Elvish Braids: Implications of the”Re-enchantment” of the World (I)

Re-enchantment of the world is an expression some observes use to denote the decline of the “Enlightenment Paradigm”, where world circumscribed by “facts and logic” slowly but surely seems to let slip some “weirdness” into it. British author Mary Harrington argues that this is the consequence of consciousness shift caused by the dissolution of modernity and the return of the pre-modern experience of the world.

In this two-part podcast we’ll argue that re-enchantment is indeed a consequence of the dissolution of the epoch, but that it has little to do with “shifts of consciousness”. The reemergence of the “weird” is the resurfacing of the world originally banished, not by Enlightenment, but by Christianity, it is quiet real and it is not a happy event, by any measure.

In the first part we discuss Mary’s basic proposition and lay down fundamentals of modern philosophy of consciousness which, in our view, exemplifies the paradigm that is being dissolved with the modernity.

In the second part we’ll discuss the “weirdness” itself – the world of unexplained and unexplainable that is both pre-modern and post-modern, and towards which “facts and logic”, understood in the modern fashion, are completely helpless. For that purpose we’ll reflect on some pop-cultural phenomena such as contemporary horror movies that sometimes reflect the popular sentiment toward unknown quite accurately.

Also we’ll touch about some folk tales of not so long ago that are even more accurate.

Listen on Youtube:

Notes

Mary Harrington’s article:

Aliens are among us Governments don’t want us to believe there’s something out there

Branko Malić

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