How Things Count As The Same: Memory, Mimesis, And Metaphor

241 Pages·2018·19.516 MB·English

by  Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller

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How Things Count as the Same
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How Things
Count as the Same
Memory, Mimesis, and Metaphor
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ADAM B. SELIGMAN AND
ROBERT P. WELLER
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1
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ISBN 978– 0– 19– 088871– 8
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1.  What Counts as the Same? 5
2.  How Memory Counts as the Same 33
3.  Mimesis, or “Society Is Imitation” 53
4.  Metaphor 78
5.  Framing Gifts 99
6.  Memory, Metaphor, and a Double Bind 118
7.  Sign, Ground, and Interpretant 135
Conclusion 165
Notes 181
References 199
Index 211
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Illustrations
1.1. Yin- yang symbol 12
1.2. Sign, object, interpretant, and ground 16
1.3. Chiang Yee, Lapwings over Merton Field 19
1.4. Gentile Bellini, The Sultan Mehmet II 20
3.1. Japanese turtle and crane 55
3.2. Phylacteries 56
3.3. Garden wall 56
3.4. “Study Lei Feng’s Fine Example; Serve the People
Wholeheartedly” 64
3.5. Donated goods 66
3.6. Donated goods 67
3.7. UN refugee camp signage 68
4.1. Oliviero Gatti, from Four Old Testament Scenes after
Pordenone (1625) 82
4.2. Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham’s Sacrifice (1655) 83
4.3. Cups and teapot 87
5.1. Spirit money for sale, Nanjing 2014 116
7.1. Sign, object, interpretant, and ground 136
7.2. Sign for toilets 136
7.3. Squat toilets 137
7.4. Sit- down toilets 137
7.5. Monument against War and Fascism, Vienna 158
7.6. Monument against War and Fascism, Vienna, detail 159
7.7. Jews forced to clean the streets of Vienna, 1938 160
7.8. Holocaust Memorial, Vienna 161
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Acknowledgments
This book is our third together. Like our other books, it is the product of
conversations over many years with each other and with many of our colleagues
and teachers of all sorts (including our students, children, and spouses). They
are far too many to name, but we trust that they are aware of how much we owe
them. As with all of our books, this one began with some vague questions and
some arduous reading together, and so thanks especially to those who helped us
along that path, especially through the swamps of C. S. Peirce. We are grateful as
well, and a little apologetic, to the people in the neighboring offices to ours, who
had to put up with our sometimes raucous way of thinking together: loud talk
punctuated with laughter and the occasional bit of yelling.
We are also grateful for the opportunity to present our ideas in a number
of different forums and have benefited greatly from the comments and critiques
offered. These include presentations at the Pontifical Academy of Social
Sciences; the Sofia University Faculty of Philosophy (Workshop on Wisdom,
Understanding and Doubt); the State Research University Higher School
of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia (Workshop on Bordering Religions in
[Post–]Cold War Worlds); the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Conference on
Religion, Spiritual Capital, and Civil Society); Konstanz University (Conference
on Wonach fragt die Judenfrage? Zum Antisemitismus der Moderne); and
Taiwan National University (Department of Anthropology).
Generous funding from the Fulbright Program and the Guggenheim
Foundation gave us the time to pursue a significant amount of the research and
complete the writing of this book. In addition, we are grateful to the Boston
University Center for the Humanities for its generous grant supporting our pub-
lication of some of the visual material that appears here.