Conveners
S.2.4. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Knowledge, Belief, and Cultural Imagination
- Brian Li
- Juan Acevedo (University of Lisbon)
Description
Chair: Matthijs Jonker
This paper discusses lithophagy (i.e., the eating of stones), a common if not bizarre literary trope in late imperial China (ca. 1550–1800). Why were well-educated literati so keen on writing and circulating accounts of such a strange diet? This paper argues that lithophagy became an object of great symbolic importance to disaffected scholars, as this fascination had roots in Daoist hermetic...
In The Labyrinth of Three Minotaurs (1994),Venezuelan philosopher J.M. Briceño Guerrero (1929–2014) posited a threefold scheme to explain the complexities of Latin American culture. Three intertwining inner “discourses” which took shape and were rooted from the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries through conquest, colonisation and independence wars. They manifest in every aspect of Latin...
