on Darwin

"The extermination of the Aborigines produced the no man's land which according the the doctrine of terra nullius gave the white settlers rights to the land. 

"Most whites were convinced that those who had been murdered in this way were members of an inferior race, doomed to destruction. They could cite the foremost biological authority of the day: Charles Darwin. In chapters 5 and 6 of The Decent of Man (1871), he presents the extermination of indigenous peoples as a natural part of the process of evolution. Animal species have always exterminated one another; races of savages have always exterminated one another; and now that there are civilised peoples, the savage races will be wiped out altogether: 'When civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.' 

"Darwin had himself seen it happen - in Argentina, in Tasmania, in mainland Australia - and reacted strongly against what he saw. But in the context of his theory of evolution, the extermination of indigenous peoples no longer appeared a crime, but seemed to be the inevitable outcome of natural processes and the precondition for continued progress. Post-Darwin, it became the done thing to shrug one's shoulders at extermination. Those reacting with disgust were merely displaying their ignorance." 

Sven Lindqvist, Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land

[It's only a few days since I was seeing posts on Facebook and elsewhere about 'Darwin Day'. According to the official website, 'Darwin Day' is a "global celebration of science and reason".]

on Claude Levi-Strauss

"What is it that makes us human beings? That was the great question that Darwin posed and Freud, Durkheim, and the rest of the class of 1913 tried to answer with reference to the Australian Aborigines. 

"Claude Levi-Strauss took up the challenge issued by his eminent predecessors. His answer was that reciprocity (reciprocite) was the key to humanity and civilisation. 

"...This was not an entirely new idea. But no one argued the case of reciprocity with more tenacity and rhetorical imagination than Levi-Strauss. Nor did anyone else have his pretensions. 

"Levi-Strauss does not study relationships between people and groups of people, but models resembling economists' ideal models of market functions. Like many economists, Levi-Strauss and his adherents believe the study of models offers knowledge of deeper, truer reality of experience, which is all to often contaminated by specific circumstances. 'To reach reality one has first to reject experience.'" 

Sven Linqvist, Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land

Quote

"Something seems to demand that truly great art skirt the edge of tastelessness, and that it be complex only incidentally, as a side-effect of trying to be absolutely simple. What is the difference between tastelessness—that quality shared between trash and high art—and banality—signature of the middlebrow? It may have something to do with extremism, with an insistence on putting gods and devils onstage alongside mere man…" 

John Pistelli