Cuarteto Artemis o de una historia sobre resiliencia colectiva

El artículo hace una reseña acerca del célebre Cuarteto Artemis en sus 3 décadas de recorrido, y gran capacidad para adaptarse a las peripecias experimentadas a lo largo de este período, preservando la calidad interpretativa como objetivo primordial. El conjunto había sufrido el tropiezo ocasionado por la partida de Friedemann Weigle quien aquejado de un trastorno bipolar y cuadro depresivo mayor pone fin a su vida el 6 de julio de 2015. Las vivencias de la agrupación aparecen bien reflejadas en el documental Artemis, The Neverending Quartet estrenado el año 2019 en Hamburgo, y posteriormente nominado al Golden Calf Film Award en la categoría de «Mejor Cortometraje Documental 2020». En sus 53 minutos la directora Hester Overmars nos brinda una pincelada a grandes rasgos de la agrupación, quien gracias a la posibilidad de asistir a los ensayos consigue registrar las experiencias detrás de bambalinas, a la par de permitirnos entrever aquellos esfuerzos reparadores, cual suerte de firme resiliencia colectiva. Teniendo a la música como principal protagonista, la película trasluce los avatares derivados de la dolorosa pérdida de un compañero de tantos años, y el empeño para no quedar atrapados en la encerrona de la desesperanza.

The Little Golden Calf [Zolotoy telyonok] and crime reports of the late 1920s

The article discusses possible inspiration behind I. Ilf and E. Petrov's novel The Little Golden Calf [Zolotoy telyonok] (1931): newspaper crime reports appearing in the late 1920s. The author points out parallels between the book's characters (Ostap Bender, Shura Balaganov, and Aleksandr Ivanovich Koreyko) and the real heroes of crime news. The article describes the adventures of an Aleksandr Serbin, who crossed the USSR from Odessa to Vladivostok alternately posing as a Brazilian industrial worker and a son of the Brazilian consul in China. All the while, Serbin seems to have been closely imitating the novel's plotline of the Lieutenant Schmidt's children. He enjoys free accommodation in hotels and receives payments from various local Soviet authorities. Interestingly, Serbin chronicles his adventures in letters to his girlfriend, thus immediately evoking another literary character — Khlestakov in Gogol's The Government Inspector [Revizor]. The article also draws analogies between crimes that took place in the Crimea in 1928 and the wealth accumulation schemes adopted by yet another of the book's characters, Koreyko.

The destruction of the golden calf (Ex 32:20): A materials science perspective

One of the most fascinating and heavily debated episodes involving gold in the Old Testament is the destruction of the golden calf described in Exodus 32:20. This study considers, for the first time, this episode from a materials science perspective. Textual analysis and experimental results indicate that it is plausible to make a gold mixture fit for later human consumption by using the three steps described in the passage. The results thus suggest that Exodus 32:20 could be an ancient reference to the most commented-upon materials processes of our day: reduce the size of matter through a top-down approach.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article brings for the first time an approach between theological analysis and a support by materials sciences to evaluate the technical viability of the destruction of the golden calf described in Exodus 32:20. It impacts the obtained results and indicates the appropriate use of technical aspects of the writers of this text.

Golden calf: Deleuze’s Nietzsche in the time of Trump

This paper examines how Gilles Deleuze addresses, and fail to address, the darker strata in Nietzsche’s work which has enabled his work to be claimed by almost every far-right European political movement since the 1890s to the Alt-Right today. Part I argues that four rhetorical strategies are present which serve to domesticate Nietzsche’s ideas concerning class and caste, race and sexuality, and his opposition to forms of liberalism, democracy, feminism and socialism: avoiding directly political subjects which Nietzsche returned to; catachrestic use of political words to describe ostensibly supra- or non-political data; denials of Nietzsche’s rightist positions, followed by justifications which, upon analysis, do not support the denials but ‘change the subject’; openly erroneous misrepresentations of divisive subjects, led by Nietzsche on war. Part II looks at how these sophistical strategies are played out in two key passages in Nietzsche and Philosophy, concerning the second ‘selection’ in the eternal recurrence, with its ‘annihilation of all parasitical and degenerate elements’. Closing remarks address the situation today, and the paradoxes and limitations of Left Nietzscheanism in the academy.

El ideal de humanidad y las humanidades. Dialogando con Kant, Fichte y Husserl

El papel de filosofía y humanidades en forjar un “ideal de humanidad” se refiere no sólo a las difíciles relaciones que éstas tradicionalmente han tenido con los poderes mundanos, sino, sobre todo, a su papel protagónico como guías de un ideal de humanidad y valores espirituales en tiempos de crisis. Kant defendió el papel de los ideales racionales de la “facultad de filosofía” a fines del s. XVIII, ante la teología, el derecho y la medicina. La reflexión de Fichte cuando la nación alemana luchaba por su existencia luego de su derrota por los ejércitos napoleónicos a inicios del s. XIX, da un impulso decisivo a los valores del idealismo alemán. Un siglo después, ante la misma nación alemana, nuevamente derrotada en la primera guerra mundial y sin hallar respuestas a su aflicción en las ciencias exactas ni en su cultura determinada por la técnica, Husserl ve en “el ideal de Humanidad de Fichte” la respuesta a aquello que puede darle su ultima satisfacción: la producción teleológica de un mundo humano, en el que pueda realizarse un orden mundial moral, único fin, fundamento y valor absoluto de la humanidad. Hoy nos hallamos en otro momento de peligro: no sólo el del positivismo naturalista desplazando desde el s. XIX a la formación humanística. El mayor de los peligros es ahora la alianza de ese naturalismo con el mundo globalizado del presente, bajo el imperio de la estan-darización burocrática y corporativa al servicio de la producción desenfrenada de dinero.The role of philosophy and the human sciences in forging an “ideal of humanity” concerns not only the tensions that they traditionally have had with worldly powers. It mostly deals with their primal role as guides of an ideal of humanity and spiritual values in times of crisis. Kant defended the central role of the “Faculty of Philosophy”’s rational ideals by the end of the 18th century, as opposed to Theology, Jurisprudence and Medicine. Fichte’s reflection when the German nation was fighting for its survival after its defeat by the Napoleonic armies at the beginning of the 19th century, gives a decisive impulse to the values brandished by German Idealism. A century later, facing the same German nation newly defeated at World War I, and without any answers to its affliction either in exact sciences nor in its culture determined by technology, Husserl finds in “Fichte’s Ideal of Humanity“ the answer to that which can give it its lasting satisfaction: the teleological production of a human world, in which a world moral order may arise, as humanity’s sole goal, foundation, and absolute value. Today we find ourselves in another moment of danger: not only that of a naturalistic positivism displacing a humanistic education. The greatest of all dangers is currently the alliance of this naturalism with the Golden calf installed in the globalized world of today, under the empire of the bureaucratic and corporative standardization at the service of the frenzied production of money.

A Gold Ring in a Swine’s Snout (Prov 11:22)

This chapter explores jewellery in the Hebrew Bible in light of the material evidence from the ancient Levant. I consider the function of jewellery in biblical texts, focused upon how these objects modify and ritualize the body. The ability of jewellery to index personhood is utilized in order to explore and unpack the use of jewellery in votive offerings. Moving beyond these insights, I then turn to the recovery of amulets inscribed with biblical passages—the earliest written evidence for biblical literature. As amulets, these objects served an apotropaic, ritual function. In biblical texts, we see this in action in the production of the golden calf, which is made from the jewellery of the Israelites. Such items therefore provide access to dimensions of personal religion and religious worship carried out outside of the official sphere. But by making sure that jewellery was utilized in the furnishing of the Temple, the biblical writers circumscribe this personal piety, making it compliant to the larger dominant model of the official Temple cult.

Dance Typologies

The opening chapter explores the relationship between medieval biblical interpretation and dance. The Vulgate was the urtext by which medieval authorities developed and justified their ideas concerning dance and its place in Christianity. Biblical glosses, as well as visual representations of the Bible, constructed the archetypes of sinful and holy dancers, thereby creating influential paradigms of Christian dancing bodies. Moreover, these exegetical strategies reveal particular political underpinnings of late medieval theology, including anti-Judaism, sacred kingship, and crusader ideology. The first section examines interpretations of Miriam and her dance of praise. The second section focuses on interpretations of the dancers around the golden calf and their idolatry. The third section explores interpretations of the dance of David, including its foreshadowing of the Passion of Christ and bolstering of the Crusades. The last section scrutinizes interpretations of the dance of Salome through the perspectives of sacrilege and misogyny.