24 research outputs found
Galls of Cecidoses eremita Curtis and Eucecidoses minutanus BrĂšthes (Lepidoptera: Cecidosidae) in Magdalena, Buenos Aires Province: preliminary study and associated fauna
The impact of âexileâ on thought: Plotinus, Derrida and Gnosticism
This article examines the impact of âexileâ â as an individual or collective experience â on how human experience is theorized. The relationship between âexileâ and thought is initially approached historically by looking at the period that Eric Dodds famously called the âage of anxietyâ in late antiquity, i.e. the period between the emperors Aurelius and Constantine. A particular interest is in the dynamics of âempireâ and the concomitant religious ferment as a context in which âexileâ, both experientially and symbolically, appears to assume an overbearing significance. Plotinusâ narrative of emanation and epistrophe as well as a group of narratives often classified as âGnosticismâ are juxtaposed as two radical examples of a wider spiritual trend at the time according to which âexileâ could be considered constitutive of human experience. By way of an historical analogy, the insights gained from this study of late antiquity are then used to guide an analysis of the current, ârestlessâ epoch, in which experiences of displacement and exile on a mass scale undermine traditional notions of belonging, thus reviving the gnostic vision of cosmic reality as an alien, exilic environment. The article concludes with a discussion of Jacques Derridaâs work as an example of contemporary gnosticism, in which a âmetaphysics of exileâ is presented in the disguise of an âexile from metaphysicsâ