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Civilized culture is killing the planet. At present, we are facing the largest extinction event in 65 million years and the cause, according to most scholars, is "patently" human. My question, however, is not whether the mass destruction of the biosphere is the result of an unfortunate and misguided particularity within civilization (e.g., over consumption, driving too much, etc.), but rather: Is it the case that civilization, by its very nature, entails the destruction of the natural world and of both human and non-human communities? In the vein of a fairly recent movement in scholarship, my answer is a resounding "yes." Taking a cue from one of the foremost voices of this recent movement, Derrick Jensen, I'll briefly trace the genesis and justification of the following premise: "Civilization is not and can never be sustainable," as well as the philosophical fallout of what this may mean for us today. Employing the thought and method of certain strands of phenomenology, I first examine how it is that civilization appears in our collective everydayness and how certain movements within this appearance give way to its replication, continuation, and (largely) unquestioned legitimacy. From there, I move to incorporate the insight of Theodor Adorno and other critical theorists, uncovering the finer ideological strands that tie us to civilization. From the arguments outlined by Jensen, John Zerzan, and others, I make a case for the active rejection and dismantling of civilization, ultimately attempting to articulate a philosophically based strategy of resistance.

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The object of investigation in this essay is the epic novel sequence Jernbanan written by Sara Lidman. More specifically the investigation takes on the idea of a “sam-vett” as it is formulated in Jernbanan. The “sam-vett” is an idea about the undivided unity of man, nature and animal, and with a kind of primitive trait. By asking the question what traces the history of ideas are to be found in the “sam-vett”, the hope is that it will bring some clarity to the notion and what its message might be. In addition to that a thesis is formulated, that the “sam-vett” can be read as a form of deep ecology. Deep ecology takes on the first rule of ecology, that everything is closely bound together, and extends it to a philosophy. By discussing the notion of the “sam-vett” in the light of two figures in the history of ideas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Martin Heidegger, the hope is to unravel its learning. In the end the “sam-vett” can be described as knowledge of nature that is based on a feeling more than the intellect – that begins where the language ends.

Scholarship on Dada and Surrealism has established that psychology was a major intellectual source for artists in both groups. However, a burgeoning amount of recent work in both the history of art and of science indicates that types of psychology other than psychoanalysis permeated the historical context of the avant-garde. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, physiological psychology, for example, was the dominant science of the body and mind, which grounded psychic phenomena in structures of conduction in the nervous system. Modern artists saw within this discourse a fascinating and new theory of experience. In my selective history of the avant-garde’s reception and response to physiological psychology, I will argue that artists worked within and partially according to the basic tenets of this discourse, but that they reshaped its superstructural projections away from formations and taxonomies of normalcy in consciousness and action. / text

Benjamin Péret effectua deux longs séjours au Brésil : à la fin des années vingt et en 1955/1956. Parti en quête de ressourcement dans la multiplicité des racines de la culture brésilienne, il est accueilli en 1929 par Oswald de Andrade et les membres du mouvement anthropophage, qui érigeaient comme référentiel mythique l’Indien cannibale. C’est toutefois une autre découverte capitale que fait le poète français : l’autre altérité intérieure, le Noir, dans ses dimensions magique et mythique, historique et politique. La poésie "primitive" et sauvage identifiée dans les mystérieux rituels afro-brésiliens prend pour lui valeur de révélation. Les dédoublements de cette découverte séminale se trouvent ainsi à la base d’une formulation théorique sur la primitivité enfouie dans les profondeurs de la conscience, identifiée à la dynamique spontanée de la vie. Les écrits du deuxième séjour poursuivent cet investissement. Ils mettent cette fois en scène l’autre altérité brésilienne : les autochtones. Du reportage à l’essai critique, du récit de voyage à l’essai historique, de la sentence au poème, du conte au [à la parodie du] mythe, le poète emprunte plusieurs registres génériques. Cette étude problématise l’expérience brésilienne de Benjamin Péret. Elle met en relief le caractère interculturel et intertextuel de son intervention. Elle rend évidentes les répercussions de cette rencontre dans sa mythologie personnelle comme dans l’agencement de sa pensée et de son œuvre. Elle dégage les constellations mythopoétiques et la communion d’imaginaires entre le poète et son pays d’accueil. Elle les relie, enfin, aux exigences éthiques et au projet esthétique du surréalisme. / Benjamin Péret has twice spent long periods of time in Brazil: both at the end of the 1920's and in 1955/56. After leaving Europe to immerse himself in Brazilian cultural roots, he was welcomed by members of the "anthropophagous" movement, conducted by Oswald de Andrade, a movement centered on a mythical figure - the Indian cannibal. His trip resulted in a fundamental discovery: the inner Other: the Black, in its magical, mythical, historical and political dimensions. "Primitive" and salvage poetry, as in the mysterious afro-brazilian rituals, acted as a revelation for him and enabled him to develop a theory about primitivism as deeply rooted in Consciousness and linked with the dynamic of life. During his second stay, Péret continued his explorations and focused his writing on a different type of Other: the Autochton. He used different literary genres to express and explore Otherness: critical and historical essay, travel stories, documentaries, poems, sentences, short-stories, and (parody of) myths. This study makes inroads into Péret's Brazilian experiences, highlights the intercultural and intertextual nature of his encounter with Brazil and demonstrates its impact on his own mythology, on his thinking and on his writing, which is always linked with surrealism and its ethical and aesthetical requirements.