From the biopolitics of lithic liminalities to the fungal symbiocene and the metaphysics of wholeness
In Horos, Thea Potter explores the complex relationship between classical philosophy and the ‘horos’, a stone that Athenians erected to mark the boundaries of their marketplace, their gravestones, their roads and their private property.Potter weaves this history into a meditation on the ancient philosophical concept of horos, the foundational project of determination and definition, arguing that it is central to the development of classical philosophy and the marketplace.
Horos challenges many significant interpretations of ancient thought. With nuance and insight, Potter combines the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer and archaic Greek inscriptions with the twentieth-century continental philosophy of Heidegger, Derrida and Walter Benjamin. The result is a powerful study of the theme of boundaries in classical Athenian society as evidenced by boundary stones, law and exchange, ontology, insurgency and occupation.
The innovative book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of ancient Greek social history, philosophy, and literature, as well as to the general reader who is curious to know more about classical life and philosophy.
The Lost Continent of the Biological Mind
An Ethnobiological Journey Through Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness
Reclaiming the environmental movement from the global technocracy
Contents
Green Fuse Burning
In Mind of the Fungal Nexus
Monoculture of the Soul
The Cosmic Animal
Surfing the Waves of the World Soul
Excerpt
Takanya is the name of the area given by the aboriginal people who inhabited the northwest area of the island of Tasmania located 240km south of the southeast coast of the Australian mainland. The name ‘Tarkine’, the Anglicised version of the name, was adopted by the environmental movement in the 1960’s to refer to the large area of wilderness, whose boundaries are today given as enclosing about 490,000 hectares, consisting of Australia’s largest area of cool-temperate rainforest, extensive button-grass plains, and coastal areas with some of the country’s most significant Aboriginal archaeological remains. Since the 1960’s to the present there has been constant and increasing interest amongst inhabitants of the island, spreading to the mainland of Australia, in conserving and protecting this region of wilderness as a world heritage site. Despite numerous efforts, business interests in mining and forestry have always held the upper hand and the government of Tasmania has ruled time and again against the overall protection of this gradually dwindling wilderness. As I write, the Tarkine is a region of recognised World Heritage significance, but is not yet nominated for World Heritage listing by the Australian government. In order to be inscribed on the World Heritage list, the Australian Government must formally propose the Tarkine to Unesco (the United Nations Body). That said, inclusion within Unesco also means the inclusion within or acceptance of a dubious intellectual tradition of evolutionary biology and a theory of ‘scientific world humanism’ in which, as Julian Huxley clarifies in his manifesto ‘Unesco: it’s Purpose and Philosophy’ , the European belief in the value of cultural and technological progress outweighs any and all indigenous values, such as belonging or connectedness.
I have a PhD in ancient languages and social theory, from the School of Philosophical and Historical Studies and the Centre for Social Theory, (University of Melbourne, Australia). My first book based on this research is Horos: Ancient Boundaries and the Ecology of Stone (see below), my second, The Lost Continent of the Biological Mind, is a journey through socio-biological questions prompted by the Tarkine wilderness of Tasmania. At the moment I am researching the agricultural and ecological history of the Cyclades. I am director of Marmaros, a guild of stonemasons in Greece. After completing a short course in evolutionary biology with the University of Copenhagen I have progressed to more radical biological thinking. I studied horticulture and then moved on to permaculture with Beck Lowe and David Holmgren (cofounder of Permaculture). On my small homestead I practice permaculture and am determined against all odds to grow a sub-tropical garden in a mediterranean climate. It could be said that I have a great fondness for ducks.