Carlo Severi: The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and Imagination (2007/2015)

“Anthropologist Carlo Severi’s The Chimera Principle breaks new theoretical ground for the study of ritual, iconographic technologies, and oral traditions among non-literate peoples. Setting himself against a tradition that has long seen the memory of people “without writing”—which relies on such ephemeral records as ornaments, body painting, and masks—as fundamentally disordered or doomed to failure, he argues strenuously that ritual actions in these societies pragmatically produce religious meaning and that they demonstrate what he calls a “chimeric” imagination.

Deploying philosophical and ethnographic theory, Severi unfolds new approaches to research in the anthropology of ritual and memory, ultimately building a new theory of imagination and an original anthropology of thought.”

First published as Le Principe de la chimère: Une anthropologie de la mémoire, Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2007.

Translated by Janet Lloyd
Foreword by David Graeber
Publisher HAU Books, Chicago, 2015
Open access
ISBN 0990505057, 9780990505051
xxxiv+362 pages

Reviews: Stéphanie Leclerc-Caffarel (Gradhiva, 2010, FR), César Carrillo Trueba (Cuicuilco, 2008, ES), André Demarchi (Mana, 2009, BR-PT).

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Ruth First (1997/2012)

“The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it. United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the ‘voices of liberation’ were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few.

The Voices of Liberation series ensures that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost. The series offers a unique combination of biographical information with selections from original speeches and writings in each volume. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy.

This volume presents a brief biography of Ruth First, followed by a selection of her writings as a political activist, scholar and journalist. The book presents a timeline summary of significant events in Ruth’s life within the context of major socio-political events of the time. It concludes with a reflection on her legacy from a current perspective and offers a further reading list.”

Compiled by Don Pinnock
Publisher HSRC Press, Cape Town, 1997
Second edition, 2012
Voices of Liberation series, 2
Open access
ISBN 9780796923592
vii+182 pages

Commentary: Ruth First: lessons for a new generation of African scholars (Tebello Letsekha, DEP, 2014).
Ruth First Papers

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF chapters (bibliography missing)
single PDF (complete)

Peter Steiner: Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics (1984)

“Thirty years after its first publication, Peter Steiner’s erudite, thoughtful book remains a classic study of Russian Formalism. His “metapoetic” analysis offers a simple, clear schema for apprehending the unity of action and dynamic configuration of the Russian formalists’s program, while fully respecting the diversity of the cluster of theories they put forward. As such, it also serves as one of the best introductions to a movement that still exerts considerable influence on literary study.”

Publisher Cornell University Press, 1984
Digital edition by sdvig press, Geneva/Lausanne, 2014
Formalisms series, 1
Open access
ISBN 9782970082934
245 pages

Reviews: Richard F. Gustafson (Slavic Review, 1985), Rene Wellek (Poetics Today, 1986), Milton Ehre (Comparative Literature, 1986).

WorldCat

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multiple formats (Internet Archive, added on 2018-6-23)
PDFs (added on 2018-9-23)