The Passionate Mind

Consciousness, declares Robin Fox, is "out of context." Useful as an adaptation in the Stone Age, it brought humanity to the top of the food chain but has now created a world it cannot control. The Passionate Mind explores this paradox not through academic demonstration but through satiric dialogues, blank-verse ruminations, lyric, narrative and comic verse, and Aesopian fables. This mix of genres and styles forces us out of our usual linear modes of thinking to confront a harsh thesis. Because of consciousness we cannot operate without ideas, but once in thrall to ideas--whether of love, power, religion, or ideology--we cannot operate without destructiveness lest we become imprisoned by them.

The range of subjects and genres Fox covers includes a verse summary of the key points of human evolution, a conference of farm animals ruminating on their social problems, visions of a desperate future from a neolithic hunter and a shaman at Lascaux, Kafkaesque trial scenes, and a new version of "God is dead." George Washington, having lost at Yorktown is put on trial with Adams, Jefferson, and Benedict Arnold giving evidence. Through the persona of Humbert Humbert as decadent Europe, the new world of Lolita/America is faced with the consequences of its pursuit of happiness. Scandinavian utopianism and salvation through romantic eros get their turn, and the basic "design failure" of humanity is examined in a Platonic dialogue. A bullfight and the struggle for existence in New Jersey farming lead up to a monologue from a decidedly unlikely Jesus who turns out to be part of an alien plan to control an otherwise out of control human race. Through this kaleidoscopic mix, Fox mounts a case for a thorough revision of consciousness that breaks "realistic" boundaries between science, the humanities, religion, and myth.

Auteur

Robin Fox is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University and the author of Conjectures and Confrontations. Reproduction and Succession. arid The Challenge of Anthropology, all available from Transaction.

Contenu

Introduction to the Transaction Edition -- Foreword: Origin of the Specious, Ashley Montagu -- Introduction -- Research Report: Conversation after a Sabbatical -- One: Diary of a Superfluous -- Three Basic Lyrics (to establish some basic things) Carousel -- The Fool Sings of His Skull and Its Contents -- He Apologizes to Her for Comparing Her Eyes to the Wings of Captive Hummingbirds Used in Navaho Rituals -- The Conference of Foules -- Posdude: Conference Ode -- What the Hunter Saw -- Overheard in the Pub -- Evolutionary Poetics -- Two More Lyrics (to explore a few more -- The Spider and the Hawk -- Le Prince Cochon -- Violence: Ritual::Power: Authority -- Two (More) Ghosts are -- Love Among the Planets: Ballad for the Ghost of Yeats -- Divina Commedia: For Byron's Ghost -- The Interrogation: A Nightmare -- Note to the Theologian -- Two: The Trial of George Washington: Documents in the Case -- How We Came By Them -- Letter to the Publisher -- Letter from Lt. John Bridges Handler -- Handwritten Manuscript from the Box -- The Fragments from the -- The Charge Against Colonel Washington -- The Evidence of Judge Jonathan Sewall -- The Evidence of General Sir Benedict Arnold -- The Evidence of Mr. John Adams -- The Evidence of Mr. Thomas Jefferson -- The Verdict of the Court -- Statement of Colonel Washington -- The Sentence of the Court -- Three: Children of the Revolution -- Humbert Reflects (more than twenty years on) -- The Marine Room Restaurant (of the Olympic Hotel, Seattle, Washington) -- Words for a Boston Blues (tune: St. James' Infirmary) -- Boring Confession (written on napkins in the Sandalwood Bar of the Sheraton, Route 18, New Jersey) -- For My Daughters (on the anniversary of the killings at Kent State, May 4, 1970) -- Liberated Woman: Happiness Pursued -- Manhattan Summer Dialogue: Staten Island Interlude -- Hymn to Isis: San Francisco Summer -- Indian Girl (written in European exile) -- Four: Toward a More Perfect -- What Can Be Done about Sweden? -- Image de la Comtesse -- Intuition, Structure, and Passion Revisited -- Love at First Sight -- Structural Sonnet -- Sonnet of the Dark Lady -- Sad Sonnet -- Design Failure: A Post-Tutorial Dialogue -- Coming of Age in Just About Everywhere (An Ode to the Selfish Gene) -- Music of the Spheres -- Three Interruptions of Rational -- The Wall (Christmas Eve: Jerusalem) -- Patrimony for a Possible Posterity (first stasimon) -- Reason Is, and Ought to Be, Futile -- Lyrics on the Female Enigma (again) -- Three Possibilities -- Girls Who Lost Their Fathers -- Prospect of a Nuclear Winter -- Bullfight at Altamira: The Sea at Santa Marta -- Psalm One Hundred and Fifty-one -- Five: Daughters of Earth/Sons of Heaven -- Juvenilia -- Schoolboy Poems -- from Catullus: "To Lesbia" -- from Verlaine: "Claire de lune" (Fêtes Galantes) -- Undergraduate Poems -- New Philosophies -- Mauvaise Foi: Hommage à la Rive Gauche -- Suburbia: Inauthentic Lives -- Tame Killers -- Our Lady of the Teacups: Hommage to Prufrock -- Neatly Rolled Umbrellas -- Popular Song: with redeeming social -- content -- New Songs Of Innocence and -- Three Love Conceits -- The Child is Mother to the Man -- Lady in a Parachute: Man in a Hang-Glider -- Last Request -- Four Daughter Poems -- To Katie-Who Loves Music and Mountains -- Kate's Eyes (from the French) -- Memo to Dr. Oedipus -- A Teardrop Wrapped in an Enigma-To Anne -- Four Poems of Disillusion -- Amergin's Song Revisited -- The Mind's I -- The Legacy -- Where Were You When Kennedy was Killed? -- One More Hoop for the Tiger: -- The Allegory of the Circus -- Alpine Excursions -- Alpine Interlude -- The Mountaineer -- La femme qui adorait la lune -- Chanson du vampire -- New Jersey Landscapes -- Spring: Earthworms -- Summer: Crows -- Autumn: Trees -- Winter: Vultures -- What The Shaman Saw (Incident at Lascaux, c. 15,000 B.P.) -- The Hedgehog and the Fox -- Heroes, Poets and Other Waifs -- Where Have the Heroes Gone? -- Oedipus Dentifrex -- The Long Line -- A Dorothy Parker Memorial -- Hippies and Lost Loves -- Hippie Girl -- Tiredness -- Primatalogical Flibbertygibbet -- Mr. Titmarch -- Unborn Sonnet -- Kings, Socialists and Other Futilities -- Haiku (engraved on a medical bracelet) -- Epigram (on the problem with the 90s) -- Kissing Your Sister -- The End -- Existentialist Clerihew -- High Living -- Serious Old Socialists -- Le roi s'amuse -- The Grand Marquis to his executioner -- The executioner replies to the Grand Marquis -- Form and Chaos -- Snowflakes and Similes -- Mandelbrot Sonnet -- Six: The Jesus Tapes: We are Not Alone -- The Messiah Mission -- The Incarnation Plan -- The Followers -- Judas and the Truth -- The Cleansing of the Temple -- The Miracles -- The Transfiguration -- Pilate and the Trial -- The Mother -- The Magdalene -- Seven: Epilogue: Fire of Sense/Smoke of Thought -- Regrets: From the Gaelic -- Epitaph on an Intellectual Mercenary -- Growing Old Gracelessly -- The Dream-Man -- About the Author -- About Ashley Montagu.