The palm at the end of the mind : relatedness, religiosity, and the real
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The palm at the end of the mind : relatedness, religiosity, and the real
Duke University Press, 2009
- : pbk
Available at / 6 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
ISBN 9780822343592
Description
In many societies and for many people, religiosity is only incidentally connected with texts or theologies, church or mosque, temple or monastery. Drawing on a lifetime of ethnographic work among people for whom religion is not principally a matter of faith, doctrine, or definition, Michael Jackson turns his attention to those situations in life where we come up against the limits of language, our strength, and our knowledge, yet are sometimes thrown open to new ways of understanding our being-in-the-world, to new ways of connecting with others. Through sixty-one beautifully crafted essays based on sojourns in Europe, West Africa, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and taking his cue from Wallace Stevens’s late poem, “Of Mere Being,” Jackson explores a range of experiences where “the palm at the end of the mind” stands “beyond thought,” on “the edge of space,” “a foreign song.” Moments of crisis as well as everyday experiences in cafés, airports, and offices disclose the subtle ways in which a single life shades into others, the boundaries between cultures become blurred, fate unfolds through genealogical time, elective affinities make their appearance, and different values contend.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
1. Ancestral Roots
The Real 1
Only Connect 2
93 Irving Street 4
Reconnecting 8
Missed Connections 11
Tertium Quid 14
The Dead 19
Mind the Gap 23
The Genealogical Imagination 29
The Penumbral 34
After Midnight 38
Second Skins 40
On Not Severing the Vine When Harvesting the Grapes 42
Corrupted Con-texts 46
The Broken Heart 48
2. Primary Bonds
Incarnations 52
The Matrixial 57
A Letter from Athens 61
Emily's Journal 62
Beginnings 65
The Pain in Painting 69
Paths 73
Parallel Lives 75
My Lunch with arthur 81
The Wellness Narratives 84
Night 94
Outside the Window 98
"What Really Matters" 99
3. Elective Affinities
Knots 103
Marina del Rey 106
In Limbo 108
In Media Res 108
In Wellington 112
The Enigma of Anteriority 116
Survivor Guilt 119
Ventifact 123
Measured Talk 129
Heaven and Hell 131
Manifest Destiny 134
The Nature of Things 148
The Road of Excess 159
The Eternal Ones of the Dream 162
Strange Lights 15
Recognitions 168
The Other Portion 173
It Happens 176
Ships That Pass in the Night 178
4. Competing Values
Cafe Stelling 182
Value Judgments 184
The Bottle Imp 189
Marginal Notes 193
A Storyteller's Story 195
Big Thing and Small Thing 200
Sacrifice 203
Prince Vessantara 208
The Girl Who Went Beneath the Water 210
Ill-Gotten Gains 216
Is Nothing Sacred? 221
Return to the Cafe Stelling 229
Metanoia 232
The Place Where We Live 236
Acknowledgments 239
- Volume
-
: pbk ISBN 9780822343813
Description
In many societies and for many people, religiosity is only incidentally connected with texts or theologies, church or mosque, temple or monastery. Drawing on a lifetime of ethnographic work among people for whom religion is not principally a matter of faith, doctrine, or definition, Michael Jackson turns his attention to those situations in life where we come up against the limits of language, our strength, and our knowledge, yet are sometimes thrown open to new ways of understanding our being-in-the-world, to new ways of connecting with others. Through sixty-one beautifully crafted essays based on sojourns in Europe, West Africa, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and taking his cue from Wallace Stevens's late poem, "Of Mere Being," Jackson explores a range of experiences where "the palm at the end of the mind" stands "beyond thought," on "the edge of space," "a foreign song." Moments of crisis as well as everyday experiences in cafes, airports, and offices disclose the subtle ways in which a single life shades into others, the boundaries between cultures become blurred, fate unfolds through genealogical time, elective affinities make their appearance, and different values contend.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
1. Ancestral Roots
The Real 1
Only Connect 2
93 Irving Street 4
Reconnecting 8
Missed Connections 11
Tertium Quid 14
The Dead 19
Mind the Gap 23
The Genealogical Imagination 29
The Penumbral 34
After Midnight 38
Second Skins 40
On Not Severing the Vine When Harvesting the Grapes 42
Corrupted Con-texts 46
The Broken Heart 48
2. Primary Bonds
Incarnations 52
The Matrixial 57
A Letter from Athens 61
Emily's Journal 62
Beginnings 65
The Pain in Painting 69
Paths 73
Parallel Lives 75
My Lunch with arthur 81
The Wellness Narratives 84
Night 94
Outside the Window 98
"What Really Matters" 99
3. Elective Affinities
Knots 103
Marina del Rey 106
In Limbo 108
In Media Res 108
In Wellington 112
The Enigma of Anteriority 116
Survivor Guilt 119
Ventifact 123
Measured Talk 129
Heaven and Hell 131
Manifest Destiny 134
The Nature of Things 148
The Road of Excess 159
The Eternal Ones of the Dream 162
Strange Lights 15
Recognitions 168
The Other Portion 173
It Happens 176
Ships That Pass in the Night 178
4. Competing Values
Cafe Stelling 182
Value Judgments 184
The Bottle Imp 189
Marginal Notes 193
A Storyteller's Story 195
Big Thing and Small Thing 200
Sacrifice 203
Prince Vessantara 208
The Girl Who Went Beneath the Water 210
Ill-Gotten Gains 216
Is Nothing Sacred? 221
Return to the Cafe Stelling 229
Metanoia 232
The Place Where We Live 236
Acknowledgments 239
by "Nielsen BookData"
