Alienation

"Idol Worship is on of the most difficult and unclear concepts of Hinduism that is quite often misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Does Hindus worship idols? Why? And how they really see these idols?
This short study aims to answer these questions."

"I pull my copy of Metrophage out of its battered pink paper folder. It is suitably badly printed, and the black and white stripes of the dysfunctional roller have left interference patterns running from the right to the left that distract the eye and make discernment of the faint courier words difficult and time consuming. I randomly separate the pages and start reading:

He stood and Nimble Virtue tossed a packet of Mad Love at his feet. It came to rest by the toe of his boot, where the water was icing up over a flaking patch of dried blood. Welding marks, like narrow scars of slag. The slaughterhouse had been grafted together from a stack of old Sea Train cargo containers. A cryogenic pump hummed at the far end of the place, like a beating heart, pushing liquid oxygen through the network of pipes that criss-crossed the walls and floor. From the ceiling, dull steel hooks held shapeless slabs of discoloured meat. Jonny looked at the slunk merchant.""

Nous partirons de l’article de Lacan sur « Le temps logique et l’assertion de certitude anticipée » en reprenant son usage du dilemme des prisonniers afin de proposer le modèle d’une structure de sujétion. Ainsi, la règle du jeu énoncée par le directeur de la prison – qui aussi bien pourrait être le gourou d’un groupe d’adeptes – a pour effet de faire émerger une modalité de calcul et de prise de décision qui n’appartient en propre à aucun des prisonniers. Pourtant chacun des prisonniers, du fait des spécificités de la règle du jeu, agit suivant une logique qui n’est pas la sienne et qui le conduira à sa perte. (Ce rapport d’extériorité décrit au mieux ce qu’il en est du sujet de l’inconscient, soit ce que Freud indexe du terme dialectique d’Unheimliche, « non-familièreté » de l’inconscient.) A la lumière de ce modèle, que peut-on dire des effets de production d’une subjectivité spécifiquement sectaire ? Il importe pour cela de cerner au mieux ce qu’il en est de la règle du jeu en vigueur dans le collectif considéré ; et notamment, quand cette règle avoisine le solipsisme du psychotique. Nous tirerons enfin un dernier profit de l’article sur « le temps logique » pour mettre ses conséquences cliniquement à l’épreuve de la parole d’adeptes et anciens adeptes dans les assertions de la certitude.

In this text, I bring out the critical assessment of an oversimplified differentiation of religions with “authoritarian” and “humanistic” categories offered by Fromm in his work “Psychoanalysis and religion”, which is rooted in an equally oversimplified division of types of authorities into “rational” and “irrational”, which implies that the use of power is antiethical to an authority that is defined and perceived as being rational (the way Fromm understands “rational” and “irrational” as attributes of authority). With brief recursions to Kaufmann’s criticism of this classification, an explanation of its shortcomings is offered, along with a practical example of problems of its application to Sunni Islamic theology. A recomposition of Fromm’s original categorization is proposed by adding a third category, “authoritative religion”, which is based on a new understanding of authority that is, aside from other qualities, characterized by the benevolent use of power. / U tekstu iznosim kritiku simplificirane diferencijacije religija na „autoritarne“ i „humanističke“ koju je ponudio Erich Fromm u svom djelu „Psihoanaliza i religija“, zasnovane na također simplificiranoj podjeli vrsta autoriteta na „racionalni“ i „iracionalni“, koja implicira da je upotreba moći od strane autoriteta nespojiva sa određivanjem i iskustvom istog kao racionalnog (onako kako, kao svojstva autoriteta, Fromm definira „racionalno“ i „iracionalno“). Uz kraći osvrt na Kaufmannovu kritiku ove klasifikacije, ponuđeno je objašnjenje njene nepotpunosti, uz praktični primjer problema njene primjene na islamsku sunitsku teologiju. U tekstu predlažem nadogradnju Frommove originalne kategorizacije dodavanjem treće kategorije, „autoritativne religije“, zasnovane na novom razumijevanju autoriteta kojeg, između ostalog, karakterizira benevolentna upotreba moći.

A discussion of the different starting-points for philosophical reflection between Nietzsche--who begins with the experience of nihilism--and Mars--who begins with the experience of alienation.  This paper explores some of the implications of these differences.

This article presents the first anthropological study of a recently incorporated destination in the diffusion of a qāt chewing culture as part of a process of diaspora formation among economic migrants from mainland Yemen to Soqotra Island. Soqotra as a sub-national entity of Yemen is subject to its sociocultural influences. The article focuses on one particular manifestation of these influences, namely qāt chewing, which is leading to a gradual process of cultural conversion among an increasing proportion of the island’s urban population. This process is discussed in terms of the main domains in which its local effects are manifested: the urban milieu as a generative matrix of consumption; the nature of local market politics that regulate supply and demand; the rituals of consumption and their ramifications on islanders/mainlanders relations; the transformation of the communal ethos of sociability; and the policy dilemmas of the local government. Finally, the article concludes with an assessment of the adequacy of the liberal policy orthodoxy for regulating qāt in Soqotra, and of the likely future of qāt consumption among Soqotran youths.