we were to discuss the second half of Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger, which ends with a famous account of the scaly anteater known as a pangolin, most unclean of animals to the Lele, but also the meat at their holiest feast, the one which (she claims) faces up to the ultimate insufficiency of human efforts at ordering experience in the face of death. Nobody had read that far, though - it's that time of the semester when everyone's exhausted and distracted, and waiting dully for the holiday eating of the (symbolically and gastronomically inert) turkey. Pity. There's something profound in Douglas' account of the Lele as "primitive existentialists" (a term she uses) and "anonymous Christians" (one she doesn't but might).
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Pangolin
In Theorizing Religion today, 
we were to discuss the second half of Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger, which ends with a famous account of the scaly anteater known as a pangolin, most unclean of animals to the Lele, but also the meat at their holiest feast, the one which (she claims) faces up to the ultimate insufficiency of human efforts at ordering experience in the face of death. Nobody had read that far, though - it's that time of the semester when everyone's exhausted and distracted, and waiting dully for the holiday eating of the (symbolically and gastronomically inert) turkey. Pity. There's something profound in Douglas' account of the Lele as "primitive existentialists" (a term she uses) and "anonymous Christians" (one she doesn't but might).
we were to discuss the second half of Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger, which ends with a famous account of the scaly anteater known as a pangolin, most unclean of animals to the Lele, but also the meat at their holiest feast, the one which (she claims) faces up to the ultimate insufficiency of human efforts at ordering experience in the face of death. Nobody had read that far, though - it's that time of the semester when everyone's exhausted and distracted, and waiting dully for the holiday eating of the (symbolically and gastronomically inert) turkey. Pity. There's something profound in Douglas' account of the Lele as "primitive existentialists" (a term she uses) and "anonymous Christians" (one she doesn't but might).
