A version of this essay was originally published in Northern Earth 165: 16-21, 2021.
Starry Path... more A version of this essay was originally published in Northern Earth 165: 16-21, 2021.
Starry Paths in Stone explores the implications of a solstitial alignment linking stone circles and a tomb in the context of the rising of Cassiopeia over Moelfre, setting in motion a choreography of elements, including the management of herds, with an impact on the present and the catastrophic death march of capital.
Fragments of critique immanent to the generic cultural forms of 'earth mysteries' and 'ghost stor... more Fragments of critique immanent to the generic cultural forms of 'earth mysteries' and 'ghost stories', mediated through the thinking of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin. This entails recognition of the nonidentity of ‘irreducible singulars’ resistant to categorisation within ‘general concepts’, and the recovery of traces of ‘spiritual experience’ from false totalities, pertinent to considering scattered remnants of diverse histories arranged in a linear way, intentionally or not, across a few miles of Kent. An edited version of this essay was published in Northern Earth, No. 169, September 2022.
This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disc... more This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disciplinary contexts, at the crossroads of the positivism of archaeology and the imaginary world of literature. The character of the reciprocal relationship between megalithism in Neolithic Portugal and the writings of the twentieth-century author, James Joyce, is transfigured through the introduction of a third element of interpretation, a deeply paradoxical current of Jewish thought, with messianic dimensions, antithetical to the forces of mythic reconciliation present in Joyce’s fiction and in archaeological conceptions of ‘symbolic systems’ in antiquity, which tend to erase the innumerable singulars of experience. Applying a cryptotheologically-inflected exegesis immanent to the materials of text and archaeology in the light of their respective orientation to the same astral phenomenon, I seek to generate insights unanticipated within interpretations restricted to the disciplinary bound...
An interpretation of aspects of the Neolithic of Atlantic Europe (c5000-c2000 BC) through the len... more An interpretation of aspects of the Neolithic of Atlantic Europe (c5000-c2000 BC) through the lens of James Joyce's novel, Finnegans Wake, and an interpretation of his novel, dialectically, through this archaeological optic, complying with Theodor W. Adorno’s injunction to ‘treat profane texts like holy scripture’. This is the occasion to reflect on the coded 'theological moment' in the thought of Adorno and Walter Benjamin to activate shifting constellations of Archaeology, Literature and Philosophical critique.
At best, the paper constitutes 'a onestone parable, a rude breathing on the void of to be' (FW 100.26-27) and, for better or worse, is one of 'the "rejected stones" of the seemingly non-existent "impossible"' (Bielik-Robson 2020b: 65).
EDIT. An updated pdf of this paper has been uploaded as of 11/8/2024
Images to be viewed in conjunction with the text, 'Skatterlings of a Stone': Finnegans Wake and t... more Images to be viewed in conjunction with the text, 'Skatterlings of a Stone': Finnegans Wake and the Moment of Philosophical Critique in Megalithic Archaeology.
Chapter Six of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory -... more Chapter Six of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory - 2004 PhD at the University of Manchester by Simon Crook
In 21 years this MA dissertation has probably only been seen (never mind read) by about ten peopl... more In 21 years this MA dissertation has probably only been seen (never mind read) by about ten people. Retyped from the original bound copy in my possession, I have left the document largely unedited, keeping sometimes quirky punctuation and sentence constructions and resisting the deletion of errors, such as describing 'traditional culture' in Ireland as Gaelic. Needless to say, this is not the least of the errors and inconsistencies in the text, reflecting the inconsistencies of my thinking at the time.* In the intervening years I have attempted a rewrite of this text, guided by a subsequent encounter with the writings of Walter Benjamin. Ultimately, I concluded that the original was too flimsy an edifice to support such a reworking. Among its many faults is an over-reliance on secondary sources as regards the attempt at a kind of 'microhistory' of witch and fairy beliefs and their social context. Evident also is the indirect, unacknowledged influence of the discourse of Weberian disenchantment and Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. The desire to make a general point equating the positivism of science and the ideal of absolute property meant that huge swathes of material were abbreviated in a way that leaves the text vulnerable to being pulled apart.
This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disc... more This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disciplinary contexts, at the crossroads of the positivism of archaeology and the imaginary world of literature. The character of the reciprocal relationship between megalithism in Neolithic Portugal and the writings of the twentieth-century author, James Joyce, is transfigured through the introduction of a third element of interpretation, a deeply paradoxical current of Jewish thought, with messianic dimensions, antithetical to the forces of mythic reconciliation present in Joyce's fiction and in archaeological conceptions of 'symbolic systems' in antiquity, which tend to erase the innumerable singulars of experience. Applying a cryptotheologically-inflected exegesis immanent to the materials of text and archaeology in the light of their respective orientation to the same astral phenomenon, I seek to generate insights unanticipated within interpretations restricted to the disciplinary boundaries, theories and methodologies of archaeology and literary criticism as discrete entities. Within allegorised readings of archaeology and an archaeologicised reading of Joyce's texts I bring into play non-synchronous elements which both disrupt the idealised harmonies of social and religious conformity and illuminate hitherto unseen connections between diverse, seemingly incommensurable contexts, beyond the discursive conventions of detached objectivity, without relinquishing irreduceible remnants to a totalising synthesis.
Contriving a collision between two very different 'artistic' 'traditions' to see patterns of cons... more Contriving a collision between two very different 'artistic' 'traditions' to see patterns of consonance.
This essay investigates the anomalous character of two neurological episodes undergone by the aut... more This essay investigates the anomalous character of two neurological episodes undergone by the author. Their perceived correspondence with periods of directed focus on archaeological and topographical themes has connotations beyond their ostensible neurobiological origins. These heterogeneous elements comprise a dynamic experiential complex, implicated in the induction of meaningful coincidence. The nonidentity of this indissoluble, contradictory 'something' with the static cognitive ideal of the concept elicits an approach informed by principles of philosophical presentation elaborated, respectively, by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). I draw on their theologically inflected attempt to retrieve the truth content in the object, which eludes identification and classification in customary philosophical and scientific determinations of the object of knowledge. That the proper approach to the unknown object is, rather, a self-forgetful immersion in it, and possession by it, implies a mimetic style of interpretation that takes shape immanently to the strange encounter with phenomena. Attempting to glimpse, in their subsequent development, essential qualities in the sphere where neurology and topography coincide, I stage a retrospective choreography of individually opaque elements, to spark 'auratic' moments of sudden reciprocal insight, illuminating the transitory promise of fulfilment which is repeatedly broken to preserve its truth. For Adorno, the immediate, definitive resolution of tensions riddling this constellation is impossible in the non-redeemed world. Hence, descending into the abyss of significances, I trace intimations of a latent transcendence, which has found refuge in art and registers in anomalous experience, its evanescent glow imbuing the 'esoteric' form of this essay.
Chapter Two of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory, ... more Chapter Two of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory, a 2004 University of Manchester PhD Thesis by Simon Crook. Uploaded to provide a public record and to present the 'prehistory' of ideas subsequently developed by the author and others in a cryptotheological context from 2019 onwards. I draw attention to the convergence of kabbalistic themes, Tao and the element of water in the closing section - the high/low tide of a certain way of thinking.
A version of this essay was originally published in Northern Earth 165: 16-21, 2021.
Starry Path... more A version of this essay was originally published in Northern Earth 165: 16-21, 2021.
Starry Paths in Stone explores the implications of a solstitial alignment linking stone circles and a tomb in the context of the rising of Cassiopeia over Moelfre, setting in motion a choreography of elements, including the management of herds, with an impact on the present and the catastrophic death march of capital.
Fragments of critique immanent to the generic cultural forms of 'earth mysteries' and 'ghost stor... more Fragments of critique immanent to the generic cultural forms of 'earth mysteries' and 'ghost stories', mediated through the thinking of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin. This entails recognition of the nonidentity of ‘irreducible singulars’ resistant to categorisation within ‘general concepts’, and the recovery of traces of ‘spiritual experience’ from false totalities, pertinent to considering scattered remnants of diverse histories arranged in a linear way, intentionally or not, across a few miles of Kent. An edited version of this essay was published in Northern Earth, No. 169, September 2022.
This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disc... more This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disciplinary contexts, at the crossroads of the positivism of archaeology and the imaginary world of literature. The character of the reciprocal relationship between megalithism in Neolithic Portugal and the writings of the twentieth-century author, James Joyce, is transfigured through the introduction of a third element of interpretation, a deeply paradoxical current of Jewish thought, with messianic dimensions, antithetical to the forces of mythic reconciliation present in Joyce’s fiction and in archaeological conceptions of ‘symbolic systems’ in antiquity, which tend to erase the innumerable singulars of experience. Applying a cryptotheologically-inflected exegesis immanent to the materials of text and archaeology in the light of their respective orientation to the same astral phenomenon, I seek to generate insights unanticipated within interpretations restricted to the disciplinary bound...
An interpretation of aspects of the Neolithic of Atlantic Europe (c5000-c2000 BC) through the len... more An interpretation of aspects of the Neolithic of Atlantic Europe (c5000-c2000 BC) through the lens of James Joyce's novel, Finnegans Wake, and an interpretation of his novel, dialectically, through this archaeological optic, complying with Theodor W. Adorno’s injunction to ‘treat profane texts like holy scripture’. This is the occasion to reflect on the coded 'theological moment' in the thought of Adorno and Walter Benjamin to activate shifting constellations of Archaeology, Literature and Philosophical critique.
At best, the paper constitutes 'a onestone parable, a rude breathing on the void of to be' (FW 100.26-27) and, for better or worse, is one of 'the "rejected stones" of the seemingly non-existent "impossible"' (Bielik-Robson 2020b: 65).
EDIT. An updated pdf of this paper has been uploaded as of 11/8/2024
Images to be viewed in conjunction with the text, 'Skatterlings of a Stone': Finnegans Wake and t... more Images to be viewed in conjunction with the text, 'Skatterlings of a Stone': Finnegans Wake and the Moment of Philosophical Critique in Megalithic Archaeology.
Chapter Six of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory -... more Chapter Six of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory - 2004 PhD at the University of Manchester by Simon Crook
In 21 years this MA dissertation has probably only been seen (never mind read) by about ten peopl... more In 21 years this MA dissertation has probably only been seen (never mind read) by about ten people. Retyped from the original bound copy in my possession, I have left the document largely unedited, keeping sometimes quirky punctuation and sentence constructions and resisting the deletion of errors, such as describing 'traditional culture' in Ireland as Gaelic. Needless to say, this is not the least of the errors and inconsistencies in the text, reflecting the inconsistencies of my thinking at the time.* In the intervening years I have attempted a rewrite of this text, guided by a subsequent encounter with the writings of Walter Benjamin. Ultimately, I concluded that the original was too flimsy an edifice to support such a reworking. Among its many faults is an over-reliance on secondary sources as regards the attempt at a kind of 'microhistory' of witch and fairy beliefs and their social context. Evident also is the indirect, unacknowledged influence of the discourse of Weberian disenchantment and Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. The desire to make a general point equating the positivism of science and the ideal of absolute property meant that huge swathes of material were abbreviated in a way that leaves the text vulnerable to being pulled apart.
This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disc... more This paper proceeds from the concurrent interpretation of two distinct, apparently unrelated disciplinary contexts, at the crossroads of the positivism of archaeology and the imaginary world of literature. The character of the reciprocal relationship between megalithism in Neolithic Portugal and the writings of the twentieth-century author, James Joyce, is transfigured through the introduction of a third element of interpretation, a deeply paradoxical current of Jewish thought, with messianic dimensions, antithetical to the forces of mythic reconciliation present in Joyce's fiction and in archaeological conceptions of 'symbolic systems' in antiquity, which tend to erase the innumerable singulars of experience. Applying a cryptotheologically-inflected exegesis immanent to the materials of text and archaeology in the light of their respective orientation to the same astral phenomenon, I seek to generate insights unanticipated within interpretations restricted to the disciplinary boundaries, theories and methodologies of archaeology and literary criticism as discrete entities. Within allegorised readings of archaeology and an archaeologicised reading of Joyce's texts I bring into play non-synchronous elements which both disrupt the idealised harmonies of social and religious conformity and illuminate hitherto unseen connections between diverse, seemingly incommensurable contexts, beyond the discursive conventions of detached objectivity, without relinquishing irreduceible remnants to a totalising synthesis.
Contriving a collision between two very different 'artistic' 'traditions' to see patterns of cons... more Contriving a collision between two very different 'artistic' 'traditions' to see patterns of consonance.
This essay investigates the anomalous character of two neurological episodes undergone by the aut... more This essay investigates the anomalous character of two neurological episodes undergone by the author. Their perceived correspondence with periods of directed focus on archaeological and topographical themes has connotations beyond their ostensible neurobiological origins. These heterogeneous elements comprise a dynamic experiential complex, implicated in the induction of meaningful coincidence. The nonidentity of this indissoluble, contradictory 'something' with the static cognitive ideal of the concept elicits an approach informed by principles of philosophical presentation elaborated, respectively, by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). I draw on their theologically inflected attempt to retrieve the truth content in the object, which eludes identification and classification in customary philosophical and scientific determinations of the object of knowledge. That the proper approach to the unknown object is, rather, a self-forgetful immersion in it, and possession by it, implies a mimetic style of interpretation that takes shape immanently to the strange encounter with phenomena. Attempting to glimpse, in their subsequent development, essential qualities in the sphere where neurology and topography coincide, I stage a retrospective choreography of individually opaque elements, to spark 'auratic' moments of sudden reciprocal insight, illuminating the transitory promise of fulfilment which is repeatedly broken to preserve its truth. For Adorno, the immediate, definitive resolution of tensions riddling this constellation is impossible in the non-redeemed world. Hence, descending into the abyss of significances, I trace intimations of a latent transcendence, which has found refuge in art and registers in anomalous experience, its evanescent glow imbuing the 'esoteric' form of this essay.
Chapter Two of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory, ... more Chapter Two of The World's End: Rock Images, Altered Realities, and the Limits of Social Theory, a 2004 University of Manchester PhD Thesis by Simon Crook. Uploaded to provide a public record and to present the 'prehistory' of ideas subsequently developed by the author and others in a cryptotheological context from 2019 onwards. I draw attention to the convergence of kabbalistic themes, Tao and the element of water in the closing section - the high/low tide of a certain way of thinking.
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Papers by Simon Crook
Starry Paths in Stone explores the implications of a solstitial alignment linking stone circles and a tomb in the context of the rising of Cassiopeia over Moelfre, setting in motion a choreography of elements, including the management of herds, with an impact on the present and the catastrophic death march of capital.
At best, the paper constitutes 'a onestone parable, a rude breathing on the void of to be' (FW 100.26-27) and, for better or worse, is one of 'the "rejected stones" of the seemingly non-existent "impossible"' (Bielik-Robson 2020b: 65).
EDIT. An updated pdf of this paper has been uploaded as of 11/8/2024
Drafts by Simon Crook
Starry Paths in Stone explores the implications of a solstitial alignment linking stone circles and a tomb in the context of the rising of Cassiopeia over Moelfre, setting in motion a choreography of elements, including the management of herds, with an impact on the present and the catastrophic death march of capital.
At best, the paper constitutes 'a onestone parable, a rude breathing on the void of to be' (FW 100.26-27) and, for better or worse, is one of 'the "rejected stones" of the seemingly non-existent "impossible"' (Bielik-Robson 2020b: 65).
EDIT. An updated pdf of this paper has been uploaded as of 11/8/2024