The Chimera Principle ─ An Anthropology of Memory and Imagination

First published in the French language as Le principe de la chimere: Une anthropologie de la memoire,Carlo Severi’s The chimera principle breaks new theoretical ground for the study of ritual, iconographic technologies, and oral traditions among non-literate peoples. In relying on ornaments, body painting, masks, or pictograms, the memory of peoples “without writing” has always seemed labile, disordered, or doomed to failure. Such mnemonic techniques are regularly described by historians as abortive attempts to express basic concepts through graphic means. This book presents an alternative theoretical position based on the results of an extensive anthropological and ethnographic survey throughout the Americas and Oceania. Herein, Severi analyzes visual and mnemonic devices used in ritual contexts across many societies, arguing that “religious ontologies” are pragmatically produced by ritual actions that demonstrate a kind of “chimeric” imagination at the core of many non-Western arts of memory. With theoretical turns both philosophical and ethnographic,The chimera principle unfolds new approaches to research in the anthropology of memory and ritual, revealing a new ethnographic theory of imagination. Translated by Janet Lloyd, with a critical foreword by anthropologist David Graeber, this first English edition is both an invaluable resource and an instant classic for anthropologists, art historians, and philosophers.

1st Edition Publication Data (French Original): 2007. Le pincipe de la chimere. Une anthropologie de la memoire. Paris: Presses de l’Ecole Normale Superieure (Rue d’Ulm) et Musee du Quai Branly. ISBN: 978-2728803934