Stocks of Images. Issue 2 (1st June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Feuchtwang, Stephan
• Is Part Of: Social analysis. Volume 65:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 124
• Page End: 138
• Publication Date: 2021-06-01
• Subjects: circumstances -- divination -- experience -- images -- moment -- patterns -- recognition -- uncertainty; Sociology -- Periodicals; Ethnology -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Ethnology; Social sciences; Sociology; Electronic journals; Periodicals; 301.05
• DOI: 10.3167/sa.2021.650207
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0155-977X

Abstract

Abstract: What kind of knowledge is created through systems of divination? I will contend that the form of such knowledge is a type of pattern recognition—patterns that emerge in reference to a cosmology and by means of a stock of images. Divination creates knowledge of a moment and its circumstances. Reference to a sense of the encompassing world raises the issue of how any one means of divination and its outcomes is bound historically to a civilization. That will be my secondary topic of reflection. I will conclude with a discussion of worlds, recent history, speculation, and the ontology of divination in relation to the experience of uncertainty in which the object of knowledge is the momentary and its circumstances.