Edward T. Hall: Beyond Culture (1976)

“Edward Hall’s fifth book is both a summary of many themes first raised in his volume on proxemics in 1959 and a fresh insight more reminiscent of a psychologist than an anthropologist. The psychological flavor appears epigramatically in a double index to the book. First there is the ‘Index of IDEAS and techniques of TRANSCENDENCE’. Immediately following is an ‘Index of Themes’ in addition to the normal index one finds in most textbooks. The indexes signal a selfconsciousness of the main proposition advanced by Hall, viz., ‘What is called for is a massive cultural literacy movement that is not imposed but springs from within.’ This movement of the collective individual would begin to relieve the two cultural crises in the contemporary world of human experience. One crisis is the population/environment connection and the other, ‘equally lethal’, is man himself.

The analysis offered by Hall covers 15 chapters beginning with the paradoxical nature of culture, where persons and their mechanical/technological extensions are confused. In a populist flourish, Hall labels this tendency the ‘E.T. screen’. An Extension Transference emerges where one intellectually confuses an extension with the process extended. Hall readily admits this issue is not new, being the focus of the Korzybski heritage of General Semantics. Yet, Hall does make the heuristic point that culture per se is now a prime, systematic example of ET.” (from a review by Richard L. Lanigan, American Anthropologist, 1978)

Publisher Anchor Books, 1976
ISBN 0385124740, 9780385124744
320 pages

Review (Marc R. Tool, Journal of Economic Issues, 1977)

PDF (29 MB, no OCR)
See also his monograph The Silent Language, 1959.

Shamil Jeppie, Souleymane Bachir Diagne (eds.): The Meanings of Timbuktu (2008)

In a joint project between South Africa and Mali, a library to preserve more than 200 000 Arabic and West African manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 19th centuries is currently under construction. It is the first official cultural project of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the socio-economic development plan of the African Union, and when the library is built, the cultural role of Timbuktu will be revived, as it becomes the safehaven for the treasured manuscripts. The manuscripts prove that Africa had a rich legacy of written history, long before western colonisers set foot on the continent.

This volume, authored by leading international scholars, begins to sketch the ‘meaning’ of Timbuktu within the context of the intellectual history of West Africa, in particular, and of the African continent, in general. The book covers four broad areas: Part I provides an introduction to the region; outlines what archaeology can tell us of its history, examines the paper and various calligraphic styles used in the manuscripts; and explains how ancient institutions of scholarship functioned. Part II begins to analyse what the manuscripts can tell us of African history. Part III offers insight into the lives and works of just a few of the many scholars who achieved renown in the region and beyond. Part IV provides a glimpse into Timbuktu’s libraries and private collections. Part V looks at the written legacy of the eastern half of Africa, which like that of the western region, is often ignored.

A fascinating read for anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of the aura of mystique and legend that surrounds Timbuktu. The Meanings of Timbuktu strives to contextualize and clarify the importance of efforts to preserve Timbuktu’s manuscripts for Mali, for Africa and for the intellectual world.

Publisher HSRC, Cape Town, in association with CODESRIA, Dakar, 2008
Open Access
ISBN 0796922047, 139780796922045
416 pages

Review (David Robinson, H-SAfrica, 2009)

Publisher (HSRC)
Publisher (CODESRIA)

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Department of Eagles (eds.): Pedagogies of Disaster (2013) [English/Albanian]

We live in an era where the university system is undergoing great changes owing to developments in financing policies and research priorities, as well as changes in the society in which this system is embedded. This change toward a more market-oriented university, which also has immediate effects in academic peripheries such as the Balkans, the Middle East, or South-East Asia, is of great influence for the pedagogical practice of “less profitable” academic areas such as the Humanities: philosophy, languages, sociology, anthropology, history.

Because of the absence of a historically grounded establishment of the Humanities, academic peripheries, usually accompanied by a weak civil society infrastructure, seem to offer the most fertile ground for rethinking the Humanities, their pedagogical practice, and their politics, as well as the greatest threats, such as the ongoing capitalization of research, and profitability as the norm of educational achievement. The sprawling presence of for-profit universities and in academic peripheries such as Albania and Kosovo is indicative of this problematic, as are consistent underfunding of universities and the relentless budget cuts in American and English, and to a lesser extent European, universities. Motivations for this ongoing attack on the university are often driven by a political system or a politics with an aggressive stance to critical thought.

At the same time, such an absence of historical grounding may inspire a rejuvenation and reinvigoration of research in the Humanities, such as may be seen in academic centers around Asia, as many young scholars are attracted to an educational environment which is not yet completely petrified in bureaucratic procedures. In this case, a different set of questions appear concerning the place of the scholar in societies with semi-democratic or even authoritarian rule. For civil society to flourish, an educational system that reflects and interrogates the values and concepts that underlie a healthy social fabric are of crucial importance.

This volume comprises papers culled from continent. journal’s Pedagogies of Disaster conference held in Tirana, Albania, hosted by The Department of Eagles (Departamenti i Shqiponjave) in June 2013, and organized to address the fate of relation and the future of pedagogical practice in the University, and especially as it concerns the humanities. The papers gathered here seek to address the infrastructural or interpersonal changes in the modes of production as it relates to current academia, examining the elements and spaces of the rifts opening up in the polis of the University—its students, professors and administrators. The volume further addresses the pedagogical horizon at a critical limit, asking: for whom or for what are we teaching and from whom or from what are we learning?

Edited by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Adam Staley Groves, and Nico Jenkins (for The Department of Eagles, Tirana, Albania)
Translations by Jonida Gashi
Publisher Punctum Books, New York, October 2013
Brooklyn, NY: punctum books, 2013.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
552 pages
ISBN 0615898718, 9780615898711

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