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Rough Metaphysics
The Speculative Thought and Mediumship of Jane Roberts
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Rough Metaphysics
$6499
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book is ideal for readers interested in anthropology, philosophy, and new ways of understanding speculative thought. It suits scholars and general readers curious about how outsider thinkers can reshape intellectual disciplines and inspire interdisciplinary dialogue.
What sort of thinking is needed to study anomalies in thought? In this trenchantly argued and beautifully written book, anthropologist Peter Skafish explores this provocative question by examining the writings of the medium and “rough metaphysician” Jane Roberts (1929–1984).
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Description
A powerful case for why anthropology should study outsiders of thought and their speculative ideas
What sort of thinking is needed to study anomalies in thought? In this trenchantly argued and beautifully written book, anthropologist Peter Skafish explores this provocative question by examining the writings of the medium and "rough metaphysician" Jane Roberts (1929-1984). Through a close interpretation of her own published texts as well as those she understood herself to have dictated for her cohort of channeled personalities—including one, named "Seth," who would inspire the New Age movement—Skafish shows her intuitive and dreamlike work to be a source of rigorously inventive ideas about science, ontology, translation, and pluralism. Arguing that Roberts's writings contain philosophies ahead of their time, he also asks: How might our understanding of speculative thinking change if we consider the way untrained writers, occult visionaries, and their counterparts in other cultural traditions undertake it? What can outsider thinkers teach us about the limitations of even our most critical intellectual habits?
Rough Metaphysics is at once an ethnography of the books of a strange and yet remarkable writer, a commentary on the unlikely philosophy contained in them, and a call for a new way of doing (and undoing) philosophy through anthropology, and vice versa. In guiding the reader through Roberts's often hallucinatory "world of concepts," Skafish also develops a series of original interpretations of thinkers—from William James to Claude Levi-Strauss to Paul Feyerabend—who have been vital to anthropologists and their fellow travellers.
Seductively written and surprising in its turns of thought, Rough Metaphysics is a feast for anyone who wants to learn how to think something new, especially about thought.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Rough Metaphysics is praised for its originality and clarity. Eduardo Kohn highlights its expansion of anthropological possibilities by encouraging openness to multiple modes of thought. Marilyn Strathern commends Skafish for probing deeply into the ontological frameworks of others, offering sharp critique of traditional anthropological categories. The book is described as lucid, insightful, and beautifully written.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781517915162
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 25 April 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Illustration: 6 black and white illustrations
Audience: General / adult, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 15.0mm
Width: 140.0mm
Height: 216.0mm
Weight: 454g
Pages: 384
About the Author
Peter Skafish is director of both the Institute of Speculative and Critical Inquiry and the social sciences division of the Sol Foundation. He has held research and teaching positions at the College de France; McGill University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Bauhaus University, Weimar, and is translator and editor of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's Cannibal Metaphysics (Minnesota, 2014).
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