The many issues touched upon in Wim van
Binsbergen's research and publications often invite specific
comments and queries from site visitors. Often such exchanges
have a more than personal relevance, and often others would like
to join in. This is now possible with the new Shikanda Forum and
Message Board.
date |
topic,
links |
details,
background illustrations etc.
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current
year: 2008 (would have begun above this line);
click here for Current topicalities 2008-2009 |
December 2007 |
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In december
2007 kwam de nieuwe dichtbundel van Wim
van Binsbergen uit: Vloed:
Een gedicht, and
werd feestelijk gepresenteerd ter
gelegenheid van de viering van zijn
zestigste verjaardag klik
hier voor de integrale tekst
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In April 2007 the University of
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo,
granted an honorary doctorate to
Professor René Devisch (one of that
University's alumni) for his immense
contributions to Congo studies. For the CODESRIA
Bulletin this was reason to organise
(in the time-honoured manner of the
journal Current Anthropology) a
critical discussion, still in press,
around René Devisch extensive and
wide-ranging speech of thanks; the
contributors to this discussion include
Mudimbe, Keita, Depelchin, and van
Binsbergen, a.o. Wim van Binsbergen's
contribution deals with the dilemmas of
vicariousness, performativity, identity
loss and personal myth in the
transcontinental construction of
Africanist knowledge: Wim van
Binsbergen, in press (2008),
Existential dilemmas of a North
Atlantic anthropologist in the production
of relevant Africanist knowledge: On the
occasion of the University of Kinshasa,
Democratic Republic of Congo, granting a
honorary doctorate to Professor Rene
Devisch of the Catholic University
Louvain, Belgium CODESRIA
Bulletin, 2008
This paper will be uploaded here once
the CODESRIA Bulletin in question will be
published (Summer / Fall 2008)
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November 2007 |
By the end of November, Wim van
Binsbergen finished the first version of his new book,
under the provisional title: Out of Africa or out of
Sundaland: Mythical discourse in global perspective
(400 p.). In due time we hope to include an excerpt from
this book in the present website. |
October 2007 |
picture source,
with thanks: http://www.djsylvia.nl/pics/ref1.jpg
(c) Paul Vonk
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Op 22
oktober 2007 traden, na een korte speech
door de Wethouder voor
Amsterdam-Noord, Zafir Aydodo (beleidsambtenaar
te Deventer) en Wim van Binsbergen (intercultureel
filosoof en Islamdeskundige) de twee
gastsprekers op een Suikerfeest-
bijeenkomst in de Buiksloterkerk,
georganiseerd door DOVO
(Diversiteitsoverleg Vrijwillige
Organisaties), een belangrijk
ontmoetingspunt in Amsterdam-Noord.
Politici, wijkregisseurs, imams,
ambtenaren en allerlei
vrijwilligersorganisaties namen deel aan
een (zeer smakelijke) gezamenlijke
maaltijd en wisselden van gedachten over
'De wederzijdse tolerantie en contacten
verbeteren van bewoners in
Amsterdam-Noord'. De interculturele
filosofie en Islamkunde werden zo
concreet vertaald naar, maar vooral ook
gevoed en tot leven gewekt door, de
hedendaagse actuele problematiek op
wijkniveau. De avond werd afgesloten met
een optreden van Draaiende Derwisjen die
de Soefi traditie vertolkten van Konya,
Turkije. Wim van Binsbergens herhaald
optreden, in 2007, in de multiculturele
context van Amsterdam-Noord weerspiegelt
het feit dat hij in dit stadsdeel woonde
van 1968 tot 1982; zijn oudste dochter,
Nezjma van Binsbergen, wier Arabische
naam boekdelen spreekt en vele
deuren opent, is een paar honderd meter
van de Buiksloterkerk geboren, en woont
nog steeds in dezelfde omgeving, waar zij
uiterst actief is als
evenementenorganisator in het kader van
het cultureel opbouwwerk.
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picture source (with
thanks): http://www.hoorn.nl/Smartsite.shtml?id=59159
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Op 29 oktober
2007 gaf Wim van Binsbergen een inleiding over
het thema: 'Achtergronden van West-Afrikaanse
religieuze praktijken en hun betekenis voor de
Nederlandse AMA problematiek', op een studiedag
over mensenhandel en mensensmokkel belegd door
Humanitas / Blinn, Amsterdam. rechts: een lid van de doelgroep; source
(with thanks): http://www.planet.nl/planet/show/id=1354909/contentid=543486/sc=a9f87c
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In the first months of 2007 Wim
van Binsbergen was a member of the
newly-established theme group on Connections and
Transformations in Africa', which was the
successor of the research group 'Agency in
Africa' of which Wim van Binsbergen was a member
2002-2006; later in the year 2007 the
sub-programme which he had initiated in that
context, Connections in African
knowledge, became a separate research unit.
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September 2007 |
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EXPRESSIONS
OF TRADITIONAL WISDOM
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
Brussels,
Thursday 27 Friday 28 SEPTEMBER 2007
The Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences,
in collaboration with the Royal Museum for
Central Africa and the Royal Museums of Art and
History, is organizing an international symposium
devoted toExpressions of Traditional
Wisdom of cultures from
overseas, i.e., Africa, Asia, Oceania
and the Americas including the ancient
civilizations of these continents.
The notion of wisdom in the
sense of practical wisdom has entered Western
civilization through biblical texts. In the
Hellenic experience this kind of wisdom received
a more structural character in the form of
philosophy. In this sense philosophy also
reflects one of the expressions of traditional
wisdom. The following themes have been retained:
Expressions of Traditional Wisdom in:
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Op 26 September 2007 vindt
in het kader van de introductieweken van de
studentenvereniging SSR-Leiden (die dit jaar
onder verantwoording van de wisselende commissie
NC-Uit handelen over het thema 'Verleiding') een
debat plaats over de wereldvraag 'Wat maakt
vrouwen mooi'? In het forum nemen zitting een
psychologe, een redacteur van Playboy,
een spreker (m/v) namens de Campagne
'Beperkt Houdbaar', en (op uitdrukkelijk
verzoek van het Afrika-Studiecentrum te Leiden),
Wim van Binsbergen. De laatste zal op grond van
tientallen jaren intensief veldwerk op diverse
plaatsen in Afrika als
antropoloog/historicus/filosoof, enige Afrikaanse
perspectieven op vrouwelijk schoon bemiddelen.
Het debat vindt plaats in de societeit van de
SSR, Hogewoerd 108, Leiden, en begint om 20 uur.
Te vrezen valt dat na afloop van het debat de
verkiezing zal plaatsvinden van 'Leiden's Next
Top Model'. NB. Wim van
Binsbergen (gehuwd, vader van o.m. drie
beeldschone dochters) beschouwt zich als
intercultureel filosoof met feministische
orientatie. Onder zijn leiding vond veel
onderzoek plaats naar vrouwencultuur en
vrouwenculten in Afrika. Hij heeft eerder over
dit onderwerp, en verwante thema's, geschreven
in: Intercultural encounters (met name de hoofdstukken 'Sensus communis or sensus
particularis: Immanuel Kant in Africa' en 'The shadow you shall not not step upon:
The western researcher at the Nkoya girl's
puberty rites, western central Zambia'); Afrika in spiegelbeeld (laatstgenoemd hoofdstuk in een eerdere,
Nederlandse versie, p. 139ff), en in zijn dichtbundels, waarin Afrikaanse thema's steeds een
aanzienlijke plaats innemen.
left: 'Black
I am but beautiful' (Song of Songs): A
Nubian queen being groomed during the period of
the so-called Black Pharaos (early first mill.
BCE); source: http://shisa.ukzn.ac.za/pictures/Nubian-kemsit.jpg
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What makes an African lady
to appear beautiful? Kwani, scion of
a leading family of spirit mediums/
ecstatic dancers/ diviners, at 16 years
of age an accomplished ritual specialist,
and as such one of my principal teachers
of sangoma dancing and herbal
lore, but also (since I was effectively
incorporated into the lodge family, as
the reincarnation of the lodge leader's
cousin Johannes) my classificatory
sister's daughter; Francistown, Botswana,
1988; picture: (c) Wim van Binsbergen |
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August 2007 |
This year it is twenty
years since Martin Bernal initiated the seminal
anti-Eurocentrist Black Athena debate, with the
first volume of his multi-volume project
Black Athena, of which the
long-awaited third volume was finally published
in 2006. To celebrate this milestone of criticial
anti-Eurocentrist debate, Wim
van Binsbergen's collection Black
Athena Ten Years After
(Talanta 1997)
-- a significant defense of Bernal against the
devastating criticism by Lefkowitz and McLean
Rogers in their book Black
Athena Revisited (1996) --
is currently being reprinted, greatly updated and
augmented, and now with increased critical
distance from Bernal, as Black
Athena Twenty Years After (Berlin/Boston:
LIT). |
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The 1st Annual Conference of the International
Association for Comparative Mythology took place
at Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 28-30 August 2007,
under the title The Deep History of
Stories; convenors Emily Lyle for The
Traditional Cosmology Society, Edinburgh, and
Michael Witzel for the International Association
for Comparative Mythology. At this occasion Wim
van Binsbergen presented a Powerpoint
presentation'Out of Sundaland? A
constructive assessment of Oppenheimers
thesis claiming decisive Indonesian prehistoric
cultural influence on West Asia, Africa and
Europe, specifically on the core mythologies of
the Ancient Near East and the Bible'.
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ABSTRACT. The paper is
devoted to the Sunda thesis as launched
by the leading British geneticist Stephen
Oppenheimer in 1998. Largely concurring
with Oppenheimer, but against the
background of an explicitly theoretical
position and critical of Oppenheimer's
archaeology and Frazerianism, the paper
extensively states the positive case in
favour of the generalised Sunda thesis,
on the basis of additional African and
European material (from comparative
mythology, comparative ethnography,
ancient history and comparative
linguistics) not yet adduced by
Oppenheimer. However, the argument is
critical of the specific application of
the Sunda thesis in the field of
comparative mythology. Although there are
several indications that mythical themes
already circulating in the Old World for
tens of thousands of years where
transformed / innovated and subsequently
spread in the Sunda context, multivariate
analysis (upon a contents analysis of a
representative corpus of flood myths from
all over the world, graciously made
available by Marc Isaak) brings out that
this is not the case for the Nuahic
(Noah-related) type of flood myth,
centring on 'The flood hero in his ark as
an ally of the Supreme God' -- as
exemplary for the core mythologies of the
Ancient Near East and of the Bible. Far
from being the source of Western
civilisation, as Oppenheimer claims,
Sunda turns out to be a relatively recent
recycling context (7 ka BP, on a total
time scale of 200 ka for Anatomically
Modern Humans), which however in recent
millennia has been a major source of
non-demic cultural diffusion all over
Oceania; South, East and Southwest Asia;
Africa; and probably even parts of
Europe. Whilst thus assessing and to a
considerable extent vindicating
Oppenheimer's seminal thesis, the paper
also entails the specific presentation
and of a more comprehensive theory as an
attractive alternative to Oppenheimer's:
Wim van Binsbergen's own 'Aggregative
diachronic approach to world mythology,
starting from the African continent'. The
latter theory was the subject of Wim van
Binsbergen's contributions to the Harvard
Round Table on Comparative Mythology
during its 2005 and 2006 sessions at Kyoto
(Japan) and Beijing (People's Republic of
China; also: click here for the paper based
on van Binsbergen's Beijing presentation) respectively. |
click here for details
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click here for details Meanwhile the original
Powerpoint Presentation had now been
worked into a article, currently in the
press in the journal Cosmos: Journal of
Ancient Cosmology (Univ. of Edinburgh);
click here for a pre-print (PDF): Wim van Binsbergen, in
press (2008), 'Transcontinental
mythological patterns in prehistory: A
multivariate contents analysis of flood
myths worldwide challenges
Oppenheimers claim that the core
mythologies of the Ancient Near East and
the Bible originate from early Holocene
South East Asia':
ABSTRACT. The
present argument is devoted to
the Sunda thesis, launched by the
leading British geneticist
Stephen Oppenheimer in 1998. He
made two claims: (1) there was
decisive Indonesian / Sundaland
prehistoric cultural influence on
West Asia (the General Sunda
Thesis); (2) this influence is
specifically manifest in the core
mythologies of the Ancient Near
East and the Bible (the Special
Sunda Thesis). Van
Binsbergens Aggregative
Diachronic Model of Global
Mythology, which is briefly
introduced, suggests that many of
the mythical themes for which
Oppenheimer claims a unique Sunda
origin, have a much older history
elsewhere in the Old World. These
themes may have undergone major
transformations and innovations,
in the Sunda context, and may
have subsequently spread to
Oceania and the western half of
the Old World, in that context.
The Nuah?ic (Noah-related) type
of Elaborate Flood
Myth, centring on The flood
hero in his ark as an ally of the
Supreme God, is taken to be
exemplary for the core
mythologies of the Ancient Near
East and of the Bible addressed
in Oppenheimers Special
Sunda Thesis. However,
multivariate analysis (upon a
contents analysis of a
representative corpus of flood
myths from all over the world),
far from massively and
unequivocally confirming
Oppenheimers Special Sunda
Thesis, merely makes plausible
that for a minority of mythemic
traits found in flood myths
worldwide, a Sunda effect may be
claimed, not for the origin of
that trait, but for relatively
minor aspects of its subsequent
distribution. One multivariate
analysis was based on
discriminant analysis, another on
factor analysis; both bring out
that pace Oppenheimer
most probably, and in line
with conventional views, the
mytheme of The flood hero
in his ark as an ally of the
Supreme God originated in
that form in Central Asia, and
from there spread worldwide, also
to Sundaland, from where
sometimes a further spread with
Sunda effect may be
reconstructed. Far from being the
source of Western, subsequently
global, civilisation, as
Oppenheimer claims, Sunda turns
out to have been mainly a
relatively recent recycling
context. These statistical
analyses unexpectedly highlight
the possible role of the New
World in the intercontinental
prehistory of flood myths. They
further demonstrate that the
Nuah?ic mytheme is in itself
composite; one or two of its
twelve principal components could
perhaps have originated in South
East Asia or have been
intercontinentally transmitted
via that region from a New World
origin. |
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In the first two weeks
of August 2007, Wim van Binsbergen
visited the Universitas Katolik
Parahyangan, Bandung, West Java,
Indonesia, as the guest of the postmodern
philosopher and aestheticist Professor
Bambang Sugiharto of the Department of
Philosophy and the Centre for
Cultural and Religious Studies (CCRS). Here Wim van Binsbergen gave
seminars on Intercultural Philosophy: van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2007,
'How to establish reliable and
valid knowledge on the epistemology and
cosmology of a culture different from the
researchers own?' Seminar,
Department of Philosophy, Parahyangan
Catholic University, Bandung, Indonesia,
August 3, 2007 (click for
Powerpoint presentation)
and
van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2007,
'Introduction to the Sunda thesis: Claiming
extensive pre- and proto-historic
cultural influence from Indonesia upon
South and West Asia, the Ancient Near
East, and by extension upon Africa and
Europe', Seminar, Centre for Cultural and
Religious Studies (CCRS), Department of
Philosophy, Parahyangan Catholic
University, Bandung, Indonesia, August 4,
2007 (click for Powerpoint
presentation)
The main purpose of the
trip however was to give intensive
supervision to the PhD student Stephanus
Djunatan, whose thesis on the Deleuzian
principle of affirmation is to be
defended before the Erasmus University
Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The
opportunity was taken to gather further
on-the-spot inspiration for Wim van
Binsbergen's current search for
African-Indonesian connections in
cultural pre- and protohistory.
click
here for a more extensive report and
photo essay on
this supervision and research trip to
Indonesia.
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July 2007 |
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Wim van Binsbergen,
'Experiential anthropology, and the reality and
world history of spirit: Questions for Edith
Turner'
(click
here for abstract; a very extensive
earlier version of this paper may be found at: http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/questions_for_Edith_Turner.pdf
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paper accepted for Panel 66 (convenors Prof.dr
Wim van Binsbergen and Mrs Nomfundo Mlisa
Traditional religion and healing in Africa
and the role of the inner senses; click here
for detailed programme of this panelAfter
the conference the convenors decided to compile a
selection of the papers presented at the panel as
basis for a book with the provisional title African
healing and the role of the inner senses.
In this connection additional papers are being
co-opted. Therefore, any authors interested to
submit their papers for consideration are
requested to contact the convenors/ editors, Wim
van Binsbergen and/or Nomfundo
Mlisa.
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
(ECAS)
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
This panel was originally
initiated and organised by Mrs Dr Jessica
Erdsieck and Mrs Nomfundo Mlisa; however, in view
of other commitments Dr Erdsieck decided to step
down as convener; Wim van Binsbergen agreed to
take her place. I take this opportunity to thank
Dr Erdsieck and Mrs Mlisa for their valuable
initiative, for the work they have already
invested in this panel, and for their trust in
co-opting me as co-convener.
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In the fall of 2007, the
South African freedom
fighter and poet Vusi Moloi, now in Ottawa,
Canada, hopes to publish the book of poems A
Goodbye To My Little Troubles. On
of the poems included is
entitled 'Sibanda of the Netherlands' and deals
with the intellectual / spiritual trajectory of
Wim van Binsbergen / Johannes Sibanda. The
poem is here reproduced (click to open)
with the explicit permission of its author. |
Vusi Moloi (left),
with Penny McCann and Amir Kiani (SAW Video,
Ottawa, Canada)
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June 2007 |
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26 June 2007: membership of the
jury, at the public defense of Robert Mbe Akoko's
PhD thesis entitled, "Ask and you shall
be given": Pentecostalism and the economic
crisis in Cameroon, Leiden University, the
Netherlands (supervisors: Professors Pels,
Geschiere and Konings); Dr Akoko is Lecturer at
the University of Buea, Cameroon |
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Quest: An African
Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine
de Philosophie After
a period of stagnation due to serious
illness of the Editor, the journal is now
picking up momentum again. Two annual
volumes (years 2006 and 2007) are in an
advanced stage of preparation
(publication to be expected before the
Fall, 2007). This includes a special
issue on Feminist Philosophy edited by
Sanya Osha, member of the Quest Editorial
Team. In order to meet the increasing
intercontinental demand, about a dozen
back issues are being reprinted and will
likewise be available before the Fall,
2007. In order to facilitate the
consultation of back volumes 1-19 already
available as entire volumes in PDF in the
Quest
website, separate links and documents
have now been prepared per issue, author
and article, and these will shortly be
uploaded. In order to ensure greater
continuity and avoid impossibly excessive
personal workloads, a campaign for
outside funding for Quest has now been
initiated.
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18-20 June: Wim
van Binsbergen travels to Hanover,
Germany, in order to participate in the
peer review committee of the intercontinental
research programme "Negotiating
Culture in Contemporary African Societies", funded
by the Volkswagen Foundation, following up the workshop with the same title, Dakar,
April 2006 |
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9 juni: Hoogtij -- De
cultureelkaravaan van Amsterdam Noord
(multicultureel and interreligieus festival)
Wim van Binsbergen is
uitgenodigd om voor het religieuze gedeelte als
intercultureel filosoof en Afrikaans
religiespecialist een algemene inleiding te
verzorgen onder de voorlopige titel
'Volgens mij lijkt die God van
jou als twee druppels water op die van mij'
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The Ancient
Mesopotamian/ Phoenician god Dagon, thought to be
identical to the amphibious culture hero Oannes
who (according to the book Babyloniaca
of the Hellenistic historian Berossus) appeared
in the Persian Gulf at the onset of (what we now
call) Sumerian civilisation (c. 3,000 BCE).
Oppenheimer takes him as another sign of Sunda
expansion. The Assyriologist Temple (in his
best-selling The Orion mystery, 1977)
considered Oannes to be extraterrestrial -- the
ultimate source of the apparently amazing (but
most probably non-existent) astronomical
knowledge which the French anthropologists
Griaule and Dieterlen attributed to the Dogon of
Mali, West Africa. Picture source: after: Cory,
I.P., Sanchuniaton (1832). In my own,
forthcoming comparative mythological analysis,
Oannes is interpreted as a transformation of the
Mistress of the Primal Waters who has haunted
Eurasian mythologies for tens of millennia; and
particularly as the most fundamental and
characteristic transformation of the Primal
Waters -- when their unbounded and featureless
extension is focussed and concentrated in one
spot that invites thought: the Fish
(e.g. the fish Matshya which, as an avatar of the
South Indian god Vishnu, assisted the regional
flood hero Manu), the Ark, the Primal Hill, the land,
the flood hero, and ultimately the Virgin
Creatix's son and lover.
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Wim van Binsbergen
hit on the significance of flood myths when
working on his 'Aggregative diachronic approach to
world mythology starting from the African
continent' (2004-2006).
Contrary to James Frazer's widely believed
assertions (1916) nearly two dozen flood myths
could be identified in Africa, in this
connection. Also in the examination of Genesis 10
as a major source for ethnicity in the Bronze Age
Mediterranean, flood myths turned out to be
highly revealing -- the whole of Genesis 1-12
(and not just the Noahite chapters 6-10) can be
read as one sustained flood story. An interesting
interpretative hypothesis was presented in recent
years by S.J. Oppenheimer, who suggests (Eden
in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast
Asia, 1998) that the package of flood myths
of the Ancient Near East was all due to 'Sunda'
seaborne expansion from insular Indonesia
(previously the subcontinent of 'Sundaland') as
from the beginning of the Holocene (10,000 years,
= 10 ka (kilo annum), Before Present BP), when
the polar caps melted. As painstaking
Assyriological and Biblical scholarship has
brought out since the middle of the 19th century
CE, this mythological package extends, besides
Sumerian, Babylonian and Hittite traditions, to
Genesis, where it encompasses such utterly
familiar themes as the creation of the world and
of Man, paradise, the serpent and the Fall of
Man, Cain and Abel, the Flood, and the tower of
Babel. Needless to say that we are looking here
at one of the central constitutive inspirations
of European civilisation and of world culture at
large. Oppenheimer's thesis is unmistakably
anti-Eurocentrist (cf. Bernal's
Black Athena
(1987-91-2006), where, incidentally, like in
Oppenheimer's approach, the violence of natural
disasters is considered major explanatory wisdom
in cultural history). Finding the Sunda thesis attractive
though hard to believe and poorly substantiated,
Wim van Binsbergen
engaged (March-June 2007) in a multivariate
statistical contents analysis of an extensive
collection of flood myths worldwide. For this he
used a well-researched and referenced sample
compiled by Mark Isaak.
Wim van Binsbergen is now writing a preliminary
but full report on the findings, with further
involvement from Isaak. One major result is the
firm, quantitative demonstration that (pace
Oppenheimer) the flood myths of the Ancient Near
East and the Bible derive, not from Sundaland
10 ka BP, but (as already suggested by Wim van
Binsbergen's other recent work on long-range,
prehistoric comparative mythology) from a body of flood-related
cosmological myths emerging in Central Asia c. 30
ka BP in close association with a population
characterised with mitochondrial DNA type B (a
type gradually drifting to East and South East
Asia, and finally, in the most recent millennia,
to Oceania and Madagascar). From Central Africa,
and partly (especially initially, but less and
less so) on the wings of the exceptionally wide
diffusion of mtDNA Type B, this mythological
comples -- in a continuous process of innovations
and transformations, part of which can be
retrieved in the statistical analysis -- ramified
in all directions through Eurasia and the New
World, largely over land (though they did reach
Oceania and Australia by boat, relatively
recently). So we have here the classical pitfall
of historical explanation when considering
connections and transformations in cultural
history: A (Ancient Near East 5 ka BP) and B
(Sunda 10 ka BP) are merely sharing a remote
common origin C (Central Asia 30 ka BP; C --> A and C --> B), yet they
are spuriously interpreted as if they stood in a
direct genetic relationship A --> B. (Again a parallel with Bernal, with
whom A= Ancient Egypt and B= the Aegean, without
stopping to consider C, which is
Mesolithic/Neolithic Central and West Asia). As
far as the Ancient Near East is concerned, the
Sunda whale turns out to be a red herring
However, this
anticlimax is not entirely the end of the story,
for genetic, ethnographic (including
musicological) and linguistic evidence
demonstrates that there was, in fact, a
considerable demic and cultural flow from
Indonesia to Africa and the Mediterranean, but it was much more recent (cf. the
peopling of Madagascar as part of the same
process, around the beginning of the present
era); and while this connection can be argued, on
substantial grounds, to have brought some flood
myths to Africa, other such myths were simply
diffused there over land from West Asia -- as
part of the more general 'Back into Africa'
migration that made for a genetically
demonstrable westbound migration from Central and
West Asia from c. 15,000 BP.
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This
project is carried out as part of the
subprogramme 'Connections in African
knowledge', which Wim van Binsbergen
initiated within the Theme Group
Connections and Transformations in Africa
(coordinator Mirjam de Bruijn), African
Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands |
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also see the NWO/WOTRO
application below, under May 2007; and the paper
proposal for the Edinburgh Annual Meeting of the
International Association of Comparative
Mythology, under August 2007.
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May 2007 |
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May 9-13: Confini (Boundaries) --
Festival della Filosofia, Fondazione Musica per
Roma, Roma, Italy: Round Table on
'Africa and the concept of Ubuntu', Sala
Petrassi, in Renzo Piano's Auditorium, Roma, 11
May, chair: Prof. Lucio Saviani (professor of
philosophy, Roma University) and Igor Patruno
(columnist), participants: Theo Eshetu (video
artist), Martin Nkafu (professor, Gregorian
University, Roma), Natnael Siyume (PhD student)
and Wim van Binsbergen (professor of philosophy
and Africanist, Rotterdam/Leiden). Wim van
Binsbergen's contribution will be largely in line
with his well-known article on ubuntu ('Ubuntu
and the Globalisation of African Thought and
Society', Quest: An African Journal of
Philosophy, 2001), which triggered a polemic
with Ramose and Bewaji in the South African
Journal of Philosophy
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Now published with CODESRIA (Dakar,
Senegal) under the editorship of the
leiding African philosopher Professor
Paulin J. Hountondji (member of the
Advisory Editorial Board of Quest:
An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue
Africaine de Philosophie): the proceedings of the
2002 UNESCO Colloque sur le rencontre des
rationalités, Proto Novo (Benin),
this contains the following article:
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2007, 'The
underpinning of scientific knowledge
systems: Epistemology or hegemonic power?
The implications of Sandra Harding's
critique of North Atlantic science for
the appreciation of African knowledge
systems', in: Hountondji, Paulin J., ed.,
La rationalité, une ou plurielle,
Dakar: CODESRIA [Conseil pour le
développement de la recherche en
sciences sociales en Afrique] / UNESCO [
Organisation des Nations Unies pour
léducation, la science et la
culture ] , pp. 294-327; text available
at: http://www.shikanda.net/general/porto_novo_for_hountondji_2-2003_bis.pdf
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In the context of the newly
launched research programme on Cultural
Dynamics of NWO
(Netherlands Science Foundation) / WOTRO
(Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research),
Wim van Binsbergen initiated and, in
collaboration with senior
academicians/co-applicants from Africa, Asia and
the Netherlands, submitted the following two
pre-proposals:
Competition for funding from the Cultural
Dynamics project is stiff and we can
only keep our fingers crossed for a positive
outcome. Meanwhile the formulation of these
proposals did a lot to focus already ongoing
research and writing, and to tighten
intercontinental networks of collaboration and
cross-fertilisation, which will not fail to yield
inspiring results, with or without the NWO/WOTRO
funding. I sincerely thank all colleagues
concerned. The purpose of putting these
pre-proposals on the web at this early stage is
to further expand the networks that will make
these projects a success. (These proposals have
circulated before their submission, they are not
confidential, and there is nothing in the NWO
procedure that prohibits their circulation while
being processed).
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April 2007 |
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A book proposal was
sent to publishers for the completed manuscript
of: Power and
Identity in African State Formation: Comparative
Perspectives (c. 500 pp.)
authored by Martin Doornbos and Wim van
Binsbergen
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on 4 April. 2007 will be the
start of Wim van Binsbergen's course on
Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy for this
academic year (course FW-IF3002, Bach III,
Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University
Rotterdam). Visit the special course website http://reticulum.bravehost.com/index.htm
; click
here for extensive details |
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March 2007 |
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6 March 2007, 11.00 hrs: Wim van
Binsbergen presents his extensive argument on
'Connections in African knowledge' before the
recently established theme group Connections
& Transformations at the African Studies
Centre, Leiden;
discussant: Prof. Wouter van Beek click
here for: (a) Powerpoint
presentation (improved performance)
; (b) summary
text only
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February 2007 |
JSTOR opens the treasures of its journal
collections to African institutions, free of charge!! click here for
details
Symposium
Healing and Spirituality
Research Institute for Religious Studies
and Theology (RST)
Research Institute for Social and
Cultural Research (NISCO)
Tuesday 30 January 2007, In
addition to his own paper, Wim van
Binsbergen interviewed Edith Turner;
these are his questions and their
elaborate theoretical and empirical
background:
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ABSTRACT. In the context of a
symposium on Healing and Spirituality,
Radboud University Nijmegen, the
Netherlands (2007), the author was
invited to put a number of questions
before Edith Turner. This was to
elucidate her sustained quest for an
experiential anthropology and for the
vindication, within anthropology and the
North Atlantic region at large, of
peripheral spirit traditions, such as
(from her own fieldwork) those of N.
Alaskan Inuit and the Ndembu of Zambia.
The authors questions seek to
situate Edith Turners work in
context, including the work of her late
husband Victor Turner. In addition to the
authors sympathy for experiential
anthropology and his own long-standing
practice as an African spirit medium, he
draws on intercultural philosophy and
long-range comparative research into
symbolism and mythology in order to
critically adduce perspectives that may
elucidate, complement or correct Edith
Turners. Topics covered include:
the reliability of eye witness accounts
of the paranormal; the relation between
experiential and mainstream anthropology;
the critique of going native
as a research strategy; the critique of
experiental anthropologys claims of
producing valid knowledge through
vicarious experience; the positioning of
anthropology as mediating between
peripheral traditions and the North
Atlantic region; can we claim that
peripheral spirit traditions constitute
both useful and valid knowledge?; an
elaborate attempt to situate peripheral
spirit traditions (and especially the
details of the Ndembu Chihamba
cult) within an emerging world history of
shamanism, spirit and transcendence, and
to define the flow of indebtedness
between periphery and centre; and (in the
light of the authors own professed
spirituality) a critique of spirit-matter
dualism and of claims of spirit as
ontologically independent from human
consciousness, in lieu of which the
author proposes a model of universal
(also extrasensory) informability and
occasional material effectiveness of the
body-mind. |
'Experiential anthropology,
and the reality and world history of
spirit: Questions for Edith Turner'
by Wim van
Binsbergen |
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Important notice: Access
to the Shikanda portal and to Wim van
Binsbergen's publications dramatically improved -- List of
publications Wim van Binsbergen Over the years, the Shikanda portal (of which the present
page on African religion has attracted the
largest number of visitors) has grown to such
size, and its internal structure has become so
complex, that visitors have had increasing
difficulty finding their way, even despite the
internal search facility which appears on all the
index pages of the various constituent websites.
Since Wim van Binsbergen's main output consists
of texts for publication, an updated list of
publications with hyperlinks to all available
fulltext digital texts seems the best remedy.
Thanks to the good services of the African
Studies Centre, Leiden, in the course of current
retrodigitalisation of its members published
work, many more digital texts have recently come
available, so that now the list of
publications could be greatly improved and given
a more prominent place in the Shikanda portal. This list is now being
provided with clickable links to these uploaded
publications. Since that time-consuming process
has not yet been completed, of many articles
listed, fulltext or draft versions are in fact
available in the Shikanda portal, even though no
links yet appear in the list of publications.
Therefore, please also look at the separate
webpages within the Shikanda portal, and use the internal
search facility (see below).
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January 2007 |
ABSTRACT. This paper is one of
a series of explorations that attempt to combine
(1) the Out-of-Africa scenario with
(2) Witzels seminal idea (2001) of myth
constituting an independent source on
humankinds remotest past. The project seeks
to identify (in addition to other cultural,
linguistic and religious elements: Anatomically
Modern Humans near-universals) some
putative Out of Africa original
mythological package (designated
Pandoras Box), consisting of a
few specific Narrative Complexes (NC). Moreover,
it attempts to trace this packages
subsequent transformations and innovations in the
course of global spread, identifying (in space
and time) a handful of specific Contexts of
Intensified Transformation and Innovation (CITI)
in which that process made leaps, closely
associated with historic advances in the field of
modes of production and language families.
Emphasis is on the development of an explicit
methodology, without which the entire exercise
would be pointless. The first paper in this
series was presented at Kyoto, 2005 (van
Binsbergen 2006a). The present paper seeks to
develop that argument in a number of ways: making
explicit its theoretical background (universals,
the status and nature of myth); adducing ample
prehistoric iconographic corroboration of the NCs
identified; situating the model more firmly in
molecular genetics (Forster 2004); suggesting
several Neanderthal connections to the long-range
development of Anatomically Modern Humans
mythologies; and proposing major alterations for
the format, the dating, and the specific
geographical path of the unfolding of world
mythology as stipulated by the model. For four
NCs their global history (200 ka to present) is
tentatively reconstructed. This brings out the
close association between the emergence and
spread of specific NCs, and specific
mitochondrial DNA types, and thus offers new
opportunities for dating the NCs. The model
stresses and explains the high rate of continuity
between present-day sub-Saharan African
mythologies, and those of the rest of the Old
World: partly as a result of the initial
universality of Pandoras Box, partly as a
result of the (genetically well established)
Back into Africa movement from
Central Asia from c. 15 ka BP. This clearly
steers away from essentialising Africa, and a
penultimate section refutes the allegation that
the present model would be Afrocentrist. The
conclusion considers the many implications of
this model for comparative mythology. |
An
extensive (50+ pp.) restatement and elaboration
of Wim van Binsbergen's aggregative diachronic
model of world mythology is now available as: van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2007,
'Further steps towards an aggregative diachronic
approach to world mythology, starting from the
African continent', paper read at the
International Conference on Comparative
Mythology, organized by Peking University
(Research Institute of Sanskrit Manuscripts &
Buddhist Literature) and the Mythology Project,
Asia Center, Harvard University (Department of
Sanskrit and Indian Studies), May 10-14, 2006, at
Peking University, Beijing, China (convenors
Professors Duan Qing and Michael Witzel)
NB this is a large PDF document
(c. 10 Mb), with dozens of high-resolution
illustrations, so rather than opening it from
inside your browser, use 'Save Target As..'
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Wim van Binsbergen (2007),
Extensive table of Old World mythological
continuities, classified on the basis of 20
Narrative Complexes (NCs) as found in a corpus of
sub-Saharan African cosmogonic myths collected in
historic times: including mythologies from
Ancient Egypt, Graeco-Roman Antiquity, the Bible,
and selected other literate civilisations of the
Old World, outside sub-Saharan Africa. (Note: this table is not in
portrait but in landscape format; your PDF reader
has a button to rotate the page 90 degrees
clockwise, so that you may read the table without
difficulty) |
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LONG-RANGE RESEARCH 1968-2007: While
rewriting my paper: 'Further steps towards an
aggregative diachronic approach to world
mythology, starting from the African continent',
read at the International Conference on
Comparative Mythology, organized by Peking
University (Research Institute of Sanskrit
Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature) and the
Mythology Project, Asia Center, Harvard
University (Department of Sanskrit and Indian
Studies), May 10-14, 2006, at Peking University,
Beijing, China (convenors Professors Duan Qing
and Michael Witzel) -- I feel the need (as a form
of theoretical, methodological and empirical
justification) to spell out the research
itinerary that has led me, from my first
anthropological and historical fieldwork in 1968,
to my present concentration on long-range
studies, involving connections across many
thousands of years, and across and between entire
continents. Hence this special web paper, that is
ultimately intended as draft for a book in which
I collect some of the intermediate results over
the years which so far have not yet been
published except on the Internet: Itinerary: An Africanist's itinerary
of long-range research 1968-2007, by Wim van
Binsbergen
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Prof.
Edith Turner, did ethnographic fieldwork in NW
Zambia from the 1950s, published on religion with
her husband Victor Turner, and in the last
decades has diversified her research sites, while
becoming more and more vocal on the reality of
spirits and healing (image courtesy http://victorturner.webpark.pl/edith.jpg -- from an interesting Polish review of
Victor Turner's work)
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Symposium 'Healing and
Spirituality'
Research Institute for
Religious Studies and Theology (RST)
Research Institute for Social and Cultural
Research (NISCO)
Tuesday 30 January 2007, 13.00-17.00 hrs, Radboud
University Nijmegen
Erasmus Building, Erasmusplein 1, 15th
floor, room 39 (E 15.39 + 15.41)
This symposium in honor of
Edith Turner focuses on healing and spirituality.
We ask about the interrelationship between
spirituality and healing,
First we will have 15 minute presentations by
Edith Turner (Anthropologist, University of
Virginia), Wim van Binsbergen (Professor of
Intercultural Philosophy, Erasmus University
Rotterdam / Africa Studies Centre, Leiden
University), Kees Waaijman (Professor of
Spirituality, Radboud University Nijmegen) and
Paul van der Velde (Chairperson Foundation for
Psychotherapy and Buddhism / Radboud University
Nijmegen).
Next there will be a dialogue between Edith
Turner and Wim van Binsbergen on their respective
experiences of indigenous healing, the
representation of healing and spirituality in
anthropology,
Finally we will have a round table discussion in
which all participants can take part and respond
to the presentations and dialogue.
The symposium will be concluded with an informal
get together with drinks and nibbles. |
easily
accessible background papers for Wim van
Binsbergen's contributions to this symposium are:
1) van Binsbergen,
W.M.J., 2003, Sangoma en filosoof: Eenheid
in de praktijk, dilemma in de theorie, in:
Bulhof, I.N., Poorthuis, M., & Bhagwandin,
V., eds., Mijn plaats is geen plaats:
Ontmoetingen tussen wereldbeschouwingen,
Kampen: Klement-Pelckmans, pp. 219-231; see http://www.shikanda.net/general/sangoma_en_filosoof_beter.pdf ; which is the slightly edited Dutch
translation of
2) van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2000, Crossing
cultural boundaries, in: Compass
Newsletter: For endogenous development, no.
3, July 2000, special issue on: Vitality, health
and disease: in soils, crops, animals and people,
p. 12-13; also at: http://www.shikanda.net/general/compas.htm ; and
3) van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2003, African
spirituality, in: Polylog: Internet Journal
for Intercultural Philosophizing, issue 4, March
2003, at: http://them.polylog.org/4/fbw-en.htm and http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/spirit.htm
4) his webpage on African religion, with
analytical studies as
well as accounts of his own practice as a
diviner-healer in the Southern African tradition
5) his book Intercultural Encounters (2003), whose central section (200 pp.) is
entirely devoted to an analytical approach to
such practice
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When I set out on my first
ethnographic/oral historical fieldwork in early
1968, I had just completed a sociology thesis
that was to exert a great influence on that
fieldwork and its subsequent analysis. Therefore,
now that the Tunisia material is finally, and
with great verve, being worked into a book, it
became opportune to return to this thesis on
Durkheim's theory of religion, and the central
place, therein, of the paired concepts 'sacré'
and 'profane'. Originally in Dutch, and with no
time available yet to translate the whole lengthy
piece in English, I took the opportunity to add
an extensive 'Postscript 2007' (largely in
English), in which I examine if the 1967 has any
continued relevance, outline some of its
weaknesses, and take the argument a few steps
further, in the late of a selection of later
literature: van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 1967,
'Het begrippenpaar sacré/profane van
Émile Durkheim (een verkenning)',
sociologie-scriptie in het kader van de
kandidaatsstudie culturele antropologie aan de
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Sociological
Institute, Amsterdam University (supervisor J.
Berting), with an extensive
Postscript 2007
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current
year: 2007 (begins
above this line; the closer to the top of the page, the
nearer to 2008) |
December 2006 |
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THIS WEBPAGE. In the context
of his anthropological research training at the
Amsterdam University, the Netherlands, Wim
van Binsbergen lived in the
village of Sidi Mhammad, between the towns of
'Ain Draham and Tabarka, in the region of
Khumiriyya (N.W. Tunisia, North Africa) in 1968.
Here, under the tutelage of the resourceful and
indefatigable research assistant Hasnauwi bin
Tahar, and under the competent academic
supervision of Douwe Jongmans, Klaas van der
Veen, Marielou Creyghton and Pieter van Dijk, the
basis was laid, both for his career as an
anthropologist and intercultural philosopher, and
for his life-long love for popular Islam, the
Mediterranean, and Arabic.
The North African experience was extremely rich
and formative. All the themes of Wim van
Binsbergen's later work were to be found here.
Yet, the Khumiri experience itself found only
rarely expression in Wim van Binsbergen's
published scholarly and literary work (with the
exception of the ethnographic novel Een buik
openen, 1988). It is only
now, almost forty years later, that his
two-volume book on Khumiri
shrine cults and social organisation
is finally being completed.
In the process, old and new materials are
cropping up that will be shared (often after
subtantial revamping) through the medium of this webpage. The webpage already contains
a considerable number of Wim van Binsbergen
published and unpublished texts on Khumiriyya,
and more will be added in the near future.
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November 2006 |
24 November 2006, 16.15 hrs: Wim van
Binsbergen's first
PhD (1982; supervised together with Leo Prakke,
then Professor of Constitutional Law, Amsterdam
University), Dr Gerti Hesseling, formerly
director of the Leiden African Studies Centre
(1996-2004), assumes her position as Professor of
Law and Peace in the newly created Koningsberger
chair, Utrecht University, with the inaugural
address entitled: 'Recht en vrede kussen elkaar'
(cf. Psalm 85: 10 'Mercy and truth are met
together; righteousness and peace have kissed
each other'). The above event has been occasion
to upload on the Shikanda portal a number of
books and papers Gerti Hesseling and Wim van
Binsbergen published together over the years:
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Wim van Binsbergen &
Gerti Hesseling, eds., 1984, Aspecten
van staat en maatschappij in Africa:
Recent Dutch and Belgian research on the
African state,
Leiden: African Studies Centre, 1984, 470
pp. |
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van Binsbergen, W.M.J.,
F. Reijntjens & G.S.C.M. Hesseling
(eds), 1986, State
and local community in Africa, Brussels:
Cahiers du CEDAF [ Centre dEtudes
et de Documentation sur lAfrique
Noire ] |
and a study of
Independence constitutions in West
Africa: Doornbos,
M.R., van Binsbergen, W.M.J., &
Hesseling, G.S.C.M., 1984,
Constitutional form and ideological
content: The preambles of French language
constitutions in Africa, in: Van
Binsbergen, W.M.J., & G.S.C.M.
Hesseling, eds, 1984, Aspecten van
staat en maatschappij in Afrika: Recent
Dutch and Belgian research on the African
state, Leiden: African Studies Centre,
pp. 41-100
also cf., more recently,
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Now available at the Shikanda portal:
16 November 2006, 15-17 hrs, : African Studies Centre,
Leiden: 'Africa Today' Seminar
on the recent elections in Congo; speakers: Alphonse
Muambi en Julie Ndaya; chair: Wim van Binsbergen
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' ''Culturen zijn van gisteren': De moeizame
constructie en deconstructie van de ander als
ander'; openingslezing door Wim van Binsbergen
van de serie 'De Ander', Studium Generale, Gerrit
Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, woensdag 1
november 16.00 uur; klik
hier voor samenvatting |
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October 2006 |
membership of the examination committee
in the narrower sense ('Kleine Commissie') of Barbara
Rohregger's PhD thesis entitled:
'Shifting boundaries: Social security at the fringes of
Lilongwe City, Malawi', Erasmus University Rotterdam,
supervisor: Professor C.E. von Benda-Beckmann (legal
anthropologist); Thursday 5 October 2006, 16.00 hrs,
Woudestein campus, Senate Room
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Wim van Binsbergen's contribution to the
Presymposium of RIHN [Research Institute ofor
Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan] and the 7th
ESCA [Ethnogenesis in South and Central Asia ]
Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable on Comparative
Mythology, Kyoto, 6-8 June, 2005, has now been
published as:
van Binsbergen, W.[M.J.], 2006, 'Mythological
archaeology: Situating sub-Saharan cosmogonic
myths within a long-range intercontinential
comparative perspective', in: Osada, Toshiki,
with the assistance of Hase, Noriko, Proceedings
of the Pre-symposium of RIHN and 7th ESCA
Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable, Kyoto: Research
Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), pp.
319-349. |
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September 2006 |
Click
here for: Extensive report on Wim van Binsbergen trip to
Cameroon, September 2006; shading over into an essay on
African-Indonesian continuities as manifest in the
Cameroonian Western Grassfields and among the Nkoya
people of Zambia in connection with the examination
(27 September 200610-15 hrs) of Jean Bertrand Amougou's
thèse de doctorat: La
rationalité chez P.M. Hebga:
Herméneutique et dialectique', Faculté des Arts,
Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Université de Yaoundé I,
République du Cameroun, and
seminar 'Possibilities and impossibilities of African
science', 27 September 2006, 17-20 hrs: Faculté de
Philosophie, Faculté des Arts, Lettres et Sciences
Humaines, Université de Yaoundé I (at the time this was
a rambling oral presentation, but I soon was to cover
much the same ground in a paper on 'Connections
in African knowledge' (Leiden 2006; click here), a
text which greatly benefitted from the Yaounde-I
discussion.)
combined with supervision of current PhD students in
Cameroon
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May-August 2006 |
In this period Wim van Binsbergen
was, regrettably, on sick leave. Full duties were
resumed early September 2006, and it is hoped
that the backlog of commitments and
correspondence will be cleared by end October,
2006. Sincere apologies for any inconvenience
caused. |
Maar ongetwijfeld ten gevolge
van de komkommertijd die in de Nederlandse media
toeslaat tegen het begin van de zomer,
parafraseerde het dagblad De
Telegraaf (10 juni 2006), overigens zonder nader contact op te
nemen met Wim van Binsbergen, een bericht over
uit Erasmus Magazine (EM) van
alweer ruim een half jaar eerder. Bij een
begeleidingsreis naar Kameroen, voorjaar 2005,
had Wim van Binsbergen daar op de Universiteit
van Yaounde I een informele bibliotheek
aangetroffen die door de studenten filosofie en
sociale wetenschappen op eigen initiatief was
gesticht omdat de officiele voorzieningen
onvoldoende waren; en omdat zij dringend betere
en meer recente boeken nodig hadden, werd in een
besloten mailtje aan de Rotterdamse collega's
gevraagd of ze nog boeken over hadden. Dit
mailtje leidde tot het interview met EM,
en De Telegraaf deed het als mosterd na
de maaltijd nog eens over. Want inmiddels (najaar
2006) is de actie -- die naar goed-vaderlands
gebruik dadelijk een treffende slogan kreeg
aangemeten ('Boeken voor Kameroen!') -- alweer
achterhaald. Alle door gulle gevers aangedragen
boeken zijn inmiddels bezorgd, waarbij ook
collega Wouter van Beek op een trip naar Kameroen
heeft geholpen. Maar na ernstige interne
moeilijkheden is de studenbibliotheek niet meer
actief: de vroegere, uiterst efficiente maar
seculiere bestuursleden van de
studentenvereniging die de bibliotheek beheert,
zijn (naar verluidt) afgelost door een nieuw
bestuur dat heel sterk de nadruk legde op gebed,
en dat zou de meeste leden in het verkeerde
keelgat geschoten zijn. |
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May 2006 |
Wim van Binsbergen, 2006, 'Further steps towards
an aggregative diachronic approach to world mythology
starting from the African continent' (summary text),
summary
paper for the International Conference on Comparative
Mythology, organized by Peking University and the
Mythology Project, Asia Center, Harvard
University/Sanskrit Department, to be held May 10-13,
2006, at Peking University, Beijing, China (convenors
Professors Duan Qing and Michael Witzel)
click here for the much more extensive
and fully illustrated slide presentation to be delivered
at Beijing
conference participants may click here to access
an extensive selection of photographs
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April 2006 |
28 april: public defense of Fred C.
Woudhuizen's PhD thesis The ethnicity of the Sea
Peoples; supervisor: Wim van Binsbergen; other
members of the core committee: Professors De Roos
(emer. Amsterdam), Dokter (Gent), de Mul (EUR),
with Dr Wiggermann as the committee's advisor;
the extended committee comprises, in addition,
Professors Van Herwaarden en Klamer (EUR). |
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20 april: De Vlaamse performancekunstenaar Kris
Verdonck geeft van 18 tot 22 april voorstellingen in De
Brakke Grond, het Vlaams Cultureel Centrum te Amsterdam.
De voorstelling van donderdag 20 april zal worden
afgesloten met een beschouwing door
filosoof-dichter-antropoloog Wim van Binsbergen
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20 april: De
Vlaamse performancekunstenaar Kris Verdonck geeft
van 18 tot 22 april voorstellingen in De Brakke
Grond, het Vlaams Cultureel Centrum te Amsterdam.
De voorstelling van donderdag 20 april wordt
afgesloten met een beschouwing en discussie door
filosoof-dichter-antropoloog Wim van Binsbergen
(22.00-23.15 uur) |
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now available: English translation of Wim van
Binsbergen's piece on the Manchester School and agency: 'Manchester as
a birthplace of modern agency research: The Manchester
School explained from the perspective of
Evans-Pritchards book The Nuer', paper
read at the international conference on 'Agency in
Africa: An old theme, a new issue', Erasmus University
Rotterdam (chair of intercultural philosophy) and Theme
Group on Agency in Africa, African Studies Centre
(convenors Rijk van Dijk, Wouter van Beek and Wim van
Binsbergen, 16 June 2003
on 5 April. was the start of Wim van
Binsbergen's course on Foundations of
Intercultural Philosophy for this year (Bach III,
Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University
Rotterdam). Two sessions will be presented by
guest lecturers Julie Ndaya and Louise Muller. Click
here for extensive details |
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March 2006 |
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February 2006 |
At long last: Global bee flight, a
500-page book drafted in 1998-2001 and announced
as a professionally Africanist
contribution to the Black Athena debate,
never made it into print, and contrary to the
author's habits not even to the Internet, for a
number of reasons now (2006) gradually being
overcome. Find here, as a first instalment, the
1998 version of chapter 5, lavishly amended with
2006 Postscripts in the light of the author's
intellectual progress since 1998: his increasing
acquaintance with Ancient Egypt and the Eastern
Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age, and (as a
background throwing the particular Africanist and
Egyptological argument into relief) his
increasingly successful long-range comparative
historical research into Old World symbolism,
myth and cultural history, going further and
further back in time and now reaching the pre-out
of Africa phase of Anatomically Modern Humans
(before 140,000 Before Present). Wim M.J. van Binsbergen, 1998-2006,
Skulls and tears: Identifying and analysing
an African fantasy space extending over 5000
kilometres and across 5000 years: Paper
read at the conference Fantasy spaces: The
power of images in a globalizing world
(convenors Bonno Thoden van Velzen & Birgit
Meyer), part of the WOTRO [Netherlands Foundation
for Tropical Research] research programme
Globalization and the construction of
communal identities, Amsterdam, the
Netherlands, 26-29 August 1998, PDF, 46 pp.
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At the time of its publication (1981), Wim
van Binsbergen's book Religious change in
Zambia: Exploratory Studies was a major
contribution to the study of African religion
from the perspective of political economy, as
well as a contribution to the study of the
ideological dimension of societies in Iron Age
South Central Africa in precolonial and colonial
times; the book has been out of print for years,
and here is a PDF of chapter 3 (pp. 100-134): 'Explorations in the history and
sociology of territorial cults in Zambia'
(1500-1950 CE), earlier
published in Matthew Schoffeleers' seminal
collection Guardians of the Land (Gwelo
1978)
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20 February: Wim van Binsbergen presents the latest
version of his paper 'Rupture and fusion in the study of
myth' at the departmental seminar, Department of the
philosophy of Man and Culture (Ontology of
Mediatisation), Philosophical Faculty, Erasmus University
Rotterdam
The ethical and knowledge-political issue of
manipulative instrumentality versus existential encounter
in anthropological fieldwork has been a constant in Wim
van Binsbergen's work since the 1970s -- reason to
include here, finally, his exchange with
Wolf Bleek / Sjaak van der Geest in Human
Organization, 1979 (PDF)
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January 2006 |
Quest: An African
Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de
Philosophy
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Phase I of the
retrodigitalisation of all Quest volumes ever
published has been completed. This
means that volumes I-XIX (1987-2005) are now
available online as PDF. For volumes I-XII
only entire issues or volumes may be downloaded.
We are still working on detailed Tables of
Contents for all issues/volumes involved, so that
soon also separate articles may be consulted
through clickable links. Special thanks are due
to the Library and Documentation Department of
the African
Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, for
greatly facilitating Quest retrodigitalisation.
Quest has been known for the major discussions it
has initated, involving such major African
philosophers as Hountondji, Wiredu, Oruka, Keita,
and (more recently) Mudimbe. Now that all back
issues are available on the internet, Quest's
position as a major journal will be greatly
reinforced |
In December 2003, Wim van Binsbergen contributed an
elaborate paper to the International conference 'Myth:
Theory and the disciplines', Leiden, convenors Mineke
Schipper and Daniela Merolla. This
paper has now been finalised and shortened for
publication in a special issue of Mythology
based on the conference; meanwhile a full version,
with lavish footnotes, quotations, and bibliography, has
been finalised and uploaded as a background paper (click
here)
published: Wim van
Binsbergen, 'Towards an Intercultural Hermeneutics of
Post-9/11 Reconciliation: Comments on Richard
Kearneys Thinking After Terror: An
Interreligious Challenge, Journal of
Interdisciplinary Crossroads, Vol. 2, No. 1: 60-72
(April 2005, actual date of publication January 2006),
preceded by Richard Kearney's original paper and comments
by other scholars, and followed by further comments,
Kearney's rejoinder, and a cumulative bibliography
covering both Kearney's texts and the various
commentaries.
January 5, 2006: participation in a pilot meeting of
the proposed NWO (Netherlands Research Foundation)
programme on Memory in Congo and the North Atlantic
region, Leiden, Gravensteen, with Valentin Mudimbe
(Duke), Lieve Spaas (Kingston), Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
(Oxford Brookes), Ulrich Loelke (Lueneburg), Bambi
Ceuppens (Leuven) and Grahame Lock (Leiden); click
here for Wim van Binsbergen's proposed contribution to
this project
|
current
year: 2006 (begins
above this line; the closer to the top of the page, the
nearer to 2007); click here for the years 2004-2005 |