Modern anthropologists and art scholars rarely talk about human culture and artistic phenomena that do not go back to distant prehistoric art. This kind of "distant" refers not only to the age of time, but also to the strangeness of civilization. The modern Indians, Bushmen, and Polynesians have brought to today's researchers the same echoes of ancient times as archaeological discoveries, which have led people to deep confusion and curiosity, and involuntarily want to del into the mysteries of prehistoric art and culture. But for a variety of reasons — in the past due to the paucity of information, in the present day because of the obsolescence of methods — this mystery has always shrouded in fog.
Mr. Yi Zhongtian's recent book "Anthropology of Art" is unique among many similar works at home and abroad. One of its most striking features is that for the first time, the author shows thatThe mysteries of prehistoric art are not merely encased in the fleeting thoughts of prehistoric humans who have long since disappeared without leaving a trace, nor are they merely enclosed in the silent stone axes, clay pots and cave paintings that have regained the light of day, but also sleep in our own hearts, it is our own mysteries, the mysteries of "art" in general, that is, the mystery of "man", the strangeness of prehistoric art, nothing more than the strangeness of our own latent and forgotten essential power.
In this way, when the book cites a large number of archaeological and ethnographic materials that have been discovered and sorted out by modern anthropologists, it has a premise that is completely different from empirical research, that is, philosophical reflections on the nature of art and the nature of man. The author proposes that the task of this book is to "achieve an anthropological restoration of the essence of art" in order to avoid "being dazzled by the fascinating and magical world that leaves us with only a wild and strange atmosphere in our writings". Of course, in a sense, this is a more difficult task than empirical fieldwork, and it is often a thankless task. The general trend of today's aesthetic, artistic, and anthropological research is to turn to the presentation and collection of empirical materials, and "metaphysical research" has long been regarded as outdated and "pedantic". This wind of empirical evidence blew from the West in the 20th century, and it coincided with the traditional Chinese literature research.
However, "a nation cannot be without theoretical thinking for a moment" (Engels), and the result of rejecting philosophy can only be to blindly follow worse philosophy. In fact, the question is not whether a certain philosophical idea should be implemented in empirical research, but what kind of philosophy can really guide our empirical research consistently. Many works on cultural anthropology such as:Boas's "Primitive Art", Cassirer's "On Man", Fraser's "The Golden Bough".In fact, they have already applied a fairly high-level philosophical theoretical framework, but we still feel that these theoretical frameworks have nothing to do with our own personal experience of existence, but are only tools used to grasp certain facts of that distant era.
This book starts from our own experience of existence and enters the vast space between concrete materials and transcendental speculation, which makes the description of prehistoric art in this book excludeThe writing is vivid and the experience is realIn addition, a kind of has been addedThe profundity of philosophy。While we feel fresh and curious, and then tired and even suffocated, we are tired and even suffocated by the dazzling empirical material in a large number of books on primitive art and primitive culture that have been published in recent years, but this book gives us a complete, concrete, yet ethereal structure, which provides us with room for reflection and reflection.
Here, you are by no means an indifferent bystander, not an expert in the study of "primitive thinking" or "wild thinking"; You will discover the "primitive" structure of your own psyche in the artistic activities and survival activities of prehistoric man; With this inner structure, you will suddenly realize that those "barbaric" phenomena that seem so incomprehensible and confusing at first glance are so intimate and moving, and you will feel as if you have become one of those simple, innocent, intelligent but unpretentious "natural people", as if you have just stepped out of the dark kingdom of the animal kingdom and stepped into the bright age of mankind.
Catalogue of first editions. The author points out that this common structure of the human psyche, the source of this light that always shows mankind infinite possibilities, is man".Self-affirmation"Structure. The most fundamental difference between the psychological nature of humans and animals is that animals do not prove themselves in objectsMan must prove himself on an object, so he has to possess the object, transform the object, and imprint his will on it, making it "his own" object。This activity is not just a "game" or "witchcraft" activity of man, but the survival of man, the survival of man as a man, which is destined to "constantly explore, constantly change reality, and constantly transform the environment in order to survive". The "man" who has lost this structure is no longer a human being, but an object or an animal.
However, to affirm the self in the object of "non-self" is by no means the natural nature of human beings, but the activity of human free will, which is the "original sin" contrary to natural nature. The so-called original sin is to desecrate nature, break the harmony of nature, and even challenge the natural state of man. Tattoos and nose piercings are painful, primitive dances push people to the brink of energy exhaustion and starvation, and sacrifices on the altar have suppressed the instinctive fear of death. Why is this happening? Just as Adam and Eve's betrayal of the Garden of Eden was the first to transform them from animals, the transformation of natural objects, including the transformation of their natural bodies and instinctive nature, is precisely to show that they are completely different beings from natural objects, and that the free spirit of man must struggle to free itself from the heavy shell of nature.
Totems and myths, witchcraft and rituals, as well as the architecture, carvings, dances, paintings, and ** that arose from them, are all "conspiracy" between people to rebel against nature in order to confirm that they are human. The apparent harmony with nature in the consciousness of primitive man, the conciliatory gesture of asking for forgiveness from nature after desecrating it, is only an indication of a "conscious self-deception", or a "rational cunning" that has not yet been realized; But in essence, original sin will inevitably bring about the ** and antagonism between man and nature, the pain of depravity, the degradation of morality, death, blood and tears, violence and fraud - but also the awakening of man and the awakening of free consciousness.
Just as primitive man's innocent little tricks towards the natural world already contain the seeds of a path to the misery of civilized society, is not the great interest of modern man in investigating the mysteries of the mind at the moment when prehistoric man was stealing the forbidden fruit (albeit a "moment" for millions of years) an expression of a strong desire to return to self-knowledge?
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