Athenians of the fifth and fourth centuries claimed with pride that their ancestors had always lived in Attica, a claim which they expressed by describing themselves as Related to this Athenian belief that they had always lived in Attica was a second, that, as a people, they were literally ‘sprung from the earth’. It is generally assumed that both beliefs developed at a very early date, but this is merely an assumption, and in the course of this paper we will (...) see evidence suggesting, to the contrary, that both ideas were relatively late developments. This paper focuses on the development of the concept of autochthony, as far as our sources allow, in an effort to understand better what autochthony meant to the Athenians. In particular it considers how the Athenians came to think of themselves as ‘born from the earth’. It then suggests how, through the medium of the word the idea of being ‘born from the earth’ came to symbolize ‘living in a place from time immemorial’. Finally it examines how the concept of autochthony was used in contexts which relate it to the ideology of Athenian democracy. (shrink)

For a little over a decade we have been witnessing a profusion of discourses on autochthony — that is, an original belonging to a group or territory — in many parts of the world. A global approach to this question first requires a look at the principle of autochthony and its genealogy. Starting from African examples, places of prolific expression of the phenomenon, this article shows how autochthony plays the role of capital that can be invested, valued (...) and profited from. The structure of this capital carries within itself the seeds of conflict. The article analyses how the stabilization of its value requires the execution of specific strategies. Among these strategies, I will focus in greater depth on voting. The relationship between capital, autochthony and elections will thus bring us back to debates that animate political science: in new municipalities, autochthony as capital is at the heart of candidate selection, suffrage, political participation and citizenship. (shrink)

Two seminal notions of Harold Garfinkel have endured despite some uncertainty and indeterminacy that accompany them: “autochthonous” and “tendentious”. These terms, which respect the dynamic and evolving nature of social interaction, describe how local parties discover, come upon, or develop coherent accounts that can assist them to lay hold of a local orderliness that is governing some mundane interaction. This paper illuminates these two notions, first theoretically and then empirically. Drawing upon the reflections of Garfinkel, Sacks, Schegloff, Mead, Husserl, Schutz, (...) Gurwitsch, and others, the radical consequences of these two notions are elucidated and then applied to two perspicuous conversations where it is possible to witness autochthony and tendentiousness in action. This provides a clearer understanding of the importance that these features of social interaction can play in our everyday lives. The two illustrations reveal occasions where a local orderliness appears on its own, autochthonously, without requiring a heavy dose of deliberate conceptual control by parties. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a critical reading of some aspects of Heidegger’s late philosophy and evaluate how these relate to his nationalist claim that we need to stay rooted in the soil of our homeland. In response to this claim, Žižek suggests thet being-rootless is the primordial state of being-human and that what we represent as our roots are secondary attempts to obfuscate this dimension. First, I will present Heidegger’s philosophy of technology to elucidate his thesis that the essence (...) of modern technology determinates the way we come to experience the totality of beings in our times as “standing reserve”. In the second section, I expound his aesthetics where art is seen as a mode of approaching entities that follows a different logic to that of the Gestell. However, this analysis of Heidegger’s philosophy of art will reveal a political dimension to the concept of earth which I take to be a reactionary attempt to neutralize the eventual dimension of the Gestell. In the third section, I offer a critical re-interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy following Žižek’s clue. I argue that modern art is characterized by its self-reflexive character which can be deemed transcendental once we accept the ontological dimension of art following Heidegger. These works offer a rooting in our own rootless condition analogous to the grounding in the Abgrund of Hegel’s absolute knowledge. Finally, I offer an analysis of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorius Basterds from the perspective of the conceptual framework developed in the previous pages. (shrink)

In Burma, the rituals connected with the earth concern the relationship between the local communities of rice-growers and the political whole that encompasses them. The structure of this totality is a result of the history of the Burmese Buddhist monarchy which was, from the tenth century to the end of the nineteenth, the dominant political institution of the Irrawaddy valley. The Buddhist kings were viewed as the masters of the earth, a role symbolized by the ritual of the first furrow, (...) which they “traced” in the soil in order to inaugurate the work season. Moreover, the native Burmese religious system does not include a deity exclusively associated with the earth and who could, by this right, be the object of a systematic cult. This complex religious system, dominated by Buddhism, includes another cult, that of the thirty-seven nats, whose history is linked both to the Burmese monarchical system and the adoption of Theravada Buddhism as the state religion. The fall of the monarchy in 1886 did not bring about its disappearance. On the contrary, this cult is still quite alive and touches all levels of Burmese society. It is especially vibrant in those local communities that worship the thirty-seven nats of the national pantheon, viewed as the protector of their land. (shrink)

Abstract Although the concept of “groundedness/autochthony“ ( Bodenständigkeit ) in Heidegger's writings receives far less scholarly attention than, for example, that of “releasement“ ( Gelassenheit ), a careful examination of the famous “ Gelassenheit “ speech of 1955 demonstrates that, in fact, Bodenständigkeit is the core concept around which everything else turns. Moreover, in the “ Gelassenheit “ speech and the writings on Hebel that follow, Heidegger understands Bodenständigkeit to be, fundamentally, something made possible by language in its particularities (...) of tradition and locale. Thus, there is an intriguing continuity of meaning between that concept and the concept as it was used phenomenologically in his writings from the summer 1924 course up to Sein und Zeit. (shrink)

A brief scholion allusion to a “Selenite” community in Arcadia raises a question concerning this epithet and its meaning on the background of similar expressions denoting extreme antiquity. The better known term associated with the Arcadians is Proselēnoi, namely, pre-lunar, people who preceded the moon. This term is examined through several options of understanding. At the core of this analysis stands the Classical tendency to highly appreciate early periods of time and early peoples. This opens up a discussion of (...) class='Hi'>autochthony and the concept of extreme antiquity, particularly associated with Arcadia. The result is an etymologically based mythographic study centred on the Arcadians’ existence in relation to the first appearance of the moon. The conclusion offers a new interpretation of a neglected term. (shrink)

The upsurge in cultural nationalism in New Zealand has failed to produce a good case that New Zealand is an exceptional society. The reason for this is that New Zealand has not had a chance to develop a culture that is autochthonous in significant respects. New Zealand's domination by the cultures of Britain, Australia and America in the 19th and 20th centuries prevented its history from taking a significantly different path. The lack of autochthony is attributed to the structural (...) effects of physical isolation. Remoteness made its human history unusually short, led it to be exceptionally exposed to the global revolution in transport and communication from the mid-19th century, and severely constrained its population size. (shrink)

The article discusses thematic representations of the city of Thebes in the two central myths of Phoinissai: that of autochthony and the family of Oedipus. The author examines the aberrant nature of autochthonic reproduction specifically in relation to the femaleness of the earth and the effect of this on the present generation, also taking into account the complex ‘gendering’ of the last of the autochthons, Menoikeus, who dies for the city. Discussion of the city’s role in the Oedipus myth (...) includes the complex relationship of Oedipus’ two sons with their native city and associated difficulties of identity and belonging which are linked with the family history of violence between males and with a problematic connection with the native- or fatherland. (shrink)

The myth of the homeland -- The Nietzschean self-assertion of the German University -- The geo-politics of Heidegger's Mitteleuropa -- Heidegger's Greeks and the myth of autochthony -- Heidegger's "Nietzsche".

This paper aims to review the meaning and scope of the Heideggerian notion of _serenity_. In accordance with this purpose, the research is articulated according to four thematic units that allow reconstructing and synoptically exposing the most significant aspects that Heidegger elucidates throughout his conference, given in 1955 with the title of _Gelassenheit_. These points read as follows: (1) the meaning and semantic scope of the word _serenity_; (2) the condition of autochthony and the threatening nature of calculating thought; (...) (3) technique, violence and alienation; (4) the Heideggerian sense of serenity according to the meaning of _equanimity_. For the interpretation of the documents, the methodology commonly used in studies concerning the history of philosophy is adopted, which consists of a hermeneutical and critical reading of the texts selected for analysis, together with the unavoidable support favored by the specialized bibliography. (shrink)

“Could we contrive one noble lie?” implies there is one noble lie. The Autochthony Claim and the Hierarchical Claim follow. The article argues the former is the “one” noble lie. It argues the claims are both normative and descriptive propositions; both descriptively true about worldly polities in Plato’s day and historically. While the Hierarchical Claim is normatively true of the Best City, the Autochthony Claim is normatively false. The article offers a tentative explanation why jointly they comprise a (...) foundational myth of political life. (shrink)

The article proceeds from the concept of understanding local government in Russia as a projection of the potestar (pre-state) organization of public life, which transforms under the dominance of methods of state organization of public life, but retains its influence as the essential core of political and social interaction between people. The existing complex «state-municipal» mechanism for exercising power at the local level largely determines the forms and nature of political actors’ interaction at the regional level. State authorities, which are (...) focused on the totality of their own administrative influences, have not yet succeeded in fully integrating local self-government into the general public space of responsibility for powers, since local power is unbuilt initially on the principles of autogenesis, autochthony and autonomy. The current situation contributes to the archaicism of a part of social relations. For some time now, to work in the multidimensional reality of society, the authorities have begun to need analytical models to understand what is happening. As an explanatory theoretical basis for the modes of existence of local authorities developed and described by the author in the current stage of development of Russian statehood, a modal methodology is used, supplemented by the results of constructing model-oriented political ontologies, which reflect the aggregates of the layers and actors of the municipal sphere of sociopolitical reality at the regional level that are actually and actively present in the Russian society. The author is interested in searching the patterns that operate in the environment created and cultivated by the organizational and activity efforts of state structures against the background of sociocultural and other characteristics inherent in the regions. Possible working models for the needs of public administration arising from the modes offered by the author are still under development, since the reform of constitutional rules proposed by the country’s leadership raises the question of new forms of organizing the continuum of coexistence and interaction of local and state authorities in Russia. The article outlines the main research lines that indicate a number of features and reference points of the author’s approach in understanding the relationship between local government and municipal government, which may serve as an occasion for a new circle of discussions of specialists interested in the prospects for the development of political potential in the Russian municipal environment. (shrink)

A term of relatively recent mintage, coined by German scientist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, ecology draws on ancient Greek to establish and consolidate its meaning. Although scholars all too often overlook it, the anachronistic rise of ecology in its semantic and conceptual determinations is noteworthy. Formed by analogy with economy, the word may be translated as “the articulation of a dwelling”, the logos of oikos. Here, I argue not only that a vast majority of ecosystems on the planet are subject (...) to environmental upheavals and ecological crises, but also that ecology as the crossroads of dwelling and articulation is in crisis, having come into its own and made explicit what was silently present in its historical enunciation. As a result, ecology needs to be deromanticized, decoupled from the bucolic and the picturesque, and dissociated from nativism and autochthony. Every organism, ecosystem, or place is affected by the forces of unsettlement and displacement; all dwellings and their articulations are shaken to the core and set in motion, rendering ecologies exilic. Ecologies today share the exilic condition, which also threatens to level the differences among them, without the chance of returning to a stable origin, itself nothing other than a theoretical fiction. In what follows, I propose to chalk out the outlines of exilic ecologies. (shrink)

In Aeschylus' "Supplices" the Danaids flee their cousins and take refuge at Argos. Scholars have noted similarities between the Argos of the play and contemporary Athens. Yet one such correspondence has generally been overlooked: the Danaids are awarded sanctuary in terms reflecting mid fifth-century Athenian μετοιϰία, a process providing for the partial incorporation of non-citizens into polis life. Danaus and his daughters are of Argive ancestry and take up residence within the city, yet do not become citizens. Instead, they receive (...) the right μετοιϰεῖν τῆσδε γῆς. As metics they retain control of their person and property, and are not liable to seizure by another. They are not permitted to own immovable property, but receive rent-free lodgings. Pelasgus and the other Argive citizens serve as their citizen representative. Casting the Danaids as metics highlights the similarities between Pelasgus and his predecessor, Apis. Both leaders were confronted by violent strangers demanding to live among the Argives, and sought to protect the autochthony and territory of Argos. Yet as suppliants the Danaids cannot be forcibly expelled. Pelasgus' solution is a grant of μετοιϰία approved by the Argive assembly. The emergence of μετοιϰία as a formal status at Athens is difficult to date. Most scholars place it between the reforms of Cleisthenes and Pericles' citizenship law. The "Supplices" provides evidence for a date in the 460s, and functions as a charter myth legitimizing μετοιϰία, much the way the Eumenides does for the Areopagus. The "Supplices" also fits well within the context of immigration and urban development leading to Pericles' law. The fact that the Danaid trilogy won first prize may be due to the Athenians' empathy for Argos as a risk-taking polis committed both to defending its identity and to acknowledging divinely sanctioned claims to refuge. (shrink)

Tuning in to nature -- The book of nature -- Reproducing nature -- Digital autochthony -- Contested places -- Zoo-space -- Refuge -- Numinous places -- The machine stops.

Cecropids, grammatically masculine in one case and feminine in the other, occur in each of these pieces of poetry. I believe that the second passage can shed some light on the meaning of the term as it is used in the fragment from the Antiope of Eubulus. The question of the significance of the Cecropids in Eubulus has previously been discussed by E. K. Borthwick. A. B. Cook, noting the similarity of κερκώπη to the name of Cecrops and seeing their (...) associations with dew as a link between the insects and the names of Cecrops' daughters, had posited a connection between the autochthonous Athenian family of Cecrops and the earth-born cicadas, those symbols of Athenian autochthony. Borthwick applied Cook's theory to the passage from Eubulus and concluded that when the poet mentions the Cecropids that feed on the breezes he is alluding to the musical cicadas, who were believed to subsist on dew and/or air. It was this latter feature of their diet, Borthwick proposed, that inspired the last line of the fragment. (shrink)

The question of the foreigner remains, as is well known, a pressing issue, now more than ever, even as “we allow the intolerable to happen : not just death, suffering, deportation, nameless woe, but also the imbecilic destruction of Europe and the Mediterranean’s chances in the new world to come,” as Jacques Derrida already noted in August 1995. This article retraces his seminars and public interventions as he calls for another concept of hospitality, thus wresting it away from fantasies of (...) blood and autochthony, even from the notion of a common language. Indeed, his emphasis on hostipitality gives rise to another experience of citizenship and of the political, of responsibility before the other. Lastly, the relationship between unconditional hospitality and non-knowledge also helps explain why a politics that tries to measure up to it necessarily implies poetic invention. More so than other aspects (geopolitics, urban planning, social work, international law) that are affected by the problem of hospitality, hospitality’s poetic dimension may well reveal itself to be the most crucial of all. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the growing reliance on discourses of autochthony in nationalisms throughout the world. Native-ness is increasingly being made a key criterion for claiming national sovereignty over territory, as well as the more amorphous – but no less consequential – claim to national membership. By examining the crucial colonial genealogy of autochthonous discursive practices, I argue that claims to autochthony are metaphysical and, as such, deeply depoliticizing of the exclusions they produce. Drawing upon historical studies (...) showing how imperial-states deployed autocthonous discourses to divide those they categorized as Natives and Migrants from one another in an effort to maintain their imperial rule, I show the continuities of such practices in the Postcolonial New World Order of nation-states. Despite their rhetoric, I argue that contemporary, nationalist discourses of autochthonies have not – and cannot – succeed in realizing decolonization, precisely because of their reliance on modes of political, economic, and social exclusion based on the separation of people categorized as either Native-Nationals or as Migrants. The material force of ideas of Native-Nationalism, because they are premised on territorial sovereignty and not on the end of practices of expropriation and exploitation across the planet, are part of the worldwide relations of ruling and not threats to it. (shrink)

RESUMEN El trabajo aborda una faceta dentro del humanismo martiano que refleja sus consideraciones en su bregar por tierras de América. Sus postulados constituyen un imprescindible legado para formar en los estudiantes universitarios valores éticos que los conviertan en mejores seres, humanos y profesionales. En su recorrido desde México hacia Guatemala, el Apóstol pretende resaltar la figura del negro de raza pura que allí vivía. Estas consideraciones se ofrecen a partir del texto Livingstone. El artículo tiene como objetivo develar algunas (...) ideas que permitan un desarrollo político-ideológico, ético y estético integral donde se destaque el conocimiento y respeto por la historia, la autoctonía de los pueblos americanos y la cultura patrias. ABSTRACT The work addresses a facet within Martian humanism that reflects its considerations in its struggle for the lands of America. Its postulates constitute an essential legacy to form in university students ethical values ​​that turn them into better beings, human beings and professionals. On his journey from Mexico to Guatemala, the Apostle pretends to highlight the figure of the black of pure race that lived there. These considerations are offered from the Livingstone text. The article aims to reveal some ideas that allow a political-ideological, ethical and integral aesthetic development where knowledge and respect for history, the autochthony of the American people and the patriotic culture are highlighted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wandering in Ancient Greek CultureVanda ZajkoSilvia Montiglio. Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xii + 290 pp. Cloth, $50.Beginning at the beginning with Odysseus's poignant statement to Eumaeus at Odyssey 15.343 that "for mortals, nothing is worse than wandering," Silvia Montiglio seeks to present an overview of the conception of wandering from the archaic to the early Roman age. The introduction states clearly (...) that its approach is both synchronic and diachronic, and the way the chapters are organized reinforces this approach, as they focus on particular themes ("Wandering, Lying and Poetry," "The Meaning of 'Home' in One's Journey: From Apollonius' Argonautica to the Novel") while simultaneously pursuing an historical trajectory. The epilogue, entitled "What Greek Wanderers Did Not Do," expands the time fame and provides insights into the differences between pagan and Christian ideas about wandering, contrasting Neoplatonist and Cynic ascetics who describe wandering primarily as a figurative manifestation of the human condition with the peregrinatio of those Christian sages for whom "to wander means to renounce this world and one's earthly self in the expectation of the Kingdom of God" (264).Throughout, there is a preoccupation both with the semantic fields of the words used for wandering, such as, for example, in the second chapter, where the middle-passive voice of the words used for wandering are adduced to emphasize the fundamental passivity of the wanderer within Greek thought, and with the wider symbolic significance of wandering within mythological, geographical, and political landscapes as it is manifested in a variety of genres and historical periods. [End Page 129] This extensive concentration means that the potential readership of the book is a diverse one and includes both those with and without Greek and those interested in particular texts as well as in the ancient world as it is most broadly conceived. There are some places in the discussion where the material is openly and heavily dependent on other works, such as the discussion of liminality that occupies pages 16–23, which to a large extent reviews the insights of Ken Dowden, Death and the Maiden: Girls' Initiation Rites in Greek Mythology (1989), and 37–41, which revisit some of the points made by Ruth Padel, Whom Gods Destroy (1995); but in a work of such scope and eclecticism, this avowed indebtedness testifies to the thoroughness of the scholarship rather than the unoriginality of the thought involved in its production.One of the great strengths of the book is the forging of connections among different kinds of texts. In the chapter entitled "Wandering in Space and Time," Plato's theory of the wandering cause in the Timaeus is read alongside other narratives of beginnings so that the progress of the cosmos from wandering to stability is associated with that of the individual body: Herodotus contrasts the "much-wandering" of the ancestors of the Dorians with the autochthony of the Athenians who are by far the most developed of the Greeks; his successor Thucydides argues that migrations characterized the patterns of habitation of the earliest times; Democritus describes the mother's navel as an anchor that restrains the wandering womb, and he also considers the earth to have wandered before it thickened and became fixed in one position; pursued by Hera, the pregnant Leto searches far and wide for a place to deliver Apollo until she finds refuge on Delos, the island that, according to Callimachus (Hymn to Delos 191–92), also wandered until the birth of the god enabled it to put down roots. Montiglio describes the thematic and conceptual links among these different discourses in a typically fertile passage:Associating wandering within the amorphous beginnings of the cosmos is not idiosyncratic to the philosopher who disparagingly relegates wandering to the world of matter. The materialistic Democritus shares a similar notion, and so do myth and historiography. Wandering, the liminal condition, is systematically removed by growth and progress. Whether it be in biology, history, or geology, progress equals sedentariness, agglomeration, and fixity; whereas wandering defines the physical or social organism when still in the making and/or disjointed. Wandering marks cultural, biological, and geological protohistory.(12)The book... (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to reconsider the Timaeus’ introduction in order to show that Plato invites the reader to demystify the discourses of the Greek political elite of the fifth century. Dreamy land, in the autochtony myth, or ocean of nightmare, in Atlantis, khôra is the aporia of the story of Critias. Compared with Republic, this khôra is in fact the phobic projection of the aristocracy’s annoyed desires.

El pensar cobra gran importancia en la obra tardía de Martin Heidegger, momento en que sus meditaciones se plasman en un gran número de cartas, conferencias y ensayos dirigidos a la posibilidad de reflexionar sobre el ser, apartándose de la tradición filosófica de Occidente agotada en la metafísica. Es en esta época cuando aparece el discurso Serenidad, cuya relevancia radica en la actitud frente a la época técnica, cimentada en el pensar meditativo que se enfrenta al calculador. Será significativo, para (...) estas consideraciones sobre el discurso mencionado, prestar especial atención a los recursos metafóricos y lingüísticos empleados por Heidegger, de modo tal que el concepto de autoctonía toma gran peso. Dicho concepto revela la posibilidad de pensar meditativamente en nuestros días y viene a enriquecer la reflexión acerca del carácter de este pensar en el discurso de Heidegger. (shrink)