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Open Access
Αncient Greek II: A 21st-Century Approach
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-31) Peek, Philip S.
In this elementary textbook, Philip S. Peek draws on his twenty-five years of teaching experience to present the ancient Greek language in an imaginative and accessible way that promotes creativity, deep learning, and diversity. The course is built on three pillars: memory, analysis, and logic. Readers memorize the top 550 most frequently occurring ancient Greek words, the essential word endings, the eight parts of speech, and the grammatical concepts they will most frequently encounter when reading authentic ancient texts. Analysis and logic exercises enable the identification of clitics and full words as well as the translation and parsing of genuine ancient Greek sentences, with compelling reading selections in English and in Greek offering starting points for contemplation, debate, and reflection. A series of thirty entries by James F. Patterson, using a simplified morphophonemic approach to understanding language improve readers’ understanding of word formation, their vocabulary, and their ability to read and understand Ancient Greek. This combination of memory-based learning and concept- and skill-based learning gradually builds the confidence of the reader, teaching them how to learn by guiding them from a familiarity with the basics to proficiency in reading this beautiful language. Ancient Greek II: A 21st-Century Approach is written for high-school and university students, but is an instructive and rewarding text for anyone who wishes to learn ancient Greek.
Open Access
Color, Healthcare and Bioethics
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-28) ten Have, Henk
This book explores the profound, yet often overlooked, role of color in healthcare and bioethics, arguing that color is far more than a visual or aesthetic element—it actively shapes human experience, perception, and ethical reasoning. Traditionally regarded as secondary to objective medical observations or rational ethical debates, color has been marginalized in these fields, considered subjective and inconsequential. However, this book reveals that color is critical in diagnostic and therapeutic practices and that it subconsciously influences moral interpretations in bioethics. Through examples like the ‘blue hour’—a time of day associated with melancholy and creativity—readers are invited to consider color not just as a physical phenomenon explained by wavelengths and visual physiology, but as a medium rich with emotional and metaphorical meaning. From ‘feeling blue’ to seeing the world in ‘black and white’, color conveys complex messages that inform our perceptions of health, morality, and identity. By bridging the gap between science, emotion, and ethics, this book illuminates how colors impact our worldviews, urging readers to consider the subtle yet significant ways that color influences our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Open Access
Music, Religion and Politics at Worcester Cathedral, 680-1950
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-17) Newsholme, Richard
This book provides a comprehensive history of music and liturgy at Worcester Cathedral, from its foundation in the seventh century to the mid-20th century. The author delves into how political shifts, public opinion, and national trends have influenced changes in the cathedral's practices over time, while also highlighting the distinct local dynamics at play. The book captures the fluctuating significance of liturgy and music across different eras, from the strict, ritualistic practices of Benedictine monks to the rejection of ceremonial traditions by Interregnum Non-Conformists. It traces how the form of worship evolved in response to the beliefs of church leaders, leading to periods of decline and revival in the cathedral’s musical standards. Notably, the study explores Worcester’s role in the development of British polyphony up to the 14th century and the comforting role of the choir during World War I. With a wealth of surviving Anglo-Saxon charters, medieval liturgical manuscripts, and unique polyphonic fragments, this volume offers rare insights into centuries-old practices. While it focuses on Worcester, the study reflects broader trends in English cathedral history, providing a vital resource for understanding the interplay of music, religion, and politics in the evolution of worship.
Open Access
Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 2: The Medieval World, Judaeo-Arabic, and Neo-Aramaic
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-07) Hornkohl, Aaron D.; Vidro, Nadia; Watson, Janet C.E.; Coghill, Eleanor; Connolly, Magdalen M.; Outhwaite, Benjamin M.
Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy. Reflecting the interconnected traditions that Khan has illuminated throughout his career, this volume presents cutting-edge research on Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics, historical syntax, manuscript studies, and the transmission of textual traditions across centuries and cultures. Contributors engage with topics central to Khan’s scholarship, including the evolution of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system, the intricacies of Masoretic notation, Geniza discoveries, Samaritan and medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts, and computational approaches to linguistic analysis. As Khan retires from his role as Regius Professor, this collection stands as both a tribute and a continuation of his work, honouring his lifelong dedication to understanding and preserving the linguistic and literary heritage of the Semitic world.
Open Access
Feeling Colour: Chromatic Embodiment in Film Culture, 1950s–1960s
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-06) Lameris, Bregt
The shift back from quasi monochrome to coloured motion picture during the 1950s and 1960s famously provided moviegoers the dazzling opportunity to more fully engage their senses, all the while opening new modes of affective possibilities for filmmakers. Set against the intersection of media studies, emotion theory, biology, and digital humanities, Feeling Colour: Chromatic Embodiment in Film Culture (1950s-1960s) delves into the role colour played in the oft-fraught relationship between cinema and its audiences. This transnational analysis of an extensive range of midcentury cinematography examines the multilayered effects which extend beyond the silver screen, offering a high-level theoretical elaboration and in-depth historical exploration of both experimental and mainstream movies. Lameris takes an interdisciplinary perspective, examining the different ways colour creates—or was believed to create—embodied reactions. From perception theory and 'putting the nerves in motion’, to colour psychology and how to ‘steer’ the spectator, to cross-modal perception (or ‘synaesthesia’), Lameris asks how how colours and feelings in film are entangled in the colour cultures, discourses and beliefs of a particular historical context. With its influential cultural scholarly contribution and accessible writing style, this book will delight both students and specialists in film and media studies. In addition, those interested in the history and use of color in advertising, neuroscience, gender studies, and emotion will find the book engaging and useful.
Open Access
The Art of Compilation: Manuscripts and Networks in the Early Medieval Latin West
(punctum books, 2025-03-04) Dorofeeva, Anna; Kelly, Michael J.
The Art of Compilation: Manuscripts and Networks in the Early Medieval Latin West interrogates the medieval manuscript book as a dynamic, constantly changing object entangled in intellectual and cultural networks, constructed and deconstructed by different people, and transmuting in form and meaning over time. Medieval manuscripts are not static, permanently bound, and delimited, but rather serve as evidence for the layered relationships between texts and their material supports, and when we realize that, we gain a clearer view of medieval manuscript culture as driven by the agency and intellectual exchange of the people behind it. This volume of essays investigates early medieval Western European manuscript culture as a field of entangled objects, focusing on the connections between knowledge selection, material representation, and scribal agency. The complex road of compiling selected texts into manuscripts (compilatio) in the early Middle Ages is still not well understood, yet it is the key to the historical context surrounding medieval manuscript culture. The practice of knowledge selection consisted of three key stages: the intellectual selection of the textual content of manuscript collections; the pragmatic action of arranging the textual content in a draft form by authors or editors; and the material representation and aesthetic exposition of texts in manuscripts. These stages were part of a linear development, but also exercised reciprocal influence upon one another. By tracing this process in surviving manuscript collections, we can better understand in what practical ways knowledge was encoded and how these often innovative and experimental practices contributed to the emergence and consolidation of intellectual and scribal traditions. This has important implications for how we understand education, reform, and the exercise of power in the early Middle Ages.
Open Access
One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer
(punctum books, 2025-03-28) Rosenthal, Sarah; Witte, Valerie
In the 1950s, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, and a handful of other young artists based in New York’s Greenwich Village set out to challenge the practices and principles of professionalized dance. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of choreographers Anna Halprin, Robert Dunn, and Merce Cunningham, as well as composer John Cage, they were determined to change what dance is and can be. In One Thing Follows Another, a boundary-crossing collection of ten experimental-poetic essays, poets Valerie Witte and Sarah Rosenthal explore the work of dancer-choreographers Rainer and Forti, both at various inflection points throughout their careers and in this particular moment. Through a combination of chance operations and intentional artistic choices that push the authors to unexpected places — including the zoo, the dance studio, the street corner — and via innovative forms and techniques, such as collage, erasure, and their own artistic inventions, they deconstruct the essay form to examine what they as poets, each with their own highly charged relationships to dance, can contribute to the conversation about these pivotal figures in postmodern performance art.
Open Access
Mourning the Ends: Collaborative Writing and Performance
(punctum books, 2025-03-21) Palani, Malin; Ovalıoğlu Gros, Nilüfer; Ambayec, Maria Shantelle Alexies; van Baarle, Kristof; Burke, Peter; Gaspar, Renata; Goudouna, Sozita; Lucie, Sarah; Moritz, Evan; Hafez, Adham; Kühling, Jan-Tage; Laine, Eero; Martins Rodrigues de Moraes, Juliana; Rachev, Rumen; Stojnić, Aneta
Mourning the Ends: Collaborative Writing and Performance is an opening, a beginning, an attempt to rethink how we can be, think, and work together. This book, authored by a multitude, explores new methodologies of collaborative scholarship for the arts and humanities within the context of the various ecological, medical, military, and epistemic ends facing the world. The authors of Mourning the Ends performed an experimental methodology as the book was researched, written, and revised by fifteen individuals situated across the globe. The writing emerged in part from a shared sense of mourning through the global pandemic and ongoing ecological catastrophes, yet the questions and arguments that are raised are immediately relevant as the rolling crises of our contemporary moment play out and further develop. The volume challenges a number of key areas in performance studies as well as foundational expectations and assumptions of the arts and humanities more broadly—namely, that writing and scholarship should be solitary endeavors. The authors write back against the model of thinking and studying that centers the singular genius, especially against the backdrop of enduring and apparent end times. Mourning the Ends is in some ways a rehearsal for another future, a speculative engagement with performance, ecology, and academic affiliation beyond institutional bounds—a methodology for shared mourning, performance, and thinking.
Open Access
Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 1: Hebrew and the Wider Semitic World
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-07) Hornkohl, Aaron D.; Watson, Janet C.E.; Vidro, Nadia; Coghill, Eleanor; Connolly, Magdalen M.; Outhwaite, Benjamin M.
Geoffrey Khan’s pioneering scholarship has transformed the study of Semitic languages, literatures, and cultures, leaving an indelible mark on fields ranging from Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic dialectology to medieval manuscript traditions and linguistic typology. This Festschrift, celebrating a distinguished career that culminated in his tenure (2012–2025) as Regius Professor of Hebrew in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, brings together contributions from a vast and representative array of scholars—retired, established, and up and coming—whose work has been influenced by his vast intellectual legacy. Reflecting the interconnected traditions that Khan has illuminated throughout his career, this volume presents cutting-edge research on Hebrew and Aramaic linguistics, historical syntax, manuscript studies, and the transmission of textual traditions across centuries and cultures. Contributors engage with topics central to Khan’s scholarship, including the evolution of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system, the intricacies of Masoretic notation, Geniza discoveries, Samaritan and medieval Judaeo-Arabic texts, and computational approaches to linguistic analysis. As Khan retires from his role as Regius Professor, this collection stands as both a tribute and a continuation of his work, honouring his lifelong dedication to understanding and preserving the linguistic and literary heritage of the Semitic world.
Open Access
Troubled People, Troubled World: Psychotherapy, Ethics and Society
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-03-04) Briant, Michael
Ethical issues are the stuff of psychotherapy, and in fact Freud envisaged the process as one in which an unexamined, irrational and oppressive conscience gives way to one more benignly rooted in reason. Therapists endeavour to be non-judgemental and, indeed, are no more qualified to pass judgement on others than anyone else; do they nevertheless learn anything about ethics from their disciplined listening? The same question was asked after the war about the persecution of the Jews and other minorities, and it’s a very live issue again, faced as we are by movements like ISIS, or Putinism in Russia, that cause great suffering in the name of religious or moral regeneration - a bewildering paradox that David Astor, former editor of The Observer called ‘the scourge’. Can psychotherapy throw any light on it, or contribute any ideas as to how we might contain, if not prevent, the barbarism it sanctions? Can it offer any insights into a different, more inclusive kind of ethics, and if so, can we glean any guidance from it as to how we might further it? These are the questions the author explores, drawing on psychoanalytic thinking on these issues for over a century and illustrated by his work with individuals over four decades.
Open Access
Two Early Byzantine Bible Manuscripts in Christian Palestinian Aramaic: Codex Climaci Rescriptus II & XI
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-02-20) Phillips, Kim
Despite the ubiquitous use of Greek by the Christian church of the late antique Southern Levant, many Christians in the region also—or only—spoke Aramaic. Today, this dialect, known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA), is relatively sparsely attested in the form of regional inscriptions and, particularly, in the form of vernacular translations of Greek biblical, liturgical and theological texts. These translations survive predominantly as undertexts within palimpsest manuscripts. Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR) is one of the most important palimpsest manuscript sources for the recovery of CPA texts. CCR was created around the tenth century; its superior text consists of Syriac translations of two theological works by John Climacus. This tenth century manuscript was manufactured using recycled parchment from at least eleven older, obsolete manuscripts whose texts had been scraped off in preparation for reuse. Two of these eleven manuscripts form the focus of the present study. The first—CCR II—was originally a manuscript of the Pauline Epistles in CPA translation; the second—CCR XI—was originally an Apostolos manuscript (i.e., it contained the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles). Cutting-edge multispectral imaging technology has been brought to bear on CCR in the last decade, enabling more detailed and accurate reconstructions of its various undertexts. With the benefit of this technology, this study offers a detailed codicological introduction to each of CCR II and CCR XI, fresh editions of the undertexts themselves, as well as a commentary that begins to evaluate the ongoing significance of this manuscript for biblical and linguistic studies.
Open Access
Phenomenography in the 21st Century: A Methodology for Investigating Human Experience of the World
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-02-10) S. Åkerlind, Gerlese
Phenomenography offers a distinctive approach to studying human experience of the world, by highlighting different ways in which the same phenomena (concepts, objects, events) are experienced within any group of people. Phenomenography focuses on the relationship between meaning—people’s holistic understanding of phenomena—and structure, that is the part-whole structure of people’s awareness of phenomena. This structure of awareness then forms the basis for identifying differences in the experienced meaning of phenomena, and how awareness needs to change to allow new meanings to emerge—whether educationally, historically, culturally or socially. Over its 50-year history, there have been substantial advancements in the methods and theoretical assumptions underlying phenomenographic research, but these developments are not always recognised. This book details how the 21st-century practice of phenomenography differs from its earlier iterations, emphasising that earlier works can be misleading when used to justify current research practices. Phenomenography is a developing, not static, approach to social science research, and this book introduces further methodological and theoretical extensions to the research. Although most commonly used in educational research, the potential of phenomenography to contribute to research in other social science disciplines is increasingly being recognised and is further emphasised in this book. In this way, this book is not only essential reading for doctoral students, but will also be of interest to those already experienced in phenomenography, and to social science researchers within and outside the field of education.
Open Access
New Words to Old Tunes: Genres and Metrics of Lebanese Zajal Poetry
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-02-06) Haydar, Adnan
New Words to Old Tunes: Genres and Metrics of Lebanese Zajal Poetry introduces the rich tradition of Lebanese oral poetry, offering an in-depth study and analysis of its metrics and genres. It presents a novel framework for the proper scansion of meters and emphasises the previously overlooked roles of musical and poetic stress. It details nearly twenty zajal genres, including popular songs that use zajal metrics, and integrates musical notations and web-streamed audio links to enrich the reader’s experience. By presenting both theoretical analysis and practical applications, the book not only contributes to the academic study of Lebanese and Arab oral traditions but also supports broader efforts to preserve and disseminate this cultural heritage through digital humanities. While previous works have been largely descriptive or focused on specific poets, this book provides a detailed analytical approach to zajal metrics and their musical dimensions. This rigorous and comprehensive study will be of interest to scholars working on oral traditions, folklore studies, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, oral-formulaic poetry traditions, throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Open Access
Winter Light: On Late Life's Radiance
(punctum books, 2025-02-28) Penick, Douglas J.
In the contemporary West, the elderly are regarded as somehow “other,” no longer who they used to be, no longer full members of the worlds they once inhabited. Being old is seen as a medical management issue. But old age is not a defective version of what preceded it; it is — like childhood, adolescence, and middle age — its own time of life with its own challenges and gifts. It is an unexpected experience and largely unknown terrain. Winter Light: On Late Life’s Radiance is an exploration of old age as a time when sudden and uncontrollable losses reveal and clarify patterns of existence formerly obscured. In this context, Penick tells of the lives of artists, musicians, and others who, in old age, changed radically through visionary modes of experience that otherwise would not have been possible. Near the end of their lives, Titian, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Rabindranath Tagore, Jean Rhys, Andrea Palladio, Paul Cézanne, Leoš Janáček, Igor Stravinsky, and others found unforeseen paths and articulated subtleties and beauties never before encountered. Their visions are now woven into our culture and the stories of their lives are signposts for us. As Thoreau once said: “Not ’til we are lost… not ’til we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.” In five essays, concerned respectively with body, connection, pattern, loss, and vision, Winter Light explores irretrievable losses and dawning possibilities. Penick gives voice to aspects of the inner life that in old age unfold with unanticipated depth, breadth, strangeness, and light.
Open Access
Bacterial Genomes: Trees and Networks
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-02-28) Seshasayee, Aswin Sai Narain
Microbes form the “unseen majority” of life on Earth, with bacteria at the forefront as both the architects of life’s chemical foundations and agents of disease. But their story is far more complex. Bacteria thrive in diverse and extreme environments, driven by the dynamic evolution of their genomes. These tiny organisms wield an extraordinary ability to adapt, balancing genetic changes across generations with rapid physiological responses to environmental shifts. In Bacterial Genomes, the evolutionary and regulatory processes that shape bacterial life are brought to life. This textbook offers a conceptual exploration of how bacterial genomes are organized, how they evolve, and how their genetic information is interpreted through intricate molecular networks. Drawing on both cutting-edge research and the historical milestones that shaped microbiology, it illuminates how bacteria navigate the intersection of genetic adaptation and ecological resilience. Designed for college students, interdisciplinary researchers, and even the determined amateur, Aswin Seshasayee moves beyond technical jargon to provide a thought-provoking synthesis of bacterial evolution and adaptation. Unlike traditional genomics texts, this book blends historical insights with contemporary discoveries, offering a fresh perspective on the role of bacteria in shaping the living world.
Open Access
The Field Guide to Mixing Social and Biophysical Methods in Environmental Research
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-02-25) Lave, Rebecca; Lane, Stuart
Despite ongoing debates about its origins, the Anthropocene—a new epoch characterized by significant human impact on the Earth's geology and ecosystems—is widely acknowledged. Our environment is increasingly a product of interacting biophysical and social forces, shaped by climate change, colonial legacies, gender norms, hydrological processes, and more. Understanding these intricate interactions requires a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative, biophysical and social research. However, mixed-methods environmental research remains rare, hindered by academic boundaries, limited training, and the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration. Time, funding, and the integration of diverse data further complicate this research, whilst the dynamics and ethics of interdisciplinary teams add another layer of complexity. Despite these challenges, mixed-methods research offers a more robust and ultimately transformative understanding of environmental questions. This Field Guide aims to inspire and equip researchers to undertake such studies. Organized like a recipe book, it assists researchers in the preparation of their field work, as well as offering entry points to key methods and providing examples of successful mixed-methods projects. This book will be of interest to scholars wishing to tackle environmental research in a more holistic manner, spanning ‘sister’ disciplines such as anthropology, statistics, political science, public health, archaeology, geography, history, ecology, and Earth science.
Open Access
Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia: Volume 1: Regional Studies
(Open Book Publishers, 2025-02-05) Anonby, Erik; Morris, Miranda J.; Watson, Janet C.E.
Traditional livelihoods and the ecosystems that sustain them are dying out around the world. This book is a collection of research on the relationships between people, their environment, their expertise and their languages along the ecologically fragile coasts of the Arabian Peninsula. These studies are the outcome of many years of collaborative fieldwork with local communities in three main regions of southern and eastern Arabia: the Musandam Peninsula, Dhofar and al-Mahrah, and the island of Soqotra. Bringing together oral literature, traditional scientific knowledge, and marine subsistence at the peripheries of the Arabian seaboard, the volume makes a major contribution to the documentation of the indigenous Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL), regional Arabic, and the Kumzari language, as well as to a greater understanding of their speakers’ mastery in harvesting the seas. Diverse contributions by scholars and language community members explore the songs and stories, experiences and viewpoints of indigenous fishers, and shed light on the cultural significance of the maritime species encountered by each community. This book is a testimony to resilient ways of life, many of which have vanished, but which at the same time may offer unique answers for the future of humanity.
Open Access
The Fight for Black Liberation: Breaking the Political Strings in the Trump Era
(punctum books, 2025-02-11) Hoston, William T.
The first presidency of Donald J. Trump further unveiled the calamity of white America’s determination to maintain societal order during a period of landmark racial upheaval. From the restrictive voting measures led by Republicans and conservatives following the 2020 election, to the death of George P. Floyd Jr. and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, to the January 6, 2021 insurrection, each racial marker continues to show the endurance and even strengthening of white America’s racist traditions alongside its avowed and always unfulfilled commitments to equality for all. The Fight for Black Liberation: Breaking the Political Strings in the Trump Era presents a political critique of the state of Black America in the Trump era, especially when so many Democratic presidents (including Clinton, Obama and Biden) have done so little for Black Americans even while relying on their votes. The book argues that amid continued structural, institutional, and systemic barriers, Black people in America must establish political independence and demand a Black political agenda to chart a path toward a Black Liberation movement. What has hindered the process of reaching a Black Liberation movement has been the assimilationist loyalty of Black Americans to the false constructs of partisanship and ideology, and this book encourages Black eligible voters, of whatever party or other affiliation, to abstain from the two-party system and become an independent voting bloc only willing to give the Black vote to a chosen party in a free partisan market that best represents Black interests. Otherwise, the Black electorate remain frozen in a two-party system that has been built to serve white interests only, even when claiming otherwise, and no amount of assimilation will make a difference.
Open Access
Ontohackers: Radical Movement Philosophy in the Age of Extinctions and Algorithms, Part I: Radical Movement Philosophy and the Body Intelligence R/evolution
(punctum books, 2024-05-16) del Val, Jaym*/Jaime
Ontohackers redefines what movement, worlds, and bodies are through the sense of proprioception reconceptualized as formless fluctuation field, a movement matrix that is itself also thought, and which underlies all life forms and fields including the inorganic. Our worlds are made of endless such entangled fields n-folding in never ending variation or enferance. The current planetary crisis has emerged due to an accidental evolutionary alignment, narrowing, and impoverishment of that matrix’s indeterminacy, that appeared gradually and eventually with bipedalism, and which created an imbalance between the larger proprioceptive field and its brain, and made the atrophied body extend itself technically in geometric fields gradually covering the planet, along with its fears, with disastrous consequences that are unleashing an unprecedented type of mass extinction and species suicide. The reply to this crisis – which is urgently due if we are to reduce even slightly the collapse coming up over the next decades – is in recovering a lost sensorimotor plasticity which is also cognitive, affective, and relational plasticity, through developing movement technes for cultivating Body Intelligence (BI), reversing and taking elsewhere the failed evolution culminating in AI, stepping down from humanist suprematist pedestals, undoing our dependency from unsustainable killing machines of sedentary consumerism that impoverish experience, stopping the reproduction of a species that has become plague (by reversing heteronormative reproductive dogmas till we reach preagricultural population levels), and recovering the joys of moving with the world, in symbiotic mutation, towards unprecedented evolutionary variations: this is our cosmic responsibility for all life on Earth. The book’s structure expresses Enferance Theory with regard to how processes of becoming have a triple movement: an incipiency unfolding the field (Part I); a condensation-expansion where the field acquires full consistency (Part II), and a resonance or memory of the field relating to other fields (Part III). Part I includes Books 1 to 3 out of 7. The preface sets the context of the book: the extinction crisis. Book 1 provides an introduction to the entire field of the book and metareflects on the book’s structure and process. Book 2 is a full treatise on proprioception, developing the theory of Body Intelligence and addressing core issues of cognition, perception, communication, and an ontological redefinition of the body as proprioceptive swarm. Book 3 develops all core concepts of Radical Movement Philosophy, unfolding into several sections, first introducing the fluctation, field, and swarm theory, secondly the core concepts of clinaos (indeterminacy), metabody (consistency), and intraduction (variation), coming together in the concept of enferance. Finally, another triad further unfolds the previous as rhythm (affect), orientation (desire), and contact (sex), closing with an orgiastic cosmo-ontology that opens the way to Part II.
Open Access
Jesus and the Making of the Modern Mind, 1380-1520
(Open Book Publishers, 2024-05-02) Clossey, Luke
For his fifteenth-century followers, Jesus was everywhere – from baptism to bloodcults to bowling. This sweeping and unconventional investigation looks at Jesus across one hundred forty years of social, cultural, and intellectual history. Mystics married him, Renaissance artists painted him in three dimensions, Muslim poets praised his life-giving breath, and Christopher (“Christ-bearing”) Columbus brought the symbol of his cross to the Americas. Beyond the European periphery, this global study follows Jesus across – and sometimes between – religious boundaries, from Greenland to Kongo to China. Amidst this diversity, Jesus and the Making of the Modern Mind, 1380-1520 offers readers sympathetic and immersive insight into the religious realities of its subjects. To this end, this book identifies two perspectives: one uncovers hidden meanings and unexpected connections, while the other restricts Jesus to the space and time of human history. Minds that believed in Jesus, and those that opposed him, made use of both perspectives to make sense of their worlds. This book includes over one hundred images, tables and audio clips.