Profanation

Walter Benjamin in his 1921 written essay, Capitalism as Religion, tried to express an opinion that Capitalism was a cultic religion without mercy or truce and its immanent principle is to create a “house of despair.”  Benjamin directly asserts the view that capitalism is the most omnipotent religious cult of all time and there is not exist any space beyond it. In other words, the utilitarian practices of capitalism have the meaning of a religious cult. Capitalism does not require the acceptance of a creed, a doctrine or a theology. What counts are the actions, which take the form, in terms of their social dynamics, of cult practices. After several decades influential Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben shared the somewhat same view about Capitalism. Agamben argues that people who belong to the religious cult of capitalism sacrifice every facet of life and end up in a supremely frustrating environment where everything is sacred, hence off-limits to personal use. It must be emphasized that both of these thinkers related capitalism to sacred space in which, in Agamben's opinion, everything is beyond of communal or cooperative use. To put this opinion in other words, sacred space and practice of sacrifice displaces something from the domain of human use to the domain of exclusively divine use, thus making it sacred and thus, in this case, the divine is capital and the sacred is anything required by the apparatus of capitalism. Agamben thinks that against the abovementioned process we should appeal an act of profanation which the opposite of and antidote to sacrifice. After the act of profanation, everything which was sacred now becomes restored to communal use. Agamben differentiates an act of profanation from secularization. He firmly asserts that secularization leaves the status-quo without any revolutionary change while profanation is intended as modes of resisting the universal absorption into capitalist production and consumption. Profaning the unprofanable as an exit strategy, a way to escape a religious cult that offers no hope of redemption. Agamben tells us: "The profanation of the unprofaniable is the political task of the coming generation."

Paper for Political Performances working group, IFTR, Hyderabad, 2015.

See 52:23 mins for another version of this paper with slides, at Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, as part of Fast Forward Festival.
http://www.sgt.gr/eng/SPG1032/?vid=1_d9djepf0&pg=4&flt=152

Giorgio Agamben’s essay ‘In Praise of Profanation’ proposes “profanation as the political task of the coming generation”. This paper uses Agamben’s text as a frame through which to think about Uninvited Guests’ Make Better Please, and thinks through this performance about Agamben’s proposal. Rather than being site-specific, Make Better Please was specific to the date on which it was performed, with each day’s unique script emerging from conversations with audience members, prompted by reading the day’s newspapers. The audience-generated content fed into a structure that borrowed from other forms and media; Quaker meetings, shamanic rites, rock gigs and radio broadcasts. Both performers and participating audience profaned the practices and means of print and broadcast media, from which the public tend to be separated, they put to new uses political debate and news reporting: democratic processes, press and media apparatuses that tend to be out of the public’s hands.

Unlike polemical, socialist theatre of the past, Uninvited Guests’ agenda was not to persuade or unite the public around an issue, or to assemble them for or against a cause. In conclusion I will turn to Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, who critique the possibility of “the democratization of democracy” and profane the concept of consensus, which they suggest has become sacred within leftist politics. In Make Better Please, multiple voices retain their precarious identity and singularity; are not subsumed into a collective, unified or fully inclusive “we”. I will argue that there is a relationship with Mouffe and Laclau’s conception of a pluralist democracy, constituted by sustained relations of antagonism as well as processes of identification.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3nksLZUyWU
Or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC3I2Zqueg8

DOS MATERIALES ARTICULADOS: (1) por una parte la interdependencia de la escuela moderna en proceso de expansión las grandes ideas dellos siglo XVIII y XIX: iluminismo y positivismo. La cruzada de civilización y progreso encontró en la escuela un ejército ideal. (2) de manera complementaria, una revision histórica del origen sagrado de la escuela, pasando por las diversas etapas, para desembocar en la desacralización y la profanación. Para pensar y debatir el presente y el futuro.

In this essay I theorize the time that remains as the temporality of "aftertime," the minor detail, and queer profanation, by looking at novels by Yiyun Li (Where Reasons End) and Adania Shibli (Minor Detail), and Dean Sameshima's two photo series, zu verschenken (to give away)—images of boxes of things left on the sidewalk, free for the taking—and being alone, images of queer erotic solitude.

Este ensaio debruça-se sobre polémicas recentes e ainda duradouras sobre vandalização e/ou possível desmantelamento ou retirada de esculturas e monumentos, ou reconfiguração de espaços públicos, em Portugal. Embora prenhes de equívocos, as polémicas tiveram o mérito de promover uma discussão pública sobre persistências coloniais nas cidades portuguesas, em especial em Lisboa. Proponho uma reflexão sobre o lugar que a história da arte, ao questionar o seu próprio papel histórico, ao historicizar o seu objecto e ao analisar os modos de produção artística, pode ocupar nessa discussão. Recorrerei necessariamente a vários artigos de jornais, pois foi aí (com ramificações nas redes sociais), que teve lugar a discussão.

This essay focuses on recent and still lasting polemics about vandalization and / or possible dismantling or removal of sculptures and monuments, or reconfiguration of public spaces, in Portugal. Although with some misunderstandings, the polemics had the merit of promoting a public discussion on colonial persistence in Portuguese cities, especially in Lisbon. I propose a reflection on the place that art history, by questioning its own historical role, by historicizing its object and by analyzing the modes of artistic production, can occupy in this discussion. I will necessarily resort to several newspaper articles, as it was there (with ramifications on social networks) that the discussion took place.

Subvertising, a portmanteau for 'subverting advertising', is the illicit practice of intervening into urban advertising space, from graffiti scribbles and removed adverts, to full-blown billboard takeovers and digitally hacked adverts. In this article, I draw from 24 months of ethnography with subvertisers to suggest that a particular ideal of public space, that of a 'regime of order', is folded into the hegemonic spatial management of urban communication by advertising actors. This 'regime' relies on separating worlds from common use, that is, on what Giorgio Agamben has phrased 'consecration'. As an operation with capacities for 'profanation', subvertising makes visible the 'natural' appearance of this urban regime, and enacts highly temporary placeholder forms for the communicative commons to come. Contributing to debates on the geographies of public space and publicness, subvertisers show that the possibility of common use does not emerge from property rights, shared value-systems or a predetermined scope of usage. Instead, common use emerges from the deactivation of the very notions of rights, laws, identity and ends. Here I trace subvertisers' insistence on taking seriously the charge of openness, incompatibility, contestation, excess, and the dysfunctional in urban expression as sources of inspiration and (self-)transformation.

The relationship of Walter Benjamin’s thought with theology and Judaism has always been controversial. In a canonical way, this controversy has posed the dichotomy between materialism and theology as the “Janus face” that would define his philosophy. But the singularity of this philosophy lies, rather, in the dissolution of all dichotomy, starting with that which opposes the theological to the profane. Therefore, it is superfluous to investigate the respective proportions of materialism and theology that would take place in his thought. Instead, it is necessary to examine the logic of the movement in which the relationship between the theological and the secular takes place. Three possible names for this logic are proposed here: dialectic of secularization, profanation and philosophical Marranism. Each with its peculiarities –that must be analyzed and demarcated– appoints the antinomian movement that turns, each time, dichotomies into extremes of an arc of tensions in which none of the poles remains immune or unchanged. This mediality is the appropriate territory to enquire the place of secularization and enlightenment in Benjamin’s thought.

The article is divided into three sections and reconstructs Proust’s impact on Bataille’s philosophy. The first one shows how Bataille derives from Proust an atheism very much different from Nietzsche’s but not less influential for his thought. The second part presents Bataille’s critique on Proust’s conception of Œuvre in relation to his notion of teleology. The final part compares the episode of Mlle Vinteuil with the alleged personal experience of Proust at the brothel, providing and discussing Bataille’s reading. All sections are held together by Bataille’s urge to desecrate the object he embraces (God, the Œuvre and Love).

This paper deals with the involvement of Greek
clergy in secular poetry and music in early-modern
Balkans. This trend began in late-16th century, and
involved the production of large anthologies and treatises
on Ottoman music. This paper offers insights
into the motives of those clergymen, the reception of
their works by laymen and clerics, and the reaction
of the official church.

As a political artist, director, theoretician and writer, Pier Paolo Pasolini engaged, on a variety of levels, with non-European cultures and the ways they were shaped by the forces of western late capitalism and modern globalization. In Pasolini’s confrontation with the foreign, his work after 1968 opens up the discursive space of modernity and puts trust in novel constellations in the form of allegory. That Pasolini had worked since the early 1970s on an allegorization of the profane in a foreign context had two consequences for both the concept of allegory and Pasolini’s idea of profanation: firstly, that as a critical form of confrontation, the allegory draws on an alternative store of text and image; secondly, that in the foreign context, the profane as such may only possibly be conceived as allegory. This transmission becomes evident in a short film that has received little attention till now: Le mura di Sana’a.

Zürih ETH Mimarlık Okulu’nda çalışmalarını sürdüren Alfredo Brillembourg ile Hubert Klumpner’in 1998’de  oluşturdukları Urban-Think Tank (U-TT),  kolektifinin, Münih Mimarlık Müzesi'nde (Pinakothek der Moderne) sergilenen çalışmaları  üzerine, serginin küratörlerinden Ayça Beygo ile  ile söyleşi.

The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint’s conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but—drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of profanation—we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this, which guides us throughout the article, is the novel A Wild Sheep Chase, by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. By means of a thematic reading of the novel, we discuss how it contributes to profaning particular notions of sacrifice and the sacred in leadership thinking. In the novel, self-sacrifice does not function as a way of establishing a leadership position, but as a way to avoid the dangers associated with leadership, and possibly redeem humans from their current collective urge to become leaders. Inspired by Murakami’s fictional example, we call organization scholars to engage in profanation of leadership studies and, in doing so, open new vistas for leadership theory and practice.

Cet article examine les liens entre, pour l’aspect technique, le plan séquence et le montage, et, pour l’aspect philosophico-historique, la vie quotidienne et la politique mondiale, du point de vue d’une profanation capable de désamorcer la puissance et avec une attention particulière portée à l’unique film expérimental de Pasolini : La sequenza del fiore di (1968). Ce court métrage n’a pas seulement un statut spécial dans la filmographie de Pasolini, il marque aussi un tournant du tragique vers un ton comique/pessimiste de son cinéma profanateur. Cet article révèle aussi une réception inattendue de Heidegger, par l’intermédiaire du marxisme heideggerien de Karel Kosik et d’une conception benjaminienne du profane fondée sur l’idée de bonheur.

The decrease in people who regularly celebrate liturgy in western Europe has led to the question of what to do with so-called obsolete church buildings. This question not only refers to whether or not a church building will be converted, reused or demolished, but also to the question of whether or not such a building needs to be deconsecrated, and if so, what does deconsecration of a church building actually entail? In this contribution, I will consider the role deconsecration rites play in the Roman Catholic church when a church building is taken out of liturgical use. In Roman Catholic liturgy, there are no prescribed, official deconsecration rites that are mandatory for a church building that is to be taken out of liturgical use. The actual deconsecration of a church building is, according to canon law, established by a decree that is issued by the responsible diocesan bishop. In the case of a church being taken out of liturgical use, however, there seems to be a shift from having a ritual void with regard to deconsecration rites, and also a focus on the "legitimate" way (in the sense of canon law) to deconsecrate a church building (object orientation), towards, in recent decades, paying more attention to a growing pastoral need (subject orientation) for deconsecration rites. These new ritual initiatives can be regarded as forms of pastoral care intended to help parishioners cope with the loss of their church building. I will show that different interpretations of canon law articles complicate straightforward answers to the question of which arguments are legitimate to deconsecrate a church. Furthermore, I will address the "ritual muddle", the mixture of the actual deconsecration act in the sense of canon law and deconsecration rites that, from the perspective of canon law, do not effect church deconsecration. I will also address the differentiation between desecration and deconsecration, address historical forms of deconsecration rites and pay attention to the making and unmaking of sacred space. Finally, I will focus on contemporary deconsecration rites against the background of the complex reality in which such rites are situated.

Научная журналистика в настоящее время играет особую роль, обусловленную исключительным местом науки и техники в современной жизни. Соответственно возросло и её воздействие на наше общество, построенное на делегировании особых полномочий опосредующим, медийным структурам. Такое воздействие может быть как позитивным, так и негативным. Научную журналистику как актуальный и быстро эволюционирующий социальный феномен можно рассматривать с двух полярных позиций-во-первых, как социальный институт, воздействующий на общество «от имени» науки, и, во-вторых, как опосредующую информационную структуру, через которую уже само общество воздействует на научное сообщество, транслируя в него свои социальные запросы, ожидания, представления, а также фобии, стереотипные и ненаучные комплексы и в целом свою картину мира, которую никак нельзя назвать научной. Научная журналистика не просто вещает от имени науки-она, занимая ключевое место в круговороте информации между специалистами, обществом и властью, непосредственно влияет и на судьбу самой науки. Опасность профанации и вульгаризации подстерегает научного журналиста на каждом шагу; один из характерных симптомов этой уже разразившейся катастрофы-та скорость, с которой мимолётом брошенные фразы из научного жаргона проникают в простонародный язык городов и весей. Бездумно выдранные из контекста и лишившиеся при этом всякого содержания, они становятся вездесущими штампами якобы «научной» журналистики. Научный журналист пишет не только для любителей науки, но и для широкой аудитории. Кроме того, его читатели-учёные из парал-лельных отраслей науки, которые из-за растущего объема исследований и обособления наук не успевают самостоятельно отслеживать происходящее «у соседей». Обращение к такой аудитории предъявляет особые требования к журналисту-к его убедительности, рассудительности, умению пользоваться общенаучным инструментарием, подходами и методами. Очищать язык от псевдонаучных жаргонизмов и пустых клише и ставить перед обществом действительно важные задачи-тоже одна из целей хорошей научной журналистики. Это особенно важно в эпоху обезличенной коммуникации посредством Интернета и социальных сетей, до предела усиливших эмоциональный фактор восприятия информации. Наука в силу своей естественной рациональности особо уязвима для провокации эмоций, поэтому научный журналист обязан оставаться рассудительным и, как минимум, не поддаваться на аргументы эмоционального характера. Опыт показывает, что профессиональная честность, искренность и самоотдача-самая прагматичная в конечном итоге стратегия обеспечения устойчивого существования отечественной культуры и народа в условиях современного мира. Ключевые слова: наука, научная журналистика, ложь, профанация, безграмотность. ===========
Currently, science journalism has begun to play a very special role due to the exceptional place of science and technology in contemporary life. Its influence on our society which delegates special authority to media structures as a certain type of mediators has grown, accordingly. Such influence can be both positive and negative. Science journalism as a live and rapidly evolving social phenomenon can be viewed from two diametrically opposite positions: firstly, as a social institution acting upon the society "on behalf" of science, and, secondly, as a mediating information structure, through which the society itself acts upon the scientific community, transmitting to the latter its social messages, expectations, and ideas along with its phobias, stereotypical and non-scientific complexes, and its overall world picture which is hardly based on science. Science journalism is not just a speaker on behalf of science. Occupying a key place in the continuous circulation of information among specialists, the society, and the authorities, it has a direct impact on the destiny of science itself. A science journalist is confronted with the lurking threats of profanation and vulgarization everywhere, at every turn. One of the characteristic symptoms of this unfolding catastrophe is the speed with which casually dropped phrases from science lingo penetrate the common language both in the cities and in the countryside. Thoughtlessly taken out of context and thus devoid of any content, they become pervasive clichés of "science journalism",-the kind of journalism that is usually referred to in quotes. A science journalist does not write for science enthusiasts and ordinary people only. In addition to those, his or her readers also include scientists from other fields whom the growing separation of sciences is already rendering incapable of independently perceiving the developments "in the realms of their neighbors". Dealing with such readers places special demands on the journalist-on his or her art of persuasion, common sense, and ability to use the established scientific tools, methods, and approaches. Releasing the society from the bonds of empty clichés and setting genuinely significant societal goals is another important task of quality science journalism. It is particularly important in the age of Internet-based impersonal communication and electronic social networking which have enhanced the emotional factor of information perception to the limit. Given its innate rationality, science, needless to say, is particularly vulnerable to provocation of emotions. Therefore, a science journalist has to remain reasonable and at the very least to resist arguments of emotional nature. Experience shows that, in the

The author shows how the Jewish community in Jerusalem is scrupulous about their own religion and their allegiance to God and His Temple. On the other hand, 2 Macc reveals a Hellenistic orientation by viewing the Temple as that of the city, as is shown by the progression city-place-Temple (cf. 3:1-3) and by reference to the high priest of the city (cf. 3:9). Our section (3:14-22) focuses on the author’s intention to involve the auditorium in the action, as he highlights the tragic emotion experienced. The classification of roles in the description of the population of the city is interesting. The priests in their formal attire form a distinct group with the greatest attention (two verses) given to describing the grief of the high priest. The males participate in the public supplication (3:18), while the married women express their grief with bared breasts and sackcloth around their waists, symbolising their role as child-bearers. The unified narrative conforms to the general pattern of a deity’s defence of his temple: attackers approach, the defenders ask the deity for help and the deity responds. There are many examples of this type of narrative such as the defence of Delphi by Apollo against marauding Persians in 480 B.C.E., the story told by Herodotus (8:35-39).

Picnic at a Hanging Cross. On Carnivalisation, Profanations in Modern Art, and „Something Else”

The main aim of this article is to discuss issue such as profanations in art and the public sphere as well as legal regulations of insulting one’s religious feelings (and its connection with cultural liberalization and secularization), in the context of Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalisation. As the author points out, it’s pointless to adapt Bakhtin’s concept directly to modern realities in order to analyze (or defend) some blasphemous incidents or works of art, because the Russian scholar clearly exposed that the18th century carnival themes and features had lost their ambivalence and achieved unequivocal, that is – cynical and vulgar dimension. So there is always „something else” needed in order to justify presence of works like Dorota Nieznalska’s Passion or Rodrigo García’s Golgota Picnic in public domain (and by this to defend them from accusers assaults according to which there is nothing but pure blasphemy and insults there). While debates are usually focused on public sphere, author tries to find some relevant hints on personal level of artists’ private experiences with sacrum.

The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint’s conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but—drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of profanation—we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this, which guides us throughout the article, is the novel A Wild Sheep Chase, by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. By means of a thematic reading of the novel, we discuss how it contributes to profaning particular notions of sacrifice and the sacred in leadership thinking. In the novel, self-sacrifice does not function as a way of establishing a leadership position, but as a way to avoid the dangers associated with leadership, and possibly redeem humans from their current collective urge to become leaders. Inspired by Murakami’s fictional exa...

This Chapter comes from the book 'Contemorary Puplics': P.D.Marshall et al. (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016.
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137533234

The concepts, ideas and material experiments that much contemporary art engages with rarely examine the commercial realities of the system that supports its exhibition. From the free labour of interns and artists to the 50 percent commission cut taken by gallery owners, contemporary art practice is trapped in a paradox in which it is free to critique its own histories and those outside the gallery, but rarely analyses its own politics of production. In this chapter I discuss two recent art projects in Melbourne that work to undermine the neo-liberal economics of the art gallery and public space. In discussing these strategies as tools for resistance I advance a purpose for art that is not discipline specific and trapped in its own spectacular and self-referential game – as witnessed in the gallery and the academy. Using Giorgio Agamben, McKenzie Wark and Guy Debord to think through and apply strategies of profanation and détournement I argue for an art that operates as counter-practice, integrated with life but testing new practices and ways of being. It is in this spirit I appropriate space, form and image to practise alternative lines of exchange; a practice that invokes a slow infuriation, a swarm, that resists the total neo-liberalisation of the gallery, the academy and public space.

The article is a study of the phenomenon of profanation and the ensuing acts of offending religious feelings on the basis of the events described in the Book of Daniel and in the Books of the Maccabees. It addresses the topics of the profanation of: (1.) a place, (2.) ritual objects, (3.) an office, and (4.) customs as well as (5.) God’s punishment connected therewith. The discussion of the motives and figures of those who committed acts of profanation revealed that they had not always been enemies deriving from outside Judaism and the Jewish nation. Kings of Israel or Jews competing for the office of the High Priest stained their hands with acts of not only profanation, but also murder and idolatry.

Taboo, as a space where the prohibited resides, delimits the form of the thinkable in a society. Freud, in Totem and Taboo, attempted to trace an explanation beyond the 'categorical imperative' of morality and custom. A century later the YouTuber PrankInvasion (Chris Monroe) seems to continue Freud's account to his advantage. Through 'Kissing my actual sister prank', one of his most controversial videos, he challenged his own followers to fulfil an especially controversial challenge: kiss his own stepsister. It is through these contacts with the limits of the moral, of the acceptable, that capitalism expands the colonized territory, absorbing the profane under its new exposure value. The unthinkable, the purported profanation of dogma (in this case, taboo of incest), disappears under the standardization of all rites as standardized consumable objects. But as Agamben warns about the nature of desecration it can not be related, in its new use, with the consumption realm. And that is not the case with PrankInvasion. Through the apparent absence of ordinary moral limits, Chris Monroe expresses his heartfelt attachment to the most extraordinary limit of capitalism: economic growth.

L’article aborde une scène présente dans la quasi-totalité des pièces du dramaturge et poète Agustín de Salazar y Torres (1636-1675) : l’entrée, effective ou simplement envisagée, d’un personnage dans un espace qui lui est interdit, intrusion condamnable en ceci qu’elle implique la « profanation d’un seuil ». L’analyse porte plus concrètement sur quatre pièces où ledit seuil ouvre sur un espace sacré : deux zarzuelas mythologiques, une comedia de santos et un auto navideño. Il s’agit de mettre en lumière le rôle structurel que Salazar donne à cette scène-type, véritable leitmotiv de sa poétique qu’il reproduit à l’envi tout en l’adaptant à chaque genre dramatique, ce qui lui permet d’en diversifier la portée.

There are few cartoonists who have had a capacity for social satire comparable to that of Al Capp in his series Li'l Abner, one of the most popular comic strips of the golden age of the American comics. In the saga of the shmoos, published in 1948, Al Capp deploys an allegorical representation of the perpetual creation of the capitalism's needs. Shmoos, creatures that provide everything that the human being can require for their subsistence, are received as a curse by a system based on a paradigm of exclusion. The present text starts from the legal-political category of homo sacer of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben to analyze the political reach of Al Capp’s critic.

This article explores the function of the precarious (non-) significance of the thing in Theodor Fontane’s 1879 novella Grete Minde. On the surface a simple tale of exclusion and revenge in seventeenth-century Brandenburg and a seeming anomaly in Fontane’s oeuvre, the novella also contains a barely visible leitmotif of the agency of things on the cusp of their disempowerment, not to say fall into vulgar parody and obscene joke. This article reads the status of the thing in Grete Minde not only as a key to some of the text’s more curious narrative choices, but also as a mark of the persistence of the ontological and aesthetic questions of the Reformation and as Fontane’s ambivalent self-reflection on the task of the novelist in the modern era.

This paper discusses issues related to society and American culture in the 1950s
and 1960s. We studied the society and the economy of the United States after the war,
and analyze the cultural field of the country during this period. In this sense, we seek to
highlight the ruptures of the canons established by Andy Warhol and the individuals
connected to the Factory studio and how the spectacle Exploding Plastic Inevitable can
be understood as an effort "profanation" of the limits between different art forms.

The conversion of Jews after the Edict of Expulsion of 1492 was completely different from the previous ones. In this case, Jews found out that there were no more ex-core¬ligionists, synagogues or symbols to link with their previous religion. Historiography has largely debated about the situation of the converted- Jews, counting a wide range of opinions from those who advocate for their total assimilation, to those who propose their absolute resistance to integration. However, little attention has been paid, in that process, to the impact that the destruction of their material and symbolic environment had, considering the emotional charge these spaces embodied. As an example, ceme¬teries were destroyed in order to remove any sign of Judaism. Only the generation of converts after the Edict of Expulsion witnessed the suppression of those sacred places. In the following pages, we will describe and analyse the systematic profanation and destruction of graves, with the purpose of measuring to what extent these actions could have influenced the process of (re)integration of the Spanish judeoconversos

The presence of the crucifix in comical literature is a special case of an encounter of the sacred and the profane. It appears in several French medieval texts, where it is associated with sexuality or with food, it is treated with familiarity and even casualness, which is not meant to outrage the public, but to make people laugh. The profanation with which we are dealing here has many aspects, depending on whether it can be assigned to a particular personage or to the author, since it is included in the story itself. In the former case, much can be justified by simplicity, but the intentions of the personage do not always seem pure. In the latter case, contrary to expectation, the sacrilege is not necessarily associated with anticlericalism. However, what is the most interesting is the question of the reception of this kind of texts in a profoundly Christian society.

En "Elogio de la profanación" , Giorgio Agamben sitúa la religión como aquella instancia que separa la esfera divina y la mantiene inaccesible a los hombres: lo sagrado, de este modo, se constituiría como un campo inaccesible, segregado o separado de la esfera humana. Profanar, por el contrario, consistiría en levantar las barreras que instituye la separación, tanto en sus formas religiosas como seculares. Lo que analizamos en el texto es esta tensión entre separación y profanación, con el objetivo de mostrar que existe en el pensamiento de Agamben todo un gesto filosófico que tiene que ver, precisamente, con la crítica de la separación.
Abstract: In "Praise of profanation," Giorgio Agamben places religion as that instance that separates the divine sphere and remains inaccessible to men: the sacred, thus, be constituted as an inaccessible area, segregated or separated from the human sphere. To desecrate, however, involves removing the barriers that establishes the separation, both religious and secular forms. What we discussed in the text is this struggle between separation and profanation, with the aim of showing that there is in the Agamben thinking a whole philosophical gesture very related, precisely, with the critique of separation.

Este artigo busca analisar o filme Histórias que nosso cinema (não) contava (2017), de Fernanda Pessoa, a partir de uma crítica dividida em três atos. Na esteira do desenvolvimento desses atos, arriscaremos situar Histórias... como um vetor de força expurgadora de repetições de ordem transgressora, provocador de um “cinema de profanação”, para além do termo geral “cinema de apropriação”.
Palavras-chave: cinema documentário; cinema brasileiro contemporâneo; cinema de apropriação; Pornochanchada; profanação.

A instituição Museu é, por natureza, uma entidade descontextualizadora, que retira do «circuito da vida» os objetos que incorpora. Os Museus de Arte, em particular, talvez sejam dos mais zelosos no cumprimento deste desígnio. Ávidos em transformar Objetos em Obras de Arte, tendem a eliminar as funções e significados originais e mais profundos de um Objeto (utilitários, rituais, de aparato) e atribuem-lhes uma nova natureza, sobretudo estética e material. É imposta, assim, uma nova relação das pessoas com estes objetos – agora elevados à dignidade e condição artística –, como tão bem referiu André Malroux..

In security studies, the dichotomy between ‘security’ and ‘regular’ politics has been effectively challenged in recent years, both theoretically and empirically. To address this challenge, the article develops Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of the sacred, the profane and the secular into three ideal types of power relations, which can provide a basis for critical re-formulation of the concepts of securitisation and desecuritisation. The article illustrates the analytical purchase of these ideal types through an analysis of the politics of Israel’s natural gas discoveries. Due to neoliberal reforms, Israel’s national security has been treated increasingly through the ‘regular’ rules of the market, while the market has been elevated beyond the ‘regular’ rules of politics. The article analyses how formerly separated domains merge, raising questions about what ‘regular’ politics is today, how it is different from security, and how their exclusionary practices can be contested effectively. The article demonstrates how Agamben’s concepts improve our understanding of contemporary configurations of security and politics, highlighting that what is at stake today in security analysis is not only the shifting of issues from security to ‘regular’ politics, but the recovery of their Political essence by means of profanation.

This chapter engages in speculation on the notion of iconoclashes (Latour 2010b) by drawing on insights garnered from three sources for which iconoclasm has become a central challenge: Bruno Latour, relational psychoanalysis and my ongoing research with queers in Christian families. The central question I wish to entertain is whether and how it might be possible to protect relationships against iconoclasm non-iconoclastically. A corollary to this question is another: could such a defence be meaningfully referred to as (a form of) sacralization? As Giorgio Agamben has argued, profanation involves negligence. It is the character of this negligence that is under question in an attempt at a non-iconoclastic defence against iconoclasm. Is protection against the accusation of sacrilege possible to achieve through non-iconoclastic sacralization?

Keywords:  Iconoclash, impasse, commensalism, antibiosis, negligence, pharmakon

The sponsoring teleologies of the historiography of magic have tended to affirm a Weberian Entzauberung at modernity’s core. Some scholars have portrayed this as a necessary and inevitable evolutionary step, while others have lamented the apparent passing of an enchanted premodernity. Many in the arts and humanities, uneasy with triumphalist (and ethnocentric) narratives of progress, have found themselves in a position of “advocacy” for premodern enchantment, whether in a spirit of ethnographic sensitivity or of confessional enthusiasm. This has helped solidify the “two cultures” problem, famously identified by C. P. Snow as one of the principal industrial conditions of contemporary scholarship. If the natural sciences are sincerely believed to “unweave [the] rainbow” (as John Keats has it), the humanities become counter-positioned on the Romantic side of the dispute, attempting either to re-enchant the world or, perhaps (following this volume), to recognize the latent enchantments of which it has never really been divested. This chapter contends that the humanities are bound neither to enchant nor disenchant, but rather to act against reduction. While metaphysical scientism (or, indeed, Heidegger’s “technicity”) certainly includes forms of reductivism against which the humanities might argue, it is equally possible for narratives of enchantment and sacrality to be implicated in reductive frameworks of knowing. The humanist, then, is in the delicate position of putting things, texts and ideas beyond technical and commercial utility, while also rendering intelligible and interpretable that which is habitually presented as self-same and absolute, from sacred texts to capital itself.