What happens to the archaic human in a digital, AI-driven, hyper-networked world?
I approach this question using the ideas of the French philosophical anthropologist René Girard (1923-2015), who studied medieval history at the famous École des Chartes in Paris, but spent most of his career in the US as a professor in philosophical anthropology at Duke, Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins, Buffalo and, finally, Stanford. In 2005, he was elected to the Académie française.
Below are some rather speculative and explorative talks and discussions with
anthropologists, philosophers, writers, artists and futurologists on this subject. Caveat emptor!
Picture:
"The fight between carnival and lent", Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559 (Wikipedia).
Following the famous dichotomy posed by the French sociologist
Émile Durkheim (1858 - 1917),
the perennial fight between lent (representing prohibition and profane time) and carnival
(representing transgression and sacred time) is the perfect anthropological metaphor for our
tumultuous times.
Parallax
Parallax is a European online media platform run by Tom Amarque and Andrew Sweeny that publishes essays, webinars and lectures on contemporary society and culture.
- Conversations with Andrew Sweeny and Alexander Bard on YouTube
- Pageau, Bard, Hamelryck, and Sweeny - Religion for the Apocalypse
- Digital duel - Archaic humans in the networked apocalypse (talk with slides)
- The return of prohibition and ritual (talk with slides)
Philosophy Portal
Philosophy Portal is an edtech initiative by anthropologist and philosopher Cadell Last, who has a PhD from the Free University of Brussels (VUB). Last organizes online courses on major thinkers and philosophers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Lacan and Zizek, and their contemporary relevance.
- The Nietzsche dialogues (part 3 of a series on Nietzsche): Nietzsche and Mimetic Theory
- Talk on Nietzsche vs. Girard (talk with slides)
- The logic dialogues (part 3 of a series on Hegel's Science of Logic): Brain sciences and artificial intelligence
- Book chapter on Nietzsche vs. Girard in the book "Abyssal Arrows" (2023), edited by Cadell Last and OG Rose.
- Girard's anthropology of religion (dialogue with Cadell Last, 30/9/2024).
- Conversation with Cadell Last on the anthropology of philosophy / Slide presentation on Lacan, part of Philosophy Portal Year in Review 2024/2025 (January 2025).
Technosocial
Technosocial consists of artist Owen Cox and author Daniel Fraga. In their interviews with various thinkers and scientists, they explore how new technologies will reshape human societies and allow humans to redesign themselves.
- Religion, desire and machine learning
-
The Girard Sessions: Owen Cox, Daniel Fraga and I go through René Girard's
magnum opus
"Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World" one chapter at a time. We are at chapter 3.
thamelry@bio.ku.dk
Department of biology
Section for Computational and RNA Biology (SCARB)
Ole Maaløes Vej 5
DK-2200 Copenhagen N
and
Department of computer science
Programming languages and theory of computation section (PLTC)
Universitetsparken 5, HCØ, building B
DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
University of Copenhagen
Denmark