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"Totemism"
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Rock Art and Ontology
This article reviews recent ontological debates in archaeology and examines how ontology has been discussed in rock art studies. It questions the prevailing symbolic analysis of rock art and critically questions the epistemological foundations of \"informed\" and \"formal\" approaches to rock art. The article evaluates ontological debates within rock art studies and argues for a committed approach to ontology that uses anthropological understandings of ontology as an analytical tool and a method for generating fresh concepts. The article then reviews the ontological dimensions of a series of aspects of rock art studies, including the production of rock art images, their placement on the rock surface, their position in the landscape, and their relationship to formation processes. The article concludes by arguing that ontological questions not only relate to the interpretation of rock art images, but touch on all aspects of rock art.
Journal Article
Temporalidade das Presentificações Totêmicas. Na Sequência de Posições e Repercussões da Carta de Husserl a Lévy-Bruhl
This article focuses on possible convergences between phenomenology and anthropology and underlines their contributions to the analysis of a specific topic. In its reconstructive dimension it departs from Edmund Husserl’s positions in the letter he addressed to Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in 1935, in particular on the relationship between humanity and the surrounding word (Umwelt) and on the opposition between historical societies and primitive ahistorical societies. After having noted some critical points emerging from Husserl’s considerations, this text retraces some of its repercussions on the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Derrida, whose diverging interpretations open up different ways of examining the relationship between the respective phenomenological and anthropological perspectives. Finally, with the aim of rethinking the contributions of these two fields to address the problem of the co-participation and the differentiations between the archaic and the current in descripted social structures by Lévy-Bruhl, this text turns to the specific temporality of totemic presentifications, which should become phenomenologically more detailed.
Journal Article
The Evolution of Egyptian Religious Thought: From Totemism to Atenism
This study provides a historical analysis of the significant religions of ancient Egypt. Early Egyptians revered a vast number of deities, and every locality, no matter how small, had its own tutelary deity, and in certain instances, two or more. Consequently, this led to a religious landscape in Egypt that was very diverse, much like the other primitive or natural religions, as will be shown in this paper. The development of religious thinking in ancient Egypt took the form of a sequence of various stages. To comprehend this development, one has to trace its historical development starting with Totemism, which was the first cornerstone of the religion of the ancient people, then the emergence of polytheism with its plurality of divine figures, and finally the religious reform of Akhenaten, which focused on the new deity (Aten). The results show that the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians were cumulative in nature. The different historical periods produced new doctrines that coexisted with the earlier traditions: Totemism coexisted with theology, and polytheism with new monotheistic inclinations. This rich religious text is an expression of the intellectual depth of the ancient Egyptians and the scope of their spiritual imaginations.
Journal Article
DE LA ANTROPOMORFIZACIÓN AL TOTEMISMO EN EL SUEÑO DE EMENO DE INONGO-VI-MAKOMÈ
Esta reflexión analiza las interconexiones entre el ser humano y el medioambiente en el libro El sueño de Emeno de Inongo-vi-Makomè, partiendo de la perspectiva de la ecofraternidad, explorada en una precedente publicación en 2023. Si la relación entre el ser humano y la naturaleza suele ser conflictiva en el mundo moderno, es importante señalar que no siempre ha sido así. Los valores tradicionales transmitidos por la oralidad negroafricana pueden constituir una alternativa para mejorar dichas relaciones. Palabras clave: ecofraternidad, medioambiente, naturaleza, valores tradicionales, tradición oral This reflection analyses the interconnections between human being and environment in El sueño de Emeno by Inongo-vi-Makomè, based on eco-fraternity, a perspective we explored in a previous publication published in 2023. While in the modern world the relationship between human being and nature is generally conflictual, it should be noted that this has not always been the case. The traditional values transmitted by the negro-African oral tradition can constitute an alternative white the aim of improving relations. Keywords: eco-fraternity, environment, nature, traditional values, oral tradition
Journal Article
Totemic Mediation and Visual Prajñā: How Lotus and Dharma Wheel Motifs Generate Embodied Śūnyatā Experience in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves
This article argues that lotus and dharma wheel motifs in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves function not merely as decorative symbols but as active visual apparatuses that generate embodied religious experience through a mechanism we term “totemic mediation.” Drawing on Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist reading of totemism, Descola’s ontological framework, Gell’s theory of art as agency, Meyer’s “sensational form,” and Varela’s neurophenomenology, we define totemic mediation as a triadic mechanism encompassing material–spatial arrangement, ontological transformation of experiential states, and value structure generation. We analyze motifs from Mogao Caves 285, 329, and 361 using a five-step analytic framework: formal–visual description, reconstructed embodied viewing, doctrinal identification, mediation mechanism analysis, and evaluative assessment. The analysis demonstrates that the lotus mediates ontologically along a spatial axis, building a vertical channel between the worldly and the divine through ceiling configurations and upward gazes, while the dharma wheel mediates teleologically across the temporal axis, neutralizing linear temporality through rotational dynamics. Together, these motifs constitute “visual prajñā”—a nonconceptual, embodied cognitive effect that bypasses discursive reasoning to enable direct apprehension of śūnyatā (emptiness). This article offers a replicable analytic framework for examining how religious images operate simultaneously as visual apparatuses and ontological mediators.
Journal Article
Through the Face of the Dead: Constructing Totemic Identity in Early Neolithic Egypt and the Near East
This study examines the construction of individual and collective identity in pre-Neolithic Egypt and the Levant through the post mortem manipulation of human remains. Focusing on funerary rituals and skull reuse, interpreted using recent anthropological theory frameworks, we propose a totemic framework of ontological identity, in which clans associated with specific animals structured their ritual and spatial practices. Based on archaeological, taphonomic, and ethnohistorical evidence, it is possible to identify how these practices reflect clan-based social units, seasonal mobility, and a reciprocal relationship with the environment, integrating corporeal and mental continuity. Plastered skulls in the Levant acted as intergenerational anchors of communal memory, while early Egyptian dismemberment practices predate the standardization of mummification and reveal the function of some structures of pre-Neolithic sanctuaries. By interpreting these mortuary rituals, we argue that selective body treatment served as a deliberate mechanism to reinforce totemic identity, transmit ancestry, and mediate ontological transitions in response to sedentarization and environmental change.
Journal Article
On the ontological scheme of Beyond nature and culture
This article is an alternative reading of Philippe Descola’s ontological scheme, arguing that animism, totemism, and analogism are but three forms of animism, namely communal, segmentary, and hierarchical. Often found in various degrees of salience in the same society, all moreover are versions of an anthropomorphism well known as our own default scheme of things. Ethnographic examples are provided.
Journal Article