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Aliveness

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Biopoetics

Part of the book series: Biosemiotics ((BSEM,volume 14))

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Abstract

Culture is not structurally different from ecological transformation processes, but echoes them in human species-specific creative forms. It expresses our own poetic interpretation of the ever-recurring theme of coping with the irresolvable paradox of autonomy and wholeness. That is why human culture cannot control and engineer nature as a passive, non-living object. Human culture and that what we have been calling “nature” are two sides of one thing which we could more aptly call “aliveness”.

“There must be a kind of painting totally free of the dependence on the figure–or object–which like music, illustrates nothing, tells no story, and launches no myth. Such painting would simply evoke the incommensurable kingdoms of the spirit, where dream becomes thought, where line becomes existence”.

(Michel Seuphor (in Lispector 2014:xvi))

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Weber, A. (2016). Aliveness. In: Biopoetics. Biosemiotics, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0832-4_11

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