Fossils and tombs in museums fascinate us and haunt us with their secrets. The discovery of the remains of
It is impossible to seek, in the world, among the dead, what comes from life – a single living being. (Henry
What a gift these prehistoric finds are, those that come to us from before time and place, that is from a time and place before emplotment into narrative, if it is possible that anything comes to us from such a place without being received as much as it arrives. Whatever it is that comes to us from before time and place can only be a gift, and as all gifts do, it brings about much excitement, as it did, for example, for Quentin Meillassoux (
He got excited because such arche-fossils as well as fossils, or fossils of prehuman or preconscious existence, question the necessity for some form of transcendence for the world to be. But does, or do, such finds not also question the various forms of realism as well, be it dialogical realism, or critical realism or Meillasoux’s own form of speculative realism? His basic argument is that arche-fossils are from a time before consciousness, and therefore question the Kantian and post-Kantian argument that phenomena can only be revealed, can only appear to some form of consciousness, for example: to Existence, to Life, to
He wants to challenge the various post-metaphysical philosophies of difference as Laruelle (
A find such as
Meillassoux’s argument is a critique of Kant and all post-Kantian philosophy and he specifically refers to Kant in his
Accordingly, all events which have taken place in the immense periods that have preceded my own existence really mean nothing but the possibility of extending the chain of experience from the present perception back to the conditions which determine this perception in respect of time. (As quoted in Brassier
This seems to be true, whether we are thinking about
Human and prehuman fossils are humanised, much as the animal kingdom is humanised, but the argument is that arche-fossils cannot be, as they come from a time prior to humans, and not only prior to consciousness, but even prior to perception of any form, even prior to the possibility of perception as they come from a time prior to any form of nervous system. Meillassoux’s conclusion is that for Kant and all thinking that is influenced by Kant, the arche-fossil cannot be represented as existing in itself but only as connected to a possible experience. But as it is impossible to extend the:
chain of experience from our present time to the time of the accretion of the earth … We cannot extent the chain of possible perception back prior to the emergence of nervous systems, which provide the material conditions for the possibility of perceptual experience. (Brassier
By the time of
Of course, the post-Kantians, the post-metaphysicians and the philosophers of difference responded to
I began with Meillassoux, as his question fascinates me – his question, reformulated in my own language (words): What comes before, prior to language? What is behind, prior, before correlation as he calls it? Or what is before Dif-ference (
Meillassoux focused on Arch-fossils and the topic in this paper is
These gifts could also be argued haunt what Alain Badiou calls body–language dualism, which he refers to as democratic materialism,
A body, or at least the remains of many bodies, bones of various skeletons, appear from a time before language, maybe even a time before the physiological and anatomical possibility of language or maybe just the early beginnings of the evolution of such a possibility, and thereby questioning many of our assumptions about ourselves, our origins and maybe also our future.
It did not take long and this find, this gift, was emplotted and
Yet, these prehistoric finds, these fossils, are more than messages of worlds long buried in an un-remembered past, as they soon become part of a remembered past as our experience is extended into their world. Yet, what fascinates us about these fossils and tombs is that they seem to come from that
Naledi means star in Sotho, star, a message, the remains of a body, prior to language, from the stars, from the heavens, indeed a place for a last God. Naledi, a star from afar that twinkles, maybe like that last God twinkling from that
If these finds are such gifts, the question might be posed, but who is it that gives this gift and who receives this gift? As gifts, to be understood as gifts, we need to have a giver and a receiver.
Who called Naledi, or did Naledi call from the silence of her secrets, hidden away in her ancient burial chamber, in which she was supposedly placed at great peril to her ‘people’, if one can call them people? Or did the scientists, the specialists, in their diverse fields of expertise call her? Or was there something else calling that inspired the search for such fossils, that inspired the search for her? Something about our past, or even something from before our past, that calls us, beckons us, maybe hinting at all sorts of promises, promises that such finds will unlock the secrets of our past, help us understand our present and maybe give indications concerning our future? Who or what called, called this search party into being, a team of scientists searching for missing information, some even call the find ‘the missing link’. A missing link in the chain of development, the chain of evolution, others call it a secret, the secret of our past that has been uncovered. Whatever it is called, it is believed to answer many questions and solve mysteries long buried in a past beyond memory. The ambition of knowledge is to find such missing links, the link to the past, the link to the truth, the link to the real, the link that binds truths and facts beyond doubt and speculation, yet this is the ambition that drives all quests for knowledge, is it not?
Once we start asking such questions, or start concerning ourselves with that time and place before memory, are we not moving into the territory of the beginning, the origin, the creation, the ultimate calling into being of all that is? Or the giving of all that is, or the arrival of all that is, which needs to be received and therefore the receiving of all that is? Are we not in a sense asking Meillasoux’s question, what is prior to correlation? Heidegger’s question about what is prior to
Once we start with those questions, are we not asking the very fundamental questions of cosmology and ontology, about what is and how what is came into being – was it created, or did it develop and/or evolve? The question of what is all part of our world, the things of our cosmos and how did they come to be. Who or what called, who or what gave, everything that is and was into being, and that question cannot be separated from who or what is calling us, to receive, name, interpret, analyse and thereby understand, classify, categorise all what was, is and maybe is to come?
This reminds me of the story of Adam and Eve, which also goes back to the story of creation. Adam and Eve when they were still in the Garden of Eden. Shortly after the creation of all that is, they were given the task, by the creator of all things in whose image they, Adam and Eve were created, to give names and identities to all things so as to differentiate them. A task humanity has taken very seriously ever since. Today we still name things, but not only name, we date and place things into history even if that history pre-dates our history. Who is this we, that speaks of
A gift always has a giver and a receiver and the two correlate, is there a beyond correlation?
In a different past, also distant past but not quite as distant as Naledi, a past that is well remembered and even well recorded in writing, there was a name given (we always give names) to that place, which is a place of receiving and giving, and it was called
It is the place of all thinking of ontology and cosmology and therefore maybe this thinking and questioning about Naledi also takes place in this place, called
One could even argue that one of the species, namely
Yes, they all take place there in that place of taking place, but they do because
Here we are in
Who gives us Naledi? Who is entitled to receive her, place and date her maybe in both senses of that word date, as either place her in time and/or place her in relationship? Who is authorised to do that, who is specialised enough to know? Maybe those who named her, Naledi,
Prehuman, when was that? When did humans become humans? Well, way back then, very long ago the lineage was clearly established, the story has been written, the narrative emplotted, and
Do we know today what a real name is? Who gives it, who receives is? Names seem to be about placing – placing people in families and in social-cultural and historical contexts, placing subjects and things in time, in relationship as well as placing her in a place, a kind of world. A world where there are names and responding and calling with or without names. Names are about time places. That is what language does: it places in time or it times in place; it is the
Once we have named her, what becomes more fascinating than she herself is the time-space that comes with her name; that comes with her and her name, maybe? Did it come with her, or did we give her this time-space? Or did we meet somewhere in the middle, in
Some are not so happy with Naledi’s time space, as they angrily respond: How dare you speak of Naledi being the missing link! God created the world in 7 days! Humans did not come from something prehuman! Did God create the world in 7 days? No, it was not God, it was us. We created, at least we created the story in which God creates creation. We gave God also a time and a place in which to create, just like we have given Naledi a time and a place. We give or we find (receive) time and place and with the time-place everything that populates that specific time and place, including God if you like, or evolution if you prefer. We create, well not really we, but language creates, narrative creates, the
We have very good reasons for some of our time-play-places, which we have named and dated. With scientific procedures of, for example, carbon dating and/or radiation, we believe we can very accurately date the time of that place in which Naledi lived, as well as all the other fossils that have been found, even arche-fossils, which can tell us the age of the earth.
Are we not back where we started? Naledi comes from a place and a time before the speaking of language, prior to
Remind me, I seem to have forgotten, like the Greeks forget so much, because they didn’t have writing, at least that is what the Egyptian priest seemed to think, because that is what he said to Solon in the
In the story in the
Only these priests can read the writing on the wall, together with those who have been initiated into their brotherhood (priesthood), those initiated into formulas, equations and mathematical abstraction, or mathematical writing.
Yet, how will we ever know, as Bruno Latour asks, whether the scientist translates or betrays (Latour
Do we trust them? Of course, I would never trust a priest. We have been warned about the priests of religion! Priests who keep society
Forget the trustworthiness of priests. Let us return to the facts. There was or is writing on the wall, even if that writing is carbon traces, instead of graphic traces. This writing on the wall is believed to be before the speaking of language. Just as there was
The silence of the secret becomes absolute with death. Death and the places of death are the best places for keeping secrets, specifically the secret of what is before or after the speaking of language, as the dead do not speak!
There must be something before the speaking of language, something more reliable, like the writing on the wall in Egypt, or the traces of carbon, or arche-fossils. There must be a way not only to reach that place before the speaking of language, by silencing the speaking of language so as to reach that place of truth, and death certainly silences the speaking of language.
Naledi is or is like the writing on the wall! The writing on the wall in the
Naledi is a bit like that writing on the wall in Egypt. Whoever can read her, will know the secrets long hidden from us:
There are no more naked truths, but there are no more naked citizens, either. The mediators have the whole space to themselves. The Enlightenment has a dwelling-place at last. Natures are present, but with their representatives, scientists who speak in their name. Societies are present, but with the objects that have been serving as their ballast from time immemorial. (Latour
Once one starts on such an important topic, one cannot talk alone, but multiple voices begin to join in and therefore the rest of this paper will be a conversation between various voices. Not characters as characters would be too distinct. These voices are not so distinct as to belong to specific characters. Just as I am never sure if I speak in my own voice. Do I have my own voice, is my voice not always an inherited voice? Plato often spoke (wrote) in many voices, but his voices had concrete characters. But for such an important topic, as our origin, these voices must remain body-less, but maybe it is good if they do not have bodies, all the more to haunt us, with their spectral presence or bodily absence.
Sorry, you seem to have confused two texts Naledi and the Timaeus.
You are right, I might have, but are they not about the same, namely cosmology and ontology? About what is and what was and what might come? In the
Who wrote? Who gave us Naledi? Was it Lee Berger who found her, did he give her? But who placed her there in that, what they say was a primitive form of grave, even a communal grave? Who placed her in that burial chamber, and why did they place her deep down in the earth, a place not easily accessible? Was it, maybe, to ponder the deep inaccessible questions of being? A place and a journey to that place, which was maybe like the journey of the mystics: ‘go where you cannot go’,
A place to think the unthinkable. Is that not also our journey as we ponder these questions?
This is truly exciting stuff and should certainly interest the priests of theology and religion, because if those prehistoric humans buried their dead, they could only have done that if they had some kind of sense of a transcendent reality. Not only prehuman, but with them come signs, ‘writings on the walls’, maybe on the walls of ancient burial chambers, on the communal tomb walls, offering indications of primitive forms of religion. If those prehistoric prehumans already believed in a transcendent reality, then there must be a God! God cannot be a construction, as those before construction already believed in some kind of Transcendence.
Told you, Naledi will reveal secrets to us that have long plagued us: There is a God! Not only a God, but also a sense of God (or transcendent) and that before a brain large enough for such questions about being or not being, Hamlet’s question, or was it Shakespeare question?
Ok, let us not go there yet. As a pragmatist, let me be more realistic. All we know is that there probably was some form of burial ritual. Those who mourned her death, that is if they mourned, placed her there in that place for the dead. Who were they and why did they do that? And where did they, who placed her, come from?
You are starting again with these same questions of placing (giving) and receiving. I thought we had left Socrates and gone much further back in time?
It does not matter much if one goes forwards or backwards in time, one never leaves Socrates, at least not in this time and place (Western thought and Western Science) so influenced by the Greeks
Maybe Socrates should date Naledi. That might solve many of the contemporary issues we currently have with modern Western thought.
That is the very problem that one is trying to avoid, Socrates (Western thought) dates everything, identifies, names and places everything, especially the other, by naming the other as other. It is time that tables were turned, and the other names, places and dates Socrates.
But is that possible? Will that ever happen? Can that happen?
I do not know. It seems impossible, because dating and naming is such a Western thing to do, and by doing it, you become Western and therefore one would not have left Socrates nor Genesis for that matter.
These finds are always like stars, twinkling at us, like Heidegger’s last god, twinkling at us from that place beyond, prior, before time and place, maybe promising answers, promising salvation, promising truth. Yet, we never reach that star, it only twinkles at us.
To turn the tables around, one would have to change the writing! What writing? The writing on the wall?
Yes, that too maybe. But I was thinking more of the writing in the book!
Which book?
Yes,
Isn’t that what Badiou (
So Naledi is a truth come to change our world?
Yes, she is if you want to place her into that kind of world, the world of truth procedures, a truth that will change the world. Or maybe only a truth to tell us we were right all along.
There are those reading her as a new truth come to change our world!
There are those reading her as a proof that they were right all along!
So she is an answer to those and a question to the others?
Yes, that is what she is, a secret revelation to the eyes of the beholder.
She will open a completely new world to you, or confirm the world you live in! Have fun, date her!
But remember, as with any relationship (never mind long distance, but with such a time difference, if that is important to you), will have problems, which disturb and haunt a relationship. However, you date her, she will haunt you!
Or maybe she is Naledi, a star, twinkling at us from afar. A twinkling that haunts us as we gaze up at the stars and ask the deep
Did
Will we ever know? What we do know is that she will not tell us.
Like all the dead things that can never tell us a single thing about the living (Henry
The letter kills, or at least it condemns to death. The writing, be it on the wall or not, is a great gift, but also
Is this gift that came with
Blessed are
Please for
While asking for forgiveness, I pray with Badiou, although he probably does not pray, for many faithful subjects (Badiou
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
The arche-fossil enjoins us to track thought by inviting us to discover the ‘hidden passage’ trodden by the latter in order to achieve what modern philosophy has been telling us for the past two centuries is impossibility itself: to get out of ourselves, to grasp the in-itself, to know what is whether we are or not (Meillassoux
‘Today, natural belief is condensed in a single statement:
Badiou argues that there are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths as well (Badiou
See Derrida quoting from the Cherubinic Wanderer (Derrida