How Things Count As The Same Memory Mimesis and Metaphor Adam B Seligman Full Chapter

How Things Count As The Same:
Memory, Mimesis, And Metaphor Adam

B. Seligman
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/how-things-count-as-the-same-memory-mimesis-and-
metaphor-adam-b-seligman/
i
How Things Count as the Same

ii
iii
How Things
Count as the Same
Memory, Mimesis, and Metaphor
zz
ADAM B. SELIGMAN AND
ROBERT P. WELLER
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–088871–8
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v
Contents
List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. What Counts as the Same? 5
2. How Memory Counts as the Same 33
3. Mimesis, or “Society Is Imitation” 53
4. Metaphor 78
5. Framing Gifts 99
6. Memory, Metaphor, and a Double Bind 118
7. Sign, Ground, and Interpretant 135
Conclusion 165
Notes 181
References 199
Index 211
vi
vi
Illustrations
1.1. Yin-yang symbol 12

1.2. Sign, object, interpretant, and ground 16
1.3. Chiang Yee, Lapwings over Merton Field 19
1.4. Gentile Bellini, The Sultan Mehmet II 20
3.1. Japanese turtle and crane 55
3.2. Phylacteries 56
3.3. Garden wall 56
3.4. “Study Lei Feng’s Fine Example; Serve the People
Wholeheartedly” 64
3.5. Donated goods 66
3.6. Donated goods 67
3.7. UN refugee camp signage 68
4.1. Oliviero Gatti, from Four Old Testament Scenes after
Pordenone (1625) 82
4.2. Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham’s Sacrifice (1655) 83
4.3. Cups and teapot 87
5.1. Spirit money for sale, Nanjing 2014 116
7.1. Sign, object, interpretant, and ground 136
7.2. Sign for toilets 136
7.3. Squat toilets 137
7.4. Sit-down toilets 137
7.5. Monument against War and Fascism, Vienna 158
7.6. Monument against War and Fascism, Vienna, detail 159
7.7. Jews forced to clean the streets of Vienna, 1938 160
7.8. Holocaust Memorial, Vienna 161
vi
ix
Acknowledgments
This book is our third together. Like our other books, it is the product of
conversations over many years with each other and with many of our colleagues
and teachers of all sorts (including our students, children, and spouses). They
are far too many to name, but we trust that they are aware of how much we owe
them. As with all of our books, this one began with some vague questions and
some arduous reading together, and so thanks especially to those who helped us
along that path, especially through the swamps of C. S. Peirce. We are grateful as
well, and a little apologetic, to the people in the neighboring offices to ours, who
had to put up with our sometimes raucous way of thinking together: loud talk
punctuated with laughter and the occasional bit of yelling.
We are also grateful for the opportunity to present our ideas in a number
of different forums and have benefited greatly from the comments and critiques
offered. These include presentations at the Pontifical Academy of Social
Sciences; the Sofia University Faculty of Philosophy (Workshop on Wisdom,
Understanding and Doubt); the State Research University Higher School
of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia (Workshop on Bordering Religions in
[Post–]Cold War Worlds); the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Conference on
Religion, Spiritual Capital, and Civil Society); Konstanz University (Conference
on Wonach fragt die Judenfrage? Zum Antisemitismus der Moderne); and
Taiwan National University (Department of Anthropology).
Generous funding from the Fulbright Program and the Guggenheim
Foundation gave us the time to pursue a significant amount of the research and
complete the writing of this book. In addition, we are grateful to the Boston
University Center for the Humanities for its generous grant supporting our pub-
lication of some of the visual material that appears here.
x
xi
How Things Count as the Same

xi
1
Introduction
How do human beings craft enduring social groups and long- lasting
relationships? Given the myriad differences that divide one individual from an-
other, why do we recognize anyone as somehow sharing a common fate with us?
How do we live in harmony with groups that may not share that sense of common
fate? Such relationships lie at the heart of the problems of pluralism that increas-
ingly face so many nations today.
This book is an attempt to answer a seemingly simple question: How do we
constitute ourselves as groups and as individuals? What counts as the same? Note
that “counting as” the same differs from “being” the same. The Greek philosopher
Heraclitus was surely right when he pointed out that no one can put her foot in
the same river twice.1 Both the river and the foot have changed by the second
time. In a sense, she cannot even put her foot into the “same” river once, because
feet and rivers change as they interact. Counting as the same is thus not an em-
pirical question about how much or how little one person shares with another
or one event shares with a previous event. Heraclitus showed us that nothing is
truly the same.
Nevertheless, as humans we construct sameness all the time. In the process,
of course, we also construct difference. I am not empirically the same as I was
yesterday—things have entered and left my body, I have honed a new skill, my
head stopped hurting. From molecules to moods, “I” am not the same. Yet I still
consider myself to be the same person and to be different from other people.
Feelings of group solidarity are similar. They have to be crafted out of our em-
pirical differences. Thus I may have nothing in common with someone who lives
down the street, but when we meet in Paris we will treat each other as the same
in some important ways (as Americans, not French citizens, for instance). Ties
of citizenship and patriotism, neighborhood, kinship, profession, and all the rest
allow us to think of each other as the same in spite of all the real differences that
2
2 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me
separate us. In Chinese, many of these ties used to create social alliances refer
explicitly to this sameness: “same” surname, “same” school class, “same” place of
origin (tong xing, tong xue, tong xiang), and so on. Each of these ties is a social con-
struction, but it can be so powerful that we naturalize it. When we create these
unities, of course, we also create differences. The world divides into our people,
who share ties with us, and those people, who are not our kin or classmates or
fellow patriots; it divides more starkly into the people and the enemies of the
people.
The issue of sameness comes up constantly in the study of religion. Rituals
must count as the same as previous versions of the ritual in order to succeed.
Today’s baptism or funeral is never identical to the one we performed last week,
but we still must recognize the two events as alike in some fundamental way. To
achieve this, some parts absolutely have to be done properly in order for the ritual
to be accepted. In the United States, for instance, the couple must make an avowal
of their intention to marry (“I do”); if this does not happen it cannot count as a
marriage. Other sorts of variations, however, can be ignored.
Religious denomination is also a matter of counting as the same. When
Christians practice pagan rites like placing an evergreen tree in their house near
the winter solstice, are they still Christians? For most American Christians the
answer is a clear yes; the Christmas tree has become a core part of the ritual itself.
For the Puritans who first came from England to Massachusetts, however, the
answer was no. Religious splits frequently start from arguments over what counts
as the same. In the Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, Patriarch Nikon’s
mid-seventeenth-century reform to make Russian and Greek Orthodox ritual
practices more “the same” led to a major split from the Old Believers. The most
divisive issues included small details of ritual practice like exactly how to hold the
fingers while making the sign of the cross or whether processions should move
in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. There were major underlying social
issues, of course, but the argument centered fully on the construction of sameness
and difference through ritual minutiae.2
The idea of syncretism is another important arena for the construction of
what counts as the same in religion. A great deal has been written about the
concept within religious studies and anthropology.3 In theological circles in par-
ticular, syncretism has often historically been viewed as a problem: syncretized
religions no longer count as the same. Every globalizing religion has had to deal
with the problem that local variations inevitably arise, and they have to decide
how much variation is still acceptable (i.e., whether a hybrid practice still counts
as “the same” religion) and how much is not.
Plutarch’s essay “On Brotherly Love,” written roughly two thousand years ago,
provides what some consider the earliest relevant use of the term “syncretism”:
3
Introduction 3
Then this further matter must be borne in mind and guarded against when
differences arise among brothers: we must be careful especially at such
times to associate familiarly with our brothers’ friends, but avoid and shun
all intimacy with their enemies, imitating in this point, at least, the prac-
tice of Cretans, who, though they often quarreled with and warred against
each other, made up their differences and united when outside enemies
attacked; and this it was which they called “syncretism. . . .” [T]‌here is
a saying that brothers walking together should not let a stone come be-
tween them, and some people are troubled if a dog runs between brothers,
and are afraid of many such signs, not one of which ever ruptured the
concord of brothers; yet they do not perceive what they are doing when
they allow snarling and slanderous men to come between them and cause
them to stumble.4
Plutarch’s folk etymology—“syn-Crete-ism” meaning an alliance of the Cretans—

may have been meant in jest. Nevertheless it captures a fundamental aspect of
syncretic pluralism in the way the normally fractious people of Crete recognized
their fraternal sameness in the face of an external enemy. The context here is cru-
cial, however. Plutarch is insisting that fraternal loyalty take precedence over
other kinds of ties. It is bad enough when we let “snarling and slanderous men”
come between us, but he warns us in the same passage not to be “fluid as water” by
simply pursuing our own tactical and personal interests no matter where they lead
us. Fraternal loyalty here conquers other forms and clearly separates friends from
enemies. Plutarch is using the idea of brothers to refer to a kind of inborn same-
ness, one that all Cretans might share even though they are not literal brothers.
As we can see from his description, however, the concept also implies a funda-
mental difference from all those who are not the same as us, a clear line between
friends and enemies, brothers and slanderous strangers. Such a construction of
sameness is familiar to all of us, and yet it is not particularly open to genuine plu-
ralism or even to empathy with those who are not the same as us.
The fraternal sameness in Plutarch’s essay never gets to pluralism but stays in
the dichotomous group dynamics of us versus them, brothers versus strangers.
Real pluralism requires accepting group-level differences. How do we construct
sameness and difference in ways that allow us to live with difference instead of
seeing it as a threat? In this book, we suggest that there are multiple ways in which
we can count things as the same and that each of them fosters different kinds of
group dynamics and different sets of benefits and risks for the creation of plural
societies. While there might be many ways to understand how people construct
sameness, three seem especially important and will form the focus of our analysis.
We will call them memory, mimesis, and metaphor.
4
In brief, “memory” creates sameness through the sharing of narrative forms,

prototypically in the stories that materialize shared experiences. This draws the
clearest boundary between the group that shares the memory and those outside
the group, who do not; it is roughly what Plutarch described. “Mimesis” refers to
repeated performances, enactments, and re-creations. We will be primarily con-
cerned with religion, and thus the most relevant focus of mimetic behavior is
ritual. Rituals also draw boundaries, but in contrast to memory, they are always
capable of being crossed or transcended. Finally, we will use the term “metaphor”
loosely, to describe the creation of innovative forms of sameness, drawing new
boundaries and suggesting new possibilities. We will be employing these terms in
a somewhat creative manner, going beyond existing linguistic, artistic, and phil-
osophical usages. Their importance for our work is to point to particular gestalts
(which we shall define in chapter 1 as “schemas” or “grounds”) of understanding
what is the same or different.
The book begins by expanding on these themes, exploring the multiple
forms and analytic purchases carried by memory, mimesis, and metaphor.
Chapter 1 begins by thinking through what it means to count as the same, and
the three chapters that follow take up each of the three grounds or schemas
in turn. We then explore more empirical applications of our ideas. We begin
in chapter 5 with a study of the importance of memory, mimesis, and meta-
phor to the understanding of the gift. In c hapter 6 we analyze the workings of
memory and metaphor as Jewish and Christian civilizational tropes. Chapter 7
continues to explore how the three forms of ground interact and transform
people’s understandings of themselves in the world, sometimes with enormous
consequences.
We argue that as memory, mimesis, and metaphor create different forms of
sameness (and so also of difference) they carry with them different possibilities
for empathy, for crossing boundaries, and for negotiating the terms of sameness
and difference between communities and individuals. Some are more “open”
than others, but as the limits of any total transcendence of boundaries are built
into our very ways of knowing the world, we can do no better than understand
the building blocks of that knowledge.
5
What Counts as the Same?
Culture and Its Categories

What do we mean when we say that people share a culture? What exactly is
shared, and how do we share? These are big questions to which it will not be pos-
sible to provide full answers. Indeed, anthropologists have been arguing about
this almost since the beginning of the field. Very few anthropologists today accept
grand claims of shared cultural themes along the lines of Ruth Benedict’s studies
of national character.1 On the other hand, they have also not been quick to accept
the idea that individuals alone are what matters. Such theories assume a unified
motivation of “rational” choice and the attempt to maximize interests. Part of the
problem with both the argument for a national character (which makes culture
too muscular) and that for rational choice (which makes culture irrelevant) is
that neither extreme has sufficiently questioned how sharing can happen.
Rather than beginning with the assumption of the unity of culture or the pri-
ority of the individual decision maker, we will focus on how we come to perceive
things as shared. This is just one facet of our basic underlying question: What
counts as the same? What lets two people, or two million people, feel that they
have the same culture, or for that matter the same class, gender, race, religion, or
any other category? This is not a question of how much we actually share but of
how and when we come to perceive that we share; not what is the same, but what
counts as the same. That is, one of our most fundamental, essential, and founda-
tional acts as humans is the construction of categories of sameness and difference.
This book is devoted to a study of this issue.
If we directly experienced the world in its elemental physical nature without
the mediation of abstracted categories—as quarks or wave-particles, as an ever-
shifting amalgamation of indeterminacies—there would be no room for social
life and no room for humanity as we know it. Shared human life relies on some
degree of coherence, however partial and however constructed. To create such
6
coherence we construct categories, which we understand to be shared, sometimes

imperfectly, by others around us.
Charles Renouvier, Emile Durkheim’s teacher, used to say that “the study of
categories is everything.”2 It is easy to understand why. What we eat (and, more
important, what we do not eat), whom we sleep with and marry (and whom
we do not), and how we define and classify natural and social (that is to say,
ultimately, moral) phenomena all depend on our cultural categories. Even our
understandings of such natural attributes as color, volume, height, and weight are
at least in part “culturally” determined and not universally shared. We will not re-
visit debates about such things as the universality of color terms here.3 We are not
trying to argue that culture supersedes biology but simply note that abstraction
into categories is a human necessity, whether it stems from our biological makeup
or from learning.
The most fundamental categorization that we make is the determination of
what counts as the same and what counts as different. Out of the random chaos
of existence, where in essence everything is different—even no two snowflakes,
we are told, are the same—we determine which differences actually matter. In
Gregory Bateson’s terms, we decide which of the infinite possible distinctions
“make a difference” and which are peripheral, nugatory, or irrelevant.
Peripheral, nugatory, or irrelevant to what? Peripheral to the classification
that we are making at the moment—to our division of phenomena into what is
the same and what is different. Determining sameness implies determining dif-
ference; one cannot happen without the other. Think, for example, of what it
means to share an experience, like going to the beach with friends or on a picnic.
There are hundreds, sometimes thousands of other people on the beach, but we
do not think of the experience as “shared” with them, only with our friends. We
share the experience only with those whom we somehow already counted as “the
same”—those we came with, those together with whom we defined an “us” (as
opposed to and distinguished from everyone else at the beach). On the picnic
too we “shared” our food (even though of course we did not; we each ate sepa-
rate things), and we count the food as shared with our friends, even though that
other couple, sitting under the tree only eight yards away, is also eating tuna fish
sandwiches, just like I am. But that doesn’t count as a shared experience; only the
sharing with my friends counts, even though my friends are actually eating egg
salad. Counting as the same and different is very much part of deciding what is
shared and what is not, and that process goes far beyond the physical similarities
and differences of tuna salad and egg salad.
As we see from these examples, not all difference matters. That we are eating
different food does not mean we are not a “we” (for the purposes of the shared
picnic), and that the other folk are eating the “same” food does not mean that
7
What Counts as the Same? 7
they are “the same” as us. And so, looking at the bookshelves behind one of
our computers, there is a book by Merlin Donald titled Origins of the Modern
Mind, one by Boman titled Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, and Homer’s
Odyssey. Even though one is very thick and one very thin, two are hardcover and
one paperback, one with pictures on the cover and the other two without (not
to mention the very different genres and subjects dealt with in the books), we
have no difficulty in calling them all books. Cover illustrations, types of binding,
height, weight, and all the rest have no relevance to our classification of them all
as books. These are differences that do not matter, distinctions that do not make
a difference, that do not contain or encode information relevant to classifying
something as “a book.” These differences may of course become relevant if I wish
to reclassify the books as potential “doorstops” and so may put all the thick books
together in a new category as “books good to use as doorstops.”
There are a few points worth teasing out of this example. The first, of the type
John Dewey drew our attention to a century ago, is that our categories depend
on our practical aims. We define any “thing” for a set of practical aims—for a
particular context and not in the abstract. An idea of something, according to
Dewey, amalgamates the currently available, physical reality before us together
with additional interpretive data that frame this reality in a broader, meaning-
giving context, defined by our specific purposes.4 The purpose of books is to
read (and cover design is irrelevant, at least for most adults); the purpose of
books-as-doorstops is to keep the door open, and so the mass and volume of
the book is relevant.
The second point is that the very first definitional move, the primary act of
categorization (indeed the very construction of categories, any set of categories)
is a determination of sameness. What qualities of a thing make it “the same”
as another thing, of the same class or category? This is true, of course, for our
classifications of people no less than books or snails. We may, depending on the
circumstances (what Dewey would call our specific purposes), base our decisions
about sameness on all kinds of different attributes (gender, age, dress, skin color,
religion, height, nationality, tribe, ethnicity, etc.).5
All such categorization is a process of abstraction. It abstracts from the infi-
nite concrete characteristics of a thing only that which is relevant for its classifi-
cation into class x. Thus your being female or 66 years old or Latina will be totally
irrelevant for your classification as Jewish, if the relevant context is behavior at a
synagogue. Your being Jewish or female will be irrelevant for your membership in
the AARP, and so on. We abstract from the multiplicity of differences that char-
acterize all people and all things and decide on one or more relevant attributes
(gender, age, whatever) to determine membership in a class of entities sharing
the same attributes. Of course this very act itself rests on a further abstraction.
8
Deciding who is Jewish is no easy task and one continually negotiated. The same
is true for all cultural categories.
Third, determining a category of sameness, saying something “is the same as,”
determines as well a category of difference: a Jew is not a Christian, a man is not a
woman, a Lithuanian is not an American, a black is not a white, and so on (though
she may also be 65 years old and Jewish and 5’9” tall). Here of course all manner
of complications set in, precisely around the boundaries of those categories. The
boundaries of Jewishness or of race or increasingly of sexuality (with, for example,
transgendered individuals) are in fact fuzzy and not sheer. And of course some
people define themselves as Lithuanian Americans. Thus we cannot ignore the
ambiguity that blurs all categories, especially the foundational ones of sameness
and difference. Wisely or not, we often struggle against such ambiguity—usually
by the definition of ever newer categories. Unfortunately, this solution tends to
put off rather than solve the definitional conundrum.6
Such attempts to parse categories ever more closely often lead to social conflict
and struggles among the relevant stakeholders. This was the case in 2006 with the
Jewish Free School in London, where the school did not accept the conversion
of a prospective student’s mother to Judaism (as it was not an Orthodox conver-
sion but performed under the auspices of the Masorati, or Conservative move-
ment in Judaism) and so refused the child entry. This case ultimately reached the
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.7 The Court ruled against the school,
which was found guilty of racial discrimination under the 1976 Race Relations
Act.8 Similar struggles over categories and their social implications are being
fought out in various states in the United States over issues of transgender access
to bathrooms, with some states defying Obama-era administration guidelines.9
More poignantly, issues of gender definition have arisen in traditional American
women’s colleges, such as Smith College, where the ambiguities inherent to a
transgendered individual’s self-identification (biological male identifying as fe-
male) have complicated college admission policies.10
Such cases highlight that, ambiguity notwithstanding, defining something as
the same also defines which categories of difference are relevant to the process of
categorization itself. Sameness defines which qualities of a thing are relevant for
its entry into whatever category is under consideration (book or doorstop or Jew
or woman, as the case may be). At the same time, it tells us about the qualities
that deny such entrance (and around which the struggles over “who is a Jew” or a
woman are fought). If our category is “tall women,” the race, religion, nationality,
and so forth of the particular woman in front of us are irrelevant. Jane is either
tall, in which case she is not short, or she is short, in which case she is not tall; all
other attributes are irrelevant. They are distinctions that do not make a difference
in this case, though they may in other contexts.
9
Thus, categories create sameness and difference at the same time. They do this
by abstracting out from the infinite amount of information that we can theo-
retically provide about any entity. We treat the abstraction as if it actually were
a “thing” because we have defined what it is and what it is not, what about it
counts as the same rather than different from other things in the same category.
Abstraction, and hence categorization, always involves a loss of information. One
implication of this is that the more finely we parse the boundaries between ab-
stracted “things”—the more clearly we delineate the categories by clarifying the
line between things and nonthings—the more information we lose. This happens
because we can clarify the boundary only by pulling our attention away from the
fractal complexities through which concrete entities merge into nonentities. The
more of an entity we deem irrelevant for our purposes (whatever these may be; re-
call Dewey above), the less we know of it.11 This works well enough for Allen keys
(hex wrenches), because we need to know only if its dimensions fit the hex bolt
we are working on now. It works less well for human relations. Treating human re-
lations as hex bolts (simply because we have, or think we have, the relevant keys)
has often led to tragedy.
Note that we have so far been using the word “difference” to indicate two phe-
nomena that might better be separated. That is, bearing in mind all the problems
of creating categories that we have just discussed, let us suggest a boundary be-
tween two categories of “difference.” The first is the infinite array of difference,
uncertainty, and flux that characterizes the physical world—the difference that
prevents us from putting our foot into the same river twice. The second are the
differences that we humans create at the same time as we create sameness. These
are constructed differences, unlike the infinite differences in the physical world.
We will term these differences “gaps.”
Gaps are not the naturally adhering differences that are functions of time and
space: no two things are in the same space at the same time and so cannot be
fundamentally “the same.” They are instead the differences that result from our
social process of categorization, from classifying things as the same and different.
We create recognizable classes of entities that are socially the same as and socially
different from others in the process of organizing the myriad differences of the
natural world. Your ears are longer than mine, and hairier, but that is not a dis-
tinction that makes a difference; the fact that your skin is black or white, how-
ever, may well do so. Recall that blackness and whiteness themselves rely on a
constructed gap, and that the categories do not follow directly from the natural
differences of skin color (and all else that Americans, for example, pour into the
categories of “black” and “white”).
We form social groups out of these categorizations of sameness and dif-
ference, establishing and institutionalizing differences between people. Social
10
life proceeds via boundaries of group membership, participation, and exclu-

sion. We cannot slight this last point about exclusion, no matter how much it
may be in disfavor. Just as any classification of sameness implies one of differ-
ence, so too does any creation of home, sense of belonging, and shared cultural
codes and meanings. The associations we all have with very particular smells,
liturgies, foods, and sights— our comfortable, taken- for-
g ranted worlds,
whether of our moral codes or our dinner menus—constitute boundaries that
both contain us and exclude the other. They define who we are but also who
is not one of us.
Sometimes people can cross these boundaries in acts of empathy, and some-
times they cannot. Sometimes empathy fails. Sometimes we manage to cross
those borders of sameness to engage with what is different, and sometimes we
even manage to redefine those boundaries. Sometimes the redefinition creates
a narrower sense of us, and sometimes a broader sense. Sometimes, while we
may not manage to cross the boundaries, we can still engage the other across
the boundaries—a sort of parallel play, like children in the sandbox. At other
times we try to seal ourselves off from the other in an almost hermetically closed
fashion (though this usually fails) and turn our back on what is beyond our class
of sameness.
There are no general formulae for how these processes occur, but this book
does look at some basic mechanisms through which we construct the class of
the same, as well as the gaps between similar entities. The relevant entities for us,
of course, are social groups—the way they are imagined, constructed, bounded,
and defined. We hope to further explore the possibilities for empathy, for move-
ment across the gaps between these groups and the different possibilities and
challenges we meet when we “mind the gap” and try to step out of our taken-for-
granted worlds.
Minding the Gap

The first challenge of forging an identity—personal, social, or cultural (as we
call those largest and vaguest notions of identity)—is the construction of same-
ness. People must “count” some features as “the same” despite the ineluctable
differences that exist in the world. Constructing a category requires us somehow
to overcome these differences, whether among snowflakes, books, beliefs,
experiences, or peoples. All the differences that make up my personal experience
and all those that separate “me” from others must be rendered void or at least
unimportant in this process. As nothing really is the same, we need, at all times,
to make an interpretive leap of one type or another that allows us to overcome
the differences of all natural or material elements (existing in space and time) and
1
count certain of them as “the same.” This is how we order and so also overcome
(at least in part and for a while) the multiplicity of the world.
This is always a social process. Even the construction of individual identity,
we would suggest, is at heart a social process. It is not a move of individual mind
or nature or of some inherent grid of consciousness, even though each of those
things may play its role. It is learned behavior, constantly altered and reproduced
through social contact. Just as dogs learn to distinguish their owners from other
humans and to differentiate frequent guests to the house from traveling salesmen,
so do humans—only our distinctions are more precise, encompass a far wider
range of variation, and carry many more implications and consequences than do
the dog’s.
Recall that the construction of difference always works at the same time as
the construction of sameness. Categories include, but they also always exclude.
The gaps that separate categories will themselves differ according to the categories
constructed. That is to say, the gaps themselves will reflect the categories of cul-
tural “sameness” and no longer the random, uncategorized differences of nature.
When, for example, Jews define “meat” in the laws of kashrut (dietary restrictions),
they also define milk (as the kind of food that cannot be eaten together with
meat), as well as the category of neither-meat-nor-milk, called “parve” (fruits,
vegetables, bread made with oil or margarine rather than butter).12 The definition
is not inherent in the materials, and the categories of sameness and difference
continue to be negotiated. In antiquity there was, for example, a position articu-
lated by R. Yossi of the Galilee that chicken was not meat and could thus be eaten
with milk. Jews from the Arab lands who observe the laws of kashrut do not eat
fish with milk. For them, fish counts as meat, but not for the equally observant
Jews of Eastern Europe.
In China, too, it is very easy to find elaborate systems of categorization that
extend to all aspects of life, certainly also including diet. Often Chinese thinkers
embraced both the separateness of categories and the idea that they flow into
each other. It is thus easy to find lists of yin and yang contrasts: yin/yang, night/
day, female/male, potential/kinetic energy, tea/wine, eggs/chicken. And it is just
as easy to find an insistence that there are no absolute boundaries because yin
and yang flow into each other as night flows into day. The yin/yang symbol itself
is meant to show both the separateness of the categories (though with a spot of
yin in the yang, and of yang in the yin) and their constant change into each other
(see figure 1.1).
The same tension between correlative categories and constant change also
occurs for all the more elaborate systems developed in China. The Chinese five
elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) have long lists of categories associated
with each (for instance, wood correlates with spring, the liver, a straight punch,
12
Figure 1.1 Yin-yang symbol.

Source: John Langdon, licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0.
morning, etc.). Yet they also flow into each other in a constant interaction, and
the Chinese term might better be translated as “the five movements” rather than
the more standard “five elements.” The history of Chinese thought is filled with
play with these systems, along with increasingly elaborate ones like the eight
trigrams, sixty-four hexagrams, twenty-four celestial asterisms, and so forth.
Alongside the love of categories and correlations stood systems of thought
that recognized the artificial nature of all such systems, just as we have been
arguing here. Laozi thus argues in the Daode Jing:
It is because every one under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty, that

the idea of ugliness exists.
And equally if every one recognized virtue as virtue, this would merely
create fresh conceptions of wickedness.
For truly, Being and Not-being grow out of one another;
Difficult and easy complete one another.13
That is why, Laozi continues, the sage teaches without using words. The Buddhist
tradition has equally embraced complex systems of categories while rejecting
the very idea of categories. As the Buddha says in the Diamond Sutra (one of
the most influential texts in Chinese Buddhism), describing the bodhisattva,
someone who has awakened the faith:
There does not exist in those noble-minded Bodhisattvas the idea of a self,
the idea of a being, the idea of a living being, the idea of a person. Nor
does there exist . . . the idea of quality (dharma), nor of no-quality. Neither
does there exist . . . any idea or no-idea. And why? Because . . . if there
existed for these noble-minded bodhisattvas the idea of quality, then they
13
would believe in a self, they would believe in a being, they would believe
in a living being, they would believe in a person. And if there existed for
them the idea of no-quality, even then they would believe in a self, they
would believe in a being, they would believe in a living being, they would
believe in a person.14
All concepts, all categories, all gaps are rejected here. But of course the text can
express itself only in concepts and categories and gaps. Like the Daoist text, it
recognizes that even sophisticated Buddhist categories like the nonexistence of
self and of others exist only by the contrast with ideas of an actual self. No cate-
gory exists without defining difference.
The nature of the gap thus partakes fully of the nature of the category—not
just in Jewish and Chinese thought, but in general. There is no “self ” without
these gaps, nor is there “culture” or “identity.” We construct individual, group,
and cultural differences in the very same move as we construct sameness. Making
a category, conceiving of a thing, interweaves saying what it is along with what it
is not. This process is inherently social, not some residual category, left over and
stitched together from the bits and pieces of a multitude of other beliefs and
orientations. As Gregory Bateson explained, making a map (a literal one as well as
a more metaphorical “mental map”) is precisely about specifying differences. Like
any forms of information, for Bateson, maps show the differences that make a
difference.15 Differences make the category and hence the thing-that-is-the-same.
Just as a continent only is in its relation to the oceans, and Germany in relation to
France, mountains to valleys, meat to milk, and self to nonself, so too one group
of people can be “mapped” only vis-à-vis another ( Jew to Christian, member of
the Middle Kingdom to the rest of the world, Greek to barbarian, etc.).
Lest we be carried away by the impulse to erase these boundaries, to do away
with mapping of difference, to make all one, we should take seriously Bateson’s
claim that difference is the basis of all information; it is the only way we have of
knowing the world and so of living in it. We cannot exist without mapping dif-
ference, physical and cognitive, of mountains, seas, or peoples, of ourselves and
of our others. Without maps (and so without differences) there is no informa-
tion, no knowledge, and so no human or social life. The opposite, however, is also
the case, as Bateson made clear (based on an earlier remark by Korzybski): “the
map is not the territory.”16 It is only the abstracted representation of territory,
the way we know territory. Territory (and the world in general) is fractal, ambig-
uous, ungraspably complex, constantly changing, and slippery of form. Unlike
maps that draw boundaries so clearly, territory proper challenges our ideas of
boundaries, and—when we look carefully—continually upends our categories of
sameness and difference.
14
A program one of us directs, Communities Engaging with Difference and

Religion (CEDAR), brings together around forty individuals from all over the
world each year, each time in a different country.17 The people are of different
nationalities, religions, ages, and professions, and they spend an intense two weeks
together, from early morning to late at night—daily classes, daily trips, small
group work, attending religious services, managing different dietary restrictions,
meeting prayer needs, and more. In many cases the students come from places that
have been riven by ethnic or religious strife and find themselves—possibly for the
first time—facing people they had always considered Other. They have to nego-
tiate their own taken-for-granted views and those of others and are exposed for
long periods of time to what is different in a substantive way. After about a week
they learn the inadequacy of their categories, which begin to fall apart, no longer
able to encompass the daily reality of their companions. The categories, that is,
are too abstract to be much use in a world where they are challenged every day
by living others; the complexity of difference overwhelms the simplicity of gaps.
An American Protestant participant may have a pretty clear idea of what
it is to be a Catholic from Zimbabwe, as the Zimbabwean may have about the
American. If they interacted for a day or two in an ordinary academic or confer-
ence setting, there is little reason to believe that their assumptions would change.
However, after two weeks in intense interaction, in a situation of having to en-
counter myriad other differences as well, their assumptions begin to be challenged
in ways they could not have imagined. Repeated encounters with the particulars
of other lives—exposure to the role of Christianity in Africa, of Catholicism
in Bosnia, of syncretic religion in the Rhodope mountains—conspire to chal-
lenge everyone’s taken-for-granted notion of what it means to be a Christian.
Challenged by the “territory” of real people facing difficult issues every day, old
“maps” are problematized and new ones must be constructed around altered
ideas of what counts as the same and what as different. Until that new construc-
tion can happen, however, there is a strong feeling of what Durkheim termed
“anomie”—the feeling of loss of regulation, of the suspension of laws and the
world they order.
The more closely we look—and CEDAR is about creating the conditions
wherein people need to look closely—the more we see both how inadequate our
own map is and also how necessary a map is. The closer we are to the phenomena
(in this case our religious, racial, ethnic others), the more we have to interact with
them in ways we never imagined having to do. As this happens we inevitably dis-
cover that our existing categories (which, we recall, are but abstractions) are inad-
equate to the new tasks that the program creates. We are thus forced to reorient
our maps, rethink our categories, and come to understand them not as “truths” of
God or nature but as tools for understanding.
15
We may recall here how Benoît Mandelbrot famously argued that the coast
of England was infinite. Even though we may approximate it as an oval, the line is
actually lengthened by a large number of inlets, lengthened again by mini-inlets
within the larger ones, yet again by micro-inlets, and so on forever.18 For most
purposes of concrete mapping, showing such multiplying fractal differences is
not necessary. It is not even plausible, as the silly idea of a 1:1 map makes clear. Just
as we may change maps if we need greater resolution (or need to focus on topog-
raphy instead of street names, for instance), so also CEDAR participants learn
that sometimes their categories prove inadequate for their purposes (of knowing
the other) and so must be put down and other ones fashioned in their stead.
Thus, while we always need to understand, and we cannot understand or know
the world without mapping its differences (and similarities), this knowledge is
always only contingent and task-specific. It is not the essential nature of anything.
This is critical, because so many overriding attitudes present differences be-
tween people as natural, taken-for-granted, and given in a material or ontolog-
ical sense (based on race or age, gender, so-called intelligence, geographic locale,
etc.). And this is pure nonsense, or perhaps pure ideology. Thus, it is certainly
true that the Kyrgyz live in the mountains that surround the Fergana Valley and
the Uzbeks in its plains and valleys. And their different orientations to Islam may
have something to do with these geographic differences; as James Scott taught us,
states have a difficult time climbing mountains, and presumably forms of religion
do as well. Nevertheless, it is a serious category mistake to use geographic location
as a marker of some essence, as some inalienable aspect of being Uzbek or Kyrgyz,
rather than as part of an explanation of emergent historical differences.19 Being
a mountain dweller or valley resident may help us explain why Islamic practice
among one set of people is, on the whole, more lax or strict than another (al-
though there is a host of other variables), but it does not tell us much of anything
about the people themselves.20
Ways to Count as the Same

The assumption that we know the people because we know the category—we
count them as the same as each other and different from us—is wrong. Worse
than wrong, it is dangerous. The irony is that social thought itself consists of
counting people and things as the same or different. It is no solution to try to
make everything count as the same; then there would be no differences, no map,
no information. How, then, can we manage to live at peace with those who do
not count as the same?
The fundamental claim of this book is that we can make progress on this issue
by realizing that there are multiple ways of counting as the same. One way to do
16
so, as we discussed in the introduction, is to follow Plutarch’s advice: “brothers”

should unite against their enemies. This is fundamentally the same as the kind of
boundary we see on political maps. There is a line, and we on this side are Belgians
and you on that side are French or Dutch. We will suggest, however, that there are
actually very different ways of thinking about sameness, which we call memory,
mimesis, and metaphor. Each of these defines sameness in different ways, and
each therefore also creates different kinds of gaps. We will not argue that any of
these provides a simple answer to the problems of pluralism and empathy, but we
do think they help clarify the grounds on which we might work in that direction.
Our hope is that by specifying the more concrete social mechanisms through
which we arrive at our ideas of sameness and difference we can approach an un-
derstanding that mitigates their more deleterious effects. Once we recognize
that sameness and difference are constructed and deconstructed all the time,
that they emerge out of the continual play and interplay between different con-
ceptual schema (memory, mimesis, and metaphor) we may be able to decenter
our own taken-for-granted assumptions of sameness and difference and accept
more movement, as well as recognize more ambiguity within and between our
categories.
Figure 1.2 represents graphically the conceptual beginnings of our approach.
It draws in equal measure from the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce
and the German art historian Ernst Gombrich.
Following Saussure, most structuralist analysis of meaning focuses on the
connection between the sign and its object (signifier and signified, in Saussurian
language). Saussure’s great insight was that the sign-object relationship is arbi-
trary. Nothing inherent in the sound “book” or “shu” or “kniga” or “livre” relates
directly to the object you are currently reading. That is why the sounds can be so
different from one language to the next. Meaning, he argued, must come instead
Sign
ground/schema
ground/schema
object, interpretant
concept
ground/schema
Figure 1.2 Sign, object, interpretant, and ground.

17
from the position of these sounds in a great structure of other sounds, whose sys-
tematic differences can encode different categories of meaning—a map of a map.
This approach has been widely influential during the twentieth century,
and we shall not much revisit it here, except to note several limitations. First, it
assumes from the beginning that everyone shares these structures, these maps.
The “culture” or “society” that is the carrier for the language is taken to be a co-
herent whole—assumed to be the same rather than asking whether and how it
comes to be counted as the same. It is worth recalling that Serbo-Croatian was
always discussed as a single language while Yugoslavia survived, but that many
speakers now consider Serbian and Croatian to be separate languages that cannot
and should not cross a national border. Second, poststructuralists in particular
have shown that the relations between signs and their objects are not such a
simple encoding, but that signs have an openness to interpretation, evocation,
and irresolvable ambiguity that structuralists’ maps struggle to address.
Those who know the work of C. S. Peirce will clearly see his influence on our
chart, and we have looked to him primarily because he offers an alternative to
the mapping paradigm of the structuralists.21 In almost all of his writings on the
topic, Peirce emphasized that meaning grows out of at least three elements: sign,
object, and interpretant. While sign and object are roughly similar to what the
structuralists discussed, the idea of an interpretant is quite different. Signs do not
automatically convey meanings for Peirce. Instead a meaning must be pulled out
of the many possible ways of understanding how a sign relates to an object. He
calls that end result of interpretation the interpretant.22 Peirce was a philosopher,
not a social scientist, and so was not particularly interested in the social correlates
of the process of interpretation. Nevertheless, by adding the concept of the inter-
pretant he immediately opened up the field of social inquiry. Social and cultural
unity—sameness—is no longer assumed here but becomes open to question.
Scholars of Peirce will also recognize the concept of “ground” from his work,
but its status in Peirce’s system of thought is far less clear than his basic triangle
of “sign, object and interpretant,” and it appears to have changed over time. Some
argue that he eventually abandoned the idea, and others that he reduced the
ground to one of the other three categories. Still others, however, see it as a cru-
cial step in the construction of an interpretant—the basis for deciding what in-
terpretation of a particular sign-object relation will be chosen.23 While we cannot
contribute to a philosophical debate about what Peirce meant, we have found this
conception of ground to be a very useful starting point, especially in its relation-
ship to the interpretant.
Our understanding of the relationship between ground and interpretant has
been helped immensely by Gombrich in his book Art and Illusion: A Study in the
Psychology of Pictorial Representation. He gives a number of wonderful examples
18
of Chinese painters who painted the English lake district to look like Chinese
landscapes rather than English countryside. The “schema” of Chinese landscape
conventions of the late Qing dynasty provided the lens through which these
painters viewed nature. The result was nothing like the English picturesque of
the late romantic period. In Gombrich’s words, “[T]‌he relatively rigid vocabulary
of the Chinese tradition acts as a selective screen which admits only the features
for which the schema exist. The artists will be attracted by motifs which can be
rendered in his idiom.”24 Needless to say, the same is true for the English painters
of the same scenery. Gombrich’s concept of a schema has been vital in our under-
standing of the role of the ground in shaping interpretation.
As an example, the painting in figure 1.3 is a rendering of Merton Field in
Oxford by the Chinese artist Chiang Yee, who lived in England. It is included in
his book, The Silent Traveller in Oxford, published in the 1940s. Gombrich used
similar images to illustrate his point on cultural conventions and the schema or
ground.
The portrait in figure 1.4, attributed to Gentile Bellini (ca. 1492), tells a
similar tale—here of the imposition of European portrait conventions on an
Ottoman ruler.
Gombrich writes that a “representation is never a replica. The forms of art,
ancient and modern, are not duplications of what the artist has in mind any more
than they are duplications of what he sees in the outer world. In both cases they
are renderings within an acquired medium, a medium grown up through tradi-
tion and skill—that of the artist and that of the beholder.”25 That acquired set of
traditions and skills is the schema, shared by some artists and viewers but by no
means immutable. Schemas are, for certain people, places, and times, ways of de-
ciding how to interpret the relationship between a sign (a painting, in this case)
and its object. They evolve and argue with each other, they are learned, reworked,
or rejected by new generations. They are guides that suggest what we should
count as the same.26
Our interest in the ground or schema is in its connection to the person or
persons interpreting the sign. In the process of creating an interpretation, the
ground is the vital step in showing how to develop an interpretant out of a sign
and object. That is why our chart shows the ground as the underlying framework
that shapes the relationships among sign, object, and interpretant. Our interest is
thus especially in the relationship between ground (or schema) and interpretant,
rather than focusing solely on the sign-object relationship. This shift adds a cru-
cial social dimension to our understanding of categories (that is, of signs, because
categories are signs of what falls into their class or set).
Let us return for a moment to our earlier example of using geographic location
as sign or category whose object is religiosity in Kyrgyzstan. One kind of ground
19
Figure 1.3 Chiang Yee, Lapwings over Merton Field.

From Chiang Yee, The Silent Traveller in Oxford (London: Methuen, 1944), 38.
for interpreting the difference between those who live in the mountains and those
in the valleys is to assume a simple decoding of sign and object, where residence
alone indexes religiosity, for instance that mountain Kyrgyz are more likely to
drink than valley Uzbeks, or even to celebrate Ramadan by toasting Muhammad
with vodka. This reading would be something like the following: Kyrgyz are
lax Muslims because they are from the mountains (and Kyrgyz say this about
themselves as well), hence they do not spurn alcohol as any good Muslim should.
20
Figure 1.4 Gentile Bellini, The Sultan Mehmet II.

Reprinted by permission of National Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York.
This is not simply an Uzbek prejudice against the Kyrgyz, who will sometimes
also accept their own laxness toward Islamic prescriptions, sometimes saying that
it is harder for them because they live in a mountain environment. Interpreted
through this particular ground, mountain residence is a simple sign that people
are poor Muslims who drink, among other inadequacies.27 Yet there are also other
ways to ground the sign of mountain residence that do not read it as a simple
index of weak Islamic practice. We can also insist that all such social geographies
be seen as varied mixes of individuals, replete with multiple meanings needing
decoding and not just as a thing, a simple “object” in itself.
Further examples abound of grounding a sign as a simple indicator of an ob-
ject. One of us is an observant Jew, which is sometimes taken (incorrectly) as an
21
unproblematic sign of attitudes about Israel and the occupied territories. Other
grounds and thus other interpretations are of course possible, for example that a
Jewish head covering indicates instead a daily practice of ritual observance, which
has no necessary correlation with political attitudes.
To take another religious sign: there are competing grounds for
interpreting the sacrifice of the Kurban (which commemorates Ibrahim’s
willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael) among Bulgarian Pomaks (ethnic
Bulgarian Muslims) in the Rhodope Mountains.28 Is this a strictly religious
event, or is it a sign of an ethnonational identity challenging the category of
Bulgarianness? These competing interpretations were a major concern during
the Renaming/R evival process in 1984–1989, when the Bulgarian authorities
repressed all expressions of Turkish and Muslim identity among the popula-
tion. The authorities frowned on the practice of Kurban, grounding it as a
sign of “Turkishness” and thus a challenge to the ethnic unity of Bulgaria.29
The locals responded with alternative schema: that they were completely
Bulgarian in every way and that the sacrifice was simply a matter of religious
practice and tradition.
Is a Palestinian youth wearing a T-shirt with the picture of a watermelon on
it (whose colors of red, white, green, and black echo those of the Palestinian flag)
signing his support for the PLO or just wearing a stylish shirt? This case actually
came up in an Israeli court in the early 1980s, when the PLO was still deemed a
terrorist organization and it was illegal publicly to represent the Palestinian flag.
In each of these cases, multiple possible grounds led to multiple possible and
competing interpretations.
The relationship of ground/schema to sign is very similar to that between
frame and message, as discussed by Bateson in his classic studies of play and
fantasy.30 How, he asked, could a dog know whether a bite was play or attack?
The answer, of course, lies in wagging tails and standing ears. The wagging tail
sets the frame; it establishes the ground that allows the bite to be interpreted as
play rather than aggression. The frames of play or attack allow the creation of
an interpretation; the sign—the bite—alone is not enough. The schema/ground
mediates how the sign comes to be understood, as we have sketched this process
in figure 1-2.
As we can see, the relationship of sign to object is never a straightforward
decoding. The ground or schema always mediates the construction of the in-
terpretant through its vocabulary of attitudes and associations, meanings and
assumptions—the map of differences within which the interpretation of the sign
takes place. The ground does not just tell us how to choose among interpretations;
it also tells us how to interpret. That is why the choice of ground ties so intimately
to social power. Grounding is not always about saying that one particular sign
2
should be decoded as some particular object. There are many different ways
of counting as the same, as we will discuss, and the ground is where we choose
among them.
The ground or schema is thus critical to the process through which we construct
our categories, our maps of sameness and difference. Different types of ground/
schema provide different types of meaning or, more concretely, different modes
of sameness and difference. They shape different types of gaps, different types of
differences and different types of sameness. Attending to the ground leaves open
the possibility of reworking the sign/category through a process of interpretation.
While structuralists have focused on the relation of sign and signified, for us it is
instead the social dimension, the negotiation of a schema, that opens the possi-
bility for different meanings, different ways of interpreting the sign.
This book focuses on how the ground helps shape interpretants because
that is the crucial step in understanding how we create sameness and difference.
The nature of the relationship between ground and interpretation cannot be
assumed—the ground does not simply tell us how to decode a particular sign. It
does something even more fundamental by telling us how to count as the same.
We focus on three different kinds of answers to the question of how, which we
loosely call memory, mimesis, and metaphor. Each structures a particular way
of being the same and so also a particular way of being different. By creating
categories of a particular kind, each also creates very specific types of “gaps.” Most
important for our purposes, each carries within it different forms of solidarity, as
well as different types of boundaries and different attitudes toward what lies be-
yond those boundaries.
To put it another way, this study inquires into what we do when we “do”
together. How do any of us come to think that we share a world, fully cogni-
zant of the fact that we are all, ultimately, inhabitants of different worlds? Our
differences, after all, begin at our birth and end with our death. Our worlds in-
tersect with many others in very different ways and for very different lengths of
time, but they are also irreducibly unique and singular. This can be parsed into a
number of more concrete questions.
• How do we share and what do we count as the same in order to belong to

some “we”?
• How do we remain singular, apart from—but also part of ?
• How, in slightly different terms, do we empathize? How do we maintain
a sense of self, separate and inviolable, but at the same time feel connected
enough to others so as to recognize, acknowledge, and even identify with
what they feel and experience?
23
• How can the self “other” itself ? How can it manage to decenter itself and see
itself as another sees it? How, in Rimbaud’s famous phrase, can we understand
that “je est un autre?”
• In the most general of terms, how do we manage to construct both sameness
and difference at the same time?
Notice the locution here: “how do we manage to construct.” We do not believe

that matters of selfhood and otherness, of empathy and difference, of being
together-apart, are either simply biological or psychological phenomena. For
any given individual there are certainly biological or neurological determinants
of one’s ability to experience an other. Autism comes to mind as an obvious
example of neurologically determined limitations in this field. But across any
society the phenomenon is cultural. It is something that individual actors do
together in order to make the “together” possible at all. This makes the con-
struction of the “individual” possible as well, as no individual can exist outside
of society.
There are myriad studies in medicine and philosophy of those human traits
that allow our perception of “other minds,” but that is not our interest here. We
are, rather, interested in the social aspects of this construction of sameness and
difference, closeness and distance that—while infinitely diverse in its forms—is
nevertheless a universal of human culture. How do we do this? We will argue
for three forms of “doing” that stand at the basis of the joint construction of
sameness and difference, of togetherness and apartness, of oneness and other-
ness: memory, mimesis, and metaphor.
Memory
The recent literature on social memory has been built especially on the
insights of Maurice Halbwachs, who held that memories were never the simple
continuations of lived experience that we usually imagine.31 Instead memories are
always constructed after the fact and based on existing social frames (including
language itself ). In this sense, no matter how personal and private we may con-
sider a particular memory to be, all memories are inherently social. As groups
we negotiate together what constitute the salient parts of memory, and even as
individuals we remember only through frames that already exist. Memory’s con-
struction of what counts as the same is not just the static trail left by past expe-
rience but an active process of shaping the parts to be retained and forgetting
the rest, the way we eject most of the details of daily experience when we write
histories or ethnographies.
24
Jan Assmann has developed some of these ideas further by distinguishing

between what he calls communicative memory from cultural memory.32
Communicative (or everyday) memory is the form that plays out in daily life,
maintained by rehearsing its stories and sharing them with others. It has no
fixed physical points and is inherently ephemeral because the people whose
memories these are die off, as do others they may have spoken to. Assmann thus
gives communicative memory a time horizon of no more than eighty to one hun-
dred years. Cultural (or collective) memory solves the problem of ephemerality
by objectifying memories in monuments or texts. Cultural memory thus has
materialized “figures of memory,” which give it a crucial role in identity formation.
Cultural memory makes a strong distinction between those who are included in
the memory and those who are not. It constructs identity by materializing the
memories that let people count as the same. Many war monuments, for example,
do this through the idea of an identity as patriotic citizens.
Another example is the way in which many Chinese materialized memory
on ancestral altars, which characterized most households in the recent past and
which are still very common in places like Taiwan. Altars could be as simple as
a shelf on the wall, but more typically were large tables in the front room of a
house. They held wooden or paper tablets commemorating the family’s ancestors.
Details could vary considerably by region and even by family, but these altars
typically also held images of gods that were important to the family, along with
incense pots and other ritual paraphernalia. For many families, they provided in
addition a place to put beloved objects. One can see kitschy tourist souvenirs, in-
teresting stones picked up in national parks, religious texts or amulets picked up
while visiting temples, and favorite photographs on some of these altars.
An image of a god or an ancestral tablet on one of these altars is a sacred ob-
ject in the sense of having been through some kind of consecration ritual. Even
the tourist knickknacks, however, also bathe in the incense smoke and sit in a
place of honor. Rather than wondering whether they should count as sacred, it is
probably more important to realize that the ancestral altar is a place of congealed
memory. Ancestors are one kind of core memory for most Chinese families, as
are deities that may have helped the family in the past, but so is a miniature Eiffel
Tower purchased on a visit to Paris or a marble pebble pulled out of a stream bed
in Taroko Gorge. Memory on an ancestral altar is a combination of an idea of a
patrilineage that extends far back in time and of the accidents of history that lead
each altar to differ in detail from the one next door.
These tables of materialized memory show the family its shared past. They tell
family members that they count as the same as each other over time and thus also
in the present. By the same token, of course, they also show that any particular
family is different from its neighbors and even from the cousin’s family that has
25
set up its own separate altar. Memory as the imagined continuity of a shared past
thus helps draw a clear line between those within the group and those beyond it.
Memory creates both groups and the gaps that separate groups—the gaps be-
tween those who share the memory and those who do not, between us and them.
Neighboring altars have different ancestors, show loyalty to different deities, and
recall different family histories. On the other hand, people in areas that still use
these altars also recognize that there are even greater gaps separating them from
those people who do not honor their ancestors at all (such as Americans). The
situation recalls Plutarch and the Cretans, who unite by recognizing the gap that
separates them from their enemies and (temporarily) ignoring the gaps that sep-
arate them from each other.
Memory also creates a second kind of gap, which may be less obvious.
Memories take place in the present, but they concern the past. Remembering is
also realizing that the past is gone. Perhaps ancestors make this especially clear
because they are the dead. The living and embodied personality of a mother, in
all the complexity of her interactions with the rest of us, dies with her even if,
for some people, ancestors are still with us in a sense. We cannot remember her
in our thoughts or memorialize her by burning incense or cleaning her grave
without also knowing that she is gone. This gap is less stark for other kinds of
memory—perhaps like the fond recollection of a trip to the Eiffel Tower many
years earlier—but it is still there. The memory of Paris is not Paris.
The gap between the present and the past means that there is a constant
tension in all forms of memory. Assmann’s description of the transition from
everyday, communicative memories to more abstracted cultural and collective
memory points to one way of reducing the tension by concretizing memories
and trying to make them permanent. A history museum, for example, creates
one form of collective memory, allowing us to imagine the past as if it were still
present—as if it were “the same” as the present. In a much more condensed way,
so does a flag. Ancestral tablets are another way of trying to accomplish this tran-
sition, although there is no equivalent for miniature Eiffel Towers. In some parts
of China, this process can sometimes also happen on the grander scale of lineage
halls and written genealogies. Each of these congeals memory into a more perma-
nent form that can last across the generations.
As a way of defining what counts as the same, memory is thus a powerful
mechanism to create group solidarity. The simple analysis suggested above for an-
cestral altars can certainly be expanded to stories of gods as well as other aspects
of local history in many different countries and locales. It can be made permanent
through a wide range of material objects, from temples to gazetteers. At the same
time, however, the groups created through memory separate out others who are
not part of the memory. Memory also shows its limits in the gap between present
26
and past. We try all kinds of ways to make memory continuous and permanent,
but all memories are of things that have gone or have changed, and it is impossible
to remember without also knowing that something has been lost. Resolution of
that problem requires other ways of counting things as the same.
Mimesis and Ritual

We could say that memory poses the problem of the arrow of time. This is, after
all, the second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases and information is lost.
Concretizing memory in images and texts attempts to ameliorate the problem
but can never get past the gap between past and present, the inevitable and inexo-
rable nature of change. Memory, however, is not the only way of counting things
as the same, and the others resolve the problem of time in quite different ways.
Another way to solve the problem of time is to allow the gap between past
and present to open and close, to allow some actions to count as if they were “the
same” as the ones that occurred in the past, even though we know that change
occurs in between. Repetition or mimesis is the fundamental principle here,
and in a religious context it brings us directly to the realm of ritual. We cannot
ever completely freeze time, but we can allow some moments to repeat or tran-
scend the past, knowing that we will have to rejoin the present afterward. Jewish
Passover does this explicitly, calling on participants to relive (and not just recall)
the bitterness of slavery, the plagues visited on Egypt, and the covenants with the
Lord. Everyone at a Seder knows that the mimetic moment will end later that
night, but they also know that they will repeat it again the following year. Easter
Week services do much the same for the death and resurrection of Christ as do
countless other rituals in all religious traditions.
Memory creates a sense of time characterized by loss, but ritual’s time instead
constantly reconstructs and re-creates. This is one of the key ways through which
ritual can create group relations: taking part in a ritual creates a shared past as
long as the participants accept the conventions of the ritual. We do not have to
remember the exodus from Egypt to take part in a Seder or in Easter services.
Instead we join the tradition by accepting the ritual conventions, which allow us
to claim a shared past without sharing any actual memories. Just as important,
and in ways very different from memory, rituals offer us a shared future as well.
We know that the ritual will be repeated again and again in the future. This is
crucial for the creation of the group as a moral community, one whose existence
lies as much in its future potential as in its past.
While memory tends to create clear boundaries between past and present
and between one group and the next, mimesis treats boundaries as something
to be crossed and recrossed. Even artistic mimesis—a realist landscape, for
27
instance—takes us across the boundary of canvas and paint to some earlier ar-
tistic vision. We know we are not standing in the same landscape that the artist
viewed or imagined, but for those moments when we look at the painting in a
certain way it counts as if it were the same as the original. That is, there is always
a boundary between painting and natural landscape, but it is a permeable barrier
that we can cross. Ritual reenactments are no different. Modern Jews know that
they are not living through the exodus in a physical sense, but during Passover
they can imaginatively cross the boundary. Chinese families know that siblings
may fight each other, that a grandfather is annoying and an uncle is greedy and
ruthless. At the New Year, however, everyone can imagine themselves for one day
as just family, the “same” family as last year and next year—even though they
know that the next day they will return to their squabbles.
Ritual has the potential to mold different sorts of social groups than memory
does. Rather than erecting impassable boundaries of remembered heritage like
the ones around the Cretans, ritual’s boundaries must be crossed, at the very least
as people move in and out of the ritual moment. In many cases, shared rituals
have also allowed a kind of vibrant pluralism that is harder to organize through
memory alone. We know of many historical cases where rituals cross ethnic or
national boundaries. This was true in the Hellenistic world and still occurs in
Macedonia, for example, when Muslims and Christians take turns worshipping in
the same sacred spaces.33 Michael Carrithers theorized this process as “polytropy,”
or spiritual cosmopolitanism, when he discussed widely shared, cross-religious
ritual traditions in India.34
Rituals repeat, and many repeat with a clear annual, monthly, or daily rhythm.
Each repetition takes us back to the one before and forward to the one in the
future. In this sense, mimesis resolves the gap between past and present that
memory creates. It creates a different kind of time that repeats itself in pulses.
Mimetic time is not the same as historical time. That is, by claiming that the
current ritual counts as the same as past performances, we mark a kind of time
when nothing fundamental really changes. Mimesis can thus have a very hard
time dealing with actual change. At the religious level, we see such challenges
to ritual when Buddhism entered China, when the Dionysian cult entered the
Greek world, or when some Jews recognized Jesus as the Messiah.
Purely social and political change, of course, can present intractable problems
for repetition as a way of thinking about what counts as the same. Mimesis
counteracts the flow of history and the arrow of time, but history flows anyway.
This is one reason why strongly ritualized periods are always eventually challenged
by new ideas that accuse the old ritual liturgies of being purely superficial, even
hypocritical. Mozi’s Warring States period critique of Confucianism was just such
an attack. In recent times, so were the twentieth-century attacks on traditional
28
Chinese rituals by both the Republican and Communist governments. In other

contexts, we can think of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century or,
for that matter, the prophetic critique of priestly religion. Thus, while mimesis
provides an alternative connection between ground and interpretant, quite dif-
ferent from the way memory defines sameness and difference, it is not a “solution”
to the problems of memory but contains its own instabilities.
Metaphor
Challenges to ritual authority remind us that sometimes a sense that things count
as the same can be created anew rather than being built out of memory or mi-
mesis. This is what metaphors do: they accept existing categories but reveal a new
relationship between them that people did not see before. When Shakespeare’s
Macbeth describes life as “but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and
frets his hour upon the stage,” he uses categories (life, walking, shadows, actors)
that we all know well, but he combines them in a way that can lead us to think
about life in a new way.
In religion, such moments of new realization fall generally into the realm of
prophets and revelations. If Jesus is the son of God, then suddenly the whole
world looks different. If Hong Xiuquan is Jesus’s younger brother, then it is
different again. David Frankfurter has documented this kind of process in his
work on desert prophets in the area around Egypt during the very early years of
Christianity.35 He shows how those early holy men healed the sick by attacking
demons in the name of Jesus. Like all metaphors, this one created a new connec-
tion. It combined existing ideas to help forge a new world. There was nothing
innovative in Egypt at that time about either demons that caused illness or
exorcisms that healed them. The innovative aspect came from combining that
tradition with an insistence on Christian monotheism—that no other forms of
healing could be legitimate. Local people may well have interpreted this healing
spirit of Jesus as simply a stronger god than the others, but the new connection
nevertheless led them down the path of monotheism and thus of what would
eventually be radical new ideas. An old framework of demonic illness thus came
to be completely reworked.
Very similar metaphors underlie some patterns of Christian conversion in
contemporary China as well. Especially in more rural parts of China, healing has
been one of the main engines for Christian expansion. For many people, the em-
pirical fact of healing itself is what draws people in. That is, they begin with a more
standard rural Chinese religious framework of religious healing, but once they
enter the Christian frame, then many other aspects of the new metaphor become
salient. Most obviously, monotheism comes to challenge the earlier, more open
29
polytheism, just as it did in the Egyptian desert. For some congregations, this
can mean a radical separation from some aspects of village life. Some Christians
will publicly burn their ancestral tablets, for example—dematerializing and
dissipating those crucial memories that had been so concretely installed on home
altars. Most will stop visiting local temples, and some will protest even the setting
off of firecrackers by other villagers carrying out their traditional rituals. Added
to the marriage endogamy that some Christians practice, we have a very new way
of counting people as the same—a new fraternity of brothers in Christ rather
than brothers in genealogy.
Metaphor opens possibilities for fundamental change and can thus chal-
lenge the social ties created through memory or mimesis. The introduction of
Christianity breaks open old groupings and creates the possibility for completely
new kinds of solidarity. Metaphor can make it far easier to open a group to
people previously dismissed as strangers. The multiethnic nature of the Taiping
Rebellion provides one example of this dynamic. Buddhism does something sim-
ilar but less radical when it pulls people out of their home communities into new
groups formed around devotion to a particular monk or temple, often combining
people from many different local places. As we shall see in c hapter 7, radical sec-
tarian Protestantism, whether in England, the Netherlands, or France, did much
the same in sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century Europe as new covenanted
communities of “visible saints” formed new communities based on their readings
of biblical Israel.
Metaphor opens up new worlds of possibility, though we would not wish to
suggest that it is the best path to pluralism. It certainly can foster new kinds of
alliances, but it can just as easily cut old alliances apart and pit one group against
another. As we will discuss later in the book, the Taiping Rebellion in China
opened up the possibility of a new kind of alliance in rural Guangxi that brought
together all kinds of people. At the same time, they drew a fierce line between
humanity (i.e., all those who joined the cause) and the inhuman—the “imps
and demons,” especially in the Qing government, who opposed them. God had
given Hong a sword to slaughter those imps, and the result was one of the largest
cataclysms in world history. In another example we will take up later, the hos-
tile and oftentimes violent relations between Jews and Christians during the two
millennia of their existence together have much to do with metaphor and its role
in separating groups of people rather than bringing them together.
Metaphor can be an extraordinarily powerful way of letting us create new
visions of sameness and difference. It offers a kind of time and history very dif-
ferent from memory or mimesis; metaphor’s time can change in a moment. It is
not just the lost past of memory or the rhythmic stasis of ritual. On the other
hand, metaphor is also ephemeral. It can fail—that is, people sometimes fail to
30
make the connection and the metaphor has no socially important consequences.
Even when it succeeds, however, it is unstable, like all moments of true change.
Metaphors are always open to reworking and revision. They succeed in the long
run only by stabilizing themselves. In works of philosophy dedicated to metaphor
such success stories are usually dismissed as “dead” metaphors, but we can also see
such a “death” as its ultimate success: a dead metaphor is one that has succeeded
so well in causing us to understand the world in a new way that we no longer feel
any shock of the new.
In the terms we are trying to develop here, this process is not actually the
death of metaphor but the transformation of metaphor into one of the more
stable forms: memory or mimesis. Metaphors become permanent when we con-
cretize them in monuments or repeat them in rituals.
Grounds and Gaps

We can distill this brief introduction of our core concepts into a series of more
analytic suggestions regarding the way memory, mimesis, and metaphor create
different schemas for meaning (and so of sameness and difference). Each
conceptualizes the gap between phenomena in very different ways. The social
category of memory constructs both sameness and difference by denying the
workings of time and so the existence of a gap between a “thing’s” past and its
present. It collapses past into present even as it is aware that the present cannot
ever really be the past. With this ground, those who share the memories count
as the same, and an unbridgeable gap opens between those who share and those
who do not. In contrast, the category of mimesis accepts the workings of time as
a form of repetition. Mimesis thus constructs an entirely different kind of gap,
between a thing and its later iteration. Repetition bridges the gap. Both sameness
and difference are understood in terms of an oscillation. Being the same thus does
not require shared memories, ideas, or interpretations; instead sameness lies in
the shared rhythms and structures of that repetition. By sharing these rhythms,
the people involved can continually reconstitute their world. The repetition
fosters the idea that the group shares a past and a potential future community.
Metaphor, most intuitively, understands the gap as that between one thing and a
“different” thing, between thing a and thing b. And unlike the denial of memory
or the oscillation of mimesis, metaphor seeks to overcome the gap in the creation
of a new sameness.
Memory is perhaps the most closed of these three interpretive schema,
the most amenable to creating in- groups and out- groups with well- de-
fined boundaries between them (defined by participation or not in the
shared memory). Mimesis allows some blurring of the boundaries of in-and
31
out-groups. It allows the possibility of at least temporary boundary crossing,

even if only partially. The very stepping into another’s reality, however, even if
only by a toehold, is enough to open the possibility of new definitions of same-
ness and otherness. Recall, moreover, that mimesis need not be understood
purely as ritual: iterated, shared experience is also a form of mimesis and one
that does bring people closer, even as their differences are maintained (which is
the example of CEDAR programs given above). Finally, metaphor is the most
open to what is beyond one’s boundaries; indeed, it seeks actively to redefine
the “thing” in terms of a new understanding, a richer sense of content, and an
expansion of its boundaries.
While we have thus far been dealing with memory, mimesis, and metaphor
separately, we must bear in mind that each is at all times present (if with different
valences) as a potential way of grounding an interpretation. There can be no lan-
guage without some form of memory. Nor can there be any stability, any ability
to predict on the most fundamental level without some repetition. However, rep-
etition itself—mimesis—always also implies a metaphor. As x is never fully equal
to its repetition as x', some metaphorical capacity is always called upon to make
the argument that x' should actually count as a repetition. With memory too, at
the end of the day, we produce something new and call it old. Even if nothing can
be truly repeated, as Kierkegaard warned us (except perhaps that hoary truth),
some degree of repetition or of what we can “count” as repetition is necessary
for the fulfillment of our basic needs.36 There can be no “sameness” via memory
or mimesis without some form of “counting as”—which is a metaphorical move.
Metaphor is thus as necessary to the construction of each of the other two as they
are to one another and to metaphor. All are always present, though with shifting
significance in the construction of what counts as the same and how we perceive
the gaps between those things so constituted. The crucial thing to tease out of
any actual interpretation is how these forms of sameness come to be highlighted.
Broader Themes
Together the different ways we count things as the same and different address
some of the overriding challenges of human social existence. We will work
through some of these implications in later chapters, but for now let us just
broach some of the broader issues. For instance, memory, mimesis, and metaphor
deal with the conundrums of time in very different ways. For memory, time is
understood to be continuous (so much so that its flow is in fact denied). Mimesis
instead posits time as iterative. Time and the events of time repeat themselves,
and though each occurs in what is clearly a different “moment” in time, these
differences are ignored and the repetitive aspect is highlighted. In metaphor, time
32
is a vehicle of transformation, and the events and placing of events in time are
accorded new meanings and significations.
Each, too, addresses issues of identity in different ways. Memory, as we have
suggested, encourages the most bonded and bounded, the most hermetically
sealed of identities. Mimesis allows for the possibility of multiple identities, at
least in the transformation between the iterated and noniterated moments. This
possibility of different identities is a potential that offers a greater openness to the
other than is found in memory. Metaphor goes far beyond mimesis, in essence
changing and converting identities. It plays with transfiguration and change and
emergent definitions of identity not previously imagined.
With identity of course comes difference, its mirror opposite in a sense. And
so, not surprisingly, memory gives us absolute differences. Either you were a
participant (real or imagined) in the storied event or you were not. Mimesis
is much more permeable: difference exists, boundaries between entities are
formulated and posited but are not absolute. There is room for negotiation,
room for some sharing, some permeation of frames and boundaries. Difference
is more like the walls of a living cell rather than of a city. Finally, metaphor
overcomes difference, dissolving an old boundary while reconstituting new
ones. Metaphor disperses boundaries just as surely as memory attempts to seal
them shut.
The fundamental societal challenge of sameness (and so of difference), how-
ever, is empathy and the related issue of trust. How can we construct sameness and
difference at the same time, how can we feel closeness to someone without losing
the boundary, be linked without any merging of self and other? Empathy requires
us to retain the boundary and transcend it at the same time.
As we hope to show in the chapters that follow, the different ways of
counting as the same create very different potential senses of group and indi-
vidual identity. It is not just that the particular group identifications change.
Far more crucial is that the grounds for understanding what an identity is can
be very different depending on the schema. Insofar as we think real empathy
and real pluralism are possible, it is in the play of these different senses of
identity.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
These were the questions which the poor exile had occasion to
revolve in his mind; and after his son and daughter joined him, and
the few dollars he had brought with him were nearly exhausted, it
became necessary that he should decide upon some course of
action. Nor were these considerations those alone which occupied
his mind. He had also to reflect upon the degradation of his country
—the ruin of those hopes of liberty which had been indulged—the
wreck of his personal fortunes—and the exchange, in his own case,
of independence for poverty.
It requires a stout heart to bear up against such misfortunes, and
at the same time to support the heavy burden which is added in that
bitter sense of wrong and injustice, which comes again and again,
under such circumstances, to ask for revenge or retribution. But
Pultova was not only a man of energy in the field—he was
something better—a man of that moral courage which enabled him
to contend against weakness of heart in the hour of trouble. I shall
best make you understand his feelings and character by telling you
how he spoke to his children, a few weeks after their arrival.
“My dear Alexis,” said he, “you complain for want of books, that
you may pursue your studies and occupy your mind: how can we get
books in Siberia, and that without money? You are uneasy for want
of something to do—some amusement or occupation;—think, my
boy, how many of our countrymen are at this very hour in dungeons,
their limbs restrained by chains, and not only denied books and
amusement, but friends, the pure air, nay the very light of heaven!
Think how many a noble Polish heart is now beating and fluttering,
like a caged eagle, against the gratings that confine it—how many a
hero, who seemed destined to fill the world with his glorious deeds,
is now in solitude, alone, emaciated, buried from the world’s view,
and lost to all existence, save that he still feels, suffers, despairs—
and all this without a friend who may share his sorrow! How long and
weary is a single day to you, Alexis; think how tedious the hours to
the prisoner in the prolonged night of the dungeon!”
“Dear father,” said Alexis; “this is dreadful—but how can it help
our condition? It only shows us that there is deeper sorrow than
ours.”
“Yes, Alexis; and from this contrast we may derive consolation.
Whether it be rational or not, still, by contemplating these deeper
sorrows of our fellow-men, and especially of our fellow-countrymen,
we may alleviate our own. But let me suggest another subject for
contemplation: what are we to do for food, Alexis? My money is
entirely gone except five dollars, and this can last for only a few
weeks.”
“Why, father, I can do something, surely.”
“Well, what can you do?”
“I do not know—I cannot say; I never thought of it before. Cannot
you borrow some money?”
“No; and if I could I would not. No, no, Alexis, our circumstances
have changed. It is the will of God. We are now poor, and we must
toil for a subsistence. It is a grievous change—but it is no disgrace,
at least. We are indeed worse off than the common laborer, for our
muscles are not so strong as his; but we must give them strength by
exercise. We have pride and long habit to contend with; but these we
must conquer. It is weakness, it is folly, to yield to circumstances. If
the ship leaks, we must take to the boat. Heaven may prosper our
efforts, and bring us, after days of trial, to a safe harbor. But my
greatest anxiety is for poor Kathinka.”
“Fear not for me,” said the lovely girl, rushing to her father and
kneeling before him—“fear not for me!”
“Kathinka, I did not know you was in the room.”
“Nor was I till this moment; but the door was ajar, and I have
heard all. Dear father—dear Alexis—fear not for me. I will be no
burthen—I will aid you rather.”
“My noble child!” said the old man, as he placed his arms around
the kneeling girl, and while his tears fell fast upon her brow, “you are
indeed worthy of your mother, who, with all the softness of woman,
had the energy of a hero. In early life, while contending with
difficulties in my business, she was ever my helper and supporter. In
every day of darkness, she was my guiding-star. She has indeed
bequeathed her spirit to me in you, Kathinka.”
“My dear father, this is indeed most kind, and I will endeavor to
make good the opinion you entertain of me. See! I have already
begun my work. Do you observe this collar? I have foreseen
difficulties, and I have wrought this that I may sell it and get money
by it.”
“Indeed!” said Pultova, “you are a brave girl;—and who put this
into your head?”
“I do not know—I thought of it myself, I believe.”
“And who do you think will buy this collar, here at Tobolsk? Who
can pay money for such finery?”
“I intend to sell it to the governor’s lady. She at least has money,
for I saw her at the chapel a few days since, and she was gaily
dressed. I do not doubt she will pay me for the collar.”
At these words a bright flush came to the old man’s cheek, and
his eye flashed with the fire of pride. The thought in his mind was
—“And can I condescend to live upon the money that comes from
the wife of the governor, the officer, the tool of the emperor, my
oppressor? And shall my daughter, a descendant of Poniatowsky, be
a slave to these cringing minions of power?” But he spoke not the
thought aloud. A better and wiser feeling came over him, and kissing
his daughter’s cheek, he went to his room, leaving his children
together.
A long and serious conversation ensued between them, the result
of which was a mutual determination to seek some employment, by
which they could obtain the means of support for their parent and
themselves. A few days after this had elapsed, when Alexis came
home with an animated countenance, and finding his sister, told her
of a scheme he had formed for himself, which was to join a party of
fur hunters, who were about to set out for the northeastern regions of
Siberia. Kathinka listened attentively, and, after some reflection,
replied—“Alexis, I approve of your scheme. If our father assents to it,
you must certainly go.”
“It seems to me that you are very ready to part with me!” said
Alexis, a little poutingly.
“Nay, nay,” said the girl; “don’t be playing the boy, for it is time that
you were a man. Think not, dear Alexis, that I shall not miss you;
think not that I shall feel no anxiety for my only brother, my only
companion, and, save our good parent, the only friend I have in
Siberia.”
Alexis smiled, though the tear was in his eye. He said nothing,
but, clasping Kathinka’s hand tenderly, he went to consult with his
father. It is sufficient to say, that at last his consent was obtained,
and in a few days the young hunter, by the active efforts of his sister,
was equipped for the expedition. The evening before he was to set
out, he had a long interview with Kathinka, who encouraged him to
procure the finest sable skins, saying that she had a scheme of her
own for disposing of them to advantage.
“And what is that precious scheme of yours?” said Alexis.
“I do not like to tell you, for you will say it is all a girl’s romance.”
“But you must tell me.”
“Indeed—I must? Well, if I must I will. Do you remember the
princess Lodoiska, that was for some time in concealment at our
house during the siege of Warsaw?”
“Yes; I remember her well. But why was she there? and what
became of her? And did father know that she was there? or was it
only you and mother and me that saw her?”
“Too many questions at once, Lex! I will tell you all I know. The
princess was accidentally captured by father’s troop in one of its
excursions to a neighboring village. She had fled from Warsaw a few
days before, when the insurrection first broke out, and she had not
yet found the means of going to St. Petersburgh. Father must have
known who she was, though he affected not to know. He kept the
secret to himself and his family, fearing, perhaps, that some harm
would come to the lady if she were discovered. It was while she was
at our house that our blessed mother died. Father, you know, was at
that time engaged with the Russians, without the walls. The princess
and myself only were at mother’s bedside when she breathed her
last. Her mind was bright and calm. Indeed, it seemed to me that
there was something of prophecy in her spirit then. A look so
beautiful I never saw. ‘Sweet lady,’ said she, taking the hand of the
princess, ‘I see how this dreadful strife will end. Poor Poland is
destined to fall—and many a noble heart must fall with her. I know
not that my gallant husband may survive; but if he do, he will be an
exile and an outcast. For him, I have few fears, for I know that he
has a spirit that cannot be crushed or broken. In Siberia, he will still
be Pultova. But, princess, forgive if a mother’s heart, in the shadow
of death, sinks at the idea of leaving children, and especially this
dear girl, in such circumstances. What will become of Kathinka, if my
fears prove prophetic?’
“The lady wept, but answered not for some time. At last she said,
looking into mother’s face, which seemed like that of an angel—‘I
feel your appeal, dear lady, and I will answer it. Your husband has
indeed put my life in peril, by bringing me here; but he did it in the
discharge of duty, and in ignorance of my name and character. He
has at least given me safety, and I owe him thanks. I owe you, also,
a debt of gratitude, and it shall be repaid to your child. You know my
power with the emperor is small, for I have been a friend to Poland,
and this has almost brought me into disgrace at court. But fear not. If
Kathinka should ever need a friend, let her apply to Lodoiska.’
“Such were the exact words of the princess. Our mother soon
after died, and in a few days I contrived the lady’s escape,—which
was happily effected. Father never spoke to me on the subject. He
must have known it, and approved of it, but perhaps he wished not to
take an active part in the matter.”
“This is very interesting,” said Alexis; “but what has it to do with
the sable skins?”
“A great deal—they must go to the princess, and she must make
a market for them at court.”
“And who is to take them to her?”
“You—you perhaps—or perhaps I.”
“You? This is indeed a girl’s romance. However, there can be no
harm in getting sable skins, for they bring the best price.” After much
further conversation between the brother and sister, they parted for
the night; and the next day, with a father’s blessing and a sister’s
tenderest farewell, the young hunter set out on his long and arduous
adventures.
(To be continued.)
The Wolf that pretended to be robbed.
A wolf once made complaint that he had been robbed, and

charged the theft upon his neighbor the fox. The case came on for
trial before a monkey, who was justice of the peace among the
quadrupeds in those parts. The parties did not employ lawyers, but
chose to plead their cause themselves. When they had been fully
heard, the judge, assuming the air of a magistrate, delivered his
sentence as follows:—
“My worthy friends and neighbors,—I have heard your case, and
examined it attentively; and my judgment is, that you both be made
to pay a fine; for you are both of bad character, and if you do not
deserve to be punished now, it is very likely you will deserve to be so
very soon. That I have good grounds for this decree, is sufficiently
evident by the fact, that Mr. Wolf’s jaws are even now stained with
blood, and I can see a dead chicken sticking out of Sir Fox’s pocket,
notwithstanding the air of injured innocence which he wears. And
beside, one who gets an evil reputation can think it no hardship if he
is occasionally made to suffer, for a crime he did not commit.”
This fable teaches us to beware of an evil reputation; for it may
cause us to be punished for the misdemeanors of others. Thus, if a
person gets the character of a liar, he will not be believed when he
tells the truth; and where a theft is known, it is of course laid to some
one who has been caught in stealing before.
Beware of Impatience.
There’s many a pleasure in life which we might possess, were it

not for our impatience. Young people, especially, miss a great deal of
happiness, because they cannot wait till the proper time.
A man once gave a fine pear to his little boy, saying to him, “The
pear is green now, my boy, but lay it by for a week, and it will then be
ripe, and very delicious.”
“But,” said the child, “I want to eat it now, father.”
“I tell you it is not ripe yet,” said the father. “It will not taste good,
and, beside, it will make you sick.”
“No it won’t, father, I know it won’t, it looks so good. Do let me eat
it!”
After a little more teasing, the father consented, and the child eat
the pear. The consequence was, that, the next day, he was taken
sick, and came very near dying. Now all this happened because the
child was impatient. He couldn’t wait, and, accordingly, the pear, that
might have been very pleasant and harmless, was the occasion of
severe illness. Thus it is that impatience, in a thousand instances,
leads children, and pretty old ones too, to convert sources of
happiness into actual mischief and misery.
There were some boys once who lived near a pond; and when
winter came, they were very anxious to have it freeze over, so that
they could slide and skate upon the ice. At last, there came a very
cold night, and in the morning the boys went to the pond, to see if
the ice would bear them. Their father came by at the moment, and
seeing that it was hardly thick enough, told the boys that it was not
safe yet, and advised them to wait another day before they ventured
upon it.
But the boys were in a great hurry to enjoy the pleasure of sliding
and skating. So they walked out upon the ice; but pretty soon it went
crack—crack—crack! and down they were all plunged into the water!
It was not very deep, so they got out, though they were very wet, and
came near drowning; and all because they could not wait.
Now these things, though they may seem to be trifles, are full of
instruction. They teach us to beware of impatience, to wait till the
fruit is ripe; they teach us that the cup of pleasure, seized before the
proper time, is turned into poison. They show us the importance of
patience.
Travels, Adventures, and Experiences of Thomas
Trotter.
CHAPTER VI.
Journey to Mount Ætna.—Mule travelling.—Neglected state of the
country.—Melilla, the town of honey.—Narrow escape of the
author.—Prospect of Ætna.—A Sicilian village and country-
house described.—Comparison of Sicily with New England.
I left Syracuse in the morning, to pursue my journey toward

Mount Ætna. There was no road for wheel-carriages, although the
distance to the mountain is but about thirty miles, and the city of
Catania, which is as large as Boston, stands directly at the foot of
the mountain. If this island was inhabited by Americans, they would
build a railroad between the two cities in a year’s time; and hundreds
of people would be travelling upon it every day. But the Sicilians are
so lazy, and so negligent of improving their country, that there is only
a mule-path through the wood and along the sea-shore for the whole
distance. I found a company of muleteers ready to set out for
Catania, with about twenty mules laden with goods, and I hired one
of their beasts for a couple of dollars. The mules travelled slowly,
going at a very small trot or quick walk: they were stout, strong-
backed creatures, and carried heavy loads on their backs. The path
was rough and wild, full of ups and downs, and strewed with rocks;
but the mules were very sure-footed, and trotted along, jumping like
cats from rock to rock, and clambering up and down rough places as
if they had hooks to their toes. I had heard before that a mule never
slips nor stumbles, but I was astonished to see what rough and
craggy spots they would get over without the least difficulty. A horse
would have broken his neck and all his legs in attempting to go a
quarter of a mile on such a road as we travelled.
We went along in a string, Indian file, as the phrase is. The head
mules had bells on their saddles, which made a perpetual tinkling.
These bells were very useful in many parts of the journey:
sometimes the rear mules lagged behind, stretching out the train to a
great length. When the course lay among woods, rocks, and bushes,
the track was hardly discernible, and those in the rear would have
strayed from the leaders but for the sound of the bells. It was the
27th of February, yet the weather was as mild as the latter part of
May, in New England. The almond-trees were covered with
blossoms, and the fig-trees were beginning to bud. An almond-tree is
about the size of a peach-tree, and when in bloom, looks almost
exactly like it. Fig-trees are of all sizes, up to that of a large apple-
tree.
It is melancholy to see this fine country so neglected and
deserted. We hardly saw a human being upon the road, or houses
anywhere; for miles beyond Syracuse, the ground was strewed with
ruins, all overgrown with grass, weeds, and prickly pears. Here and
there we saw a vineyard, but this was not the season for grapes; the
vines were bare, and propped up with cane-poles. A few olive-trees
were scattered about: these trees are about the size of a willow, and
their leaves are green all the year round. The olives were now nearly
full-grown. About ten o’clock in the forenoon, we saw a little town
called Melilla on the side of a mountain, about six miles off, but we
passed by without entering it; and met with no inhabitants, except a
peasant riding on an ass. Melilla produces the finest honey in the
world, and this gave the town its name. All along the road in this
neighborhood, we saw great abundance of wild thyme and other
fragrant flowers, which furnish the busy bees with rich materials for
their labors. In a wild part of the road further onward, we met a
company of half a dozen men with guns advancing toward us. I
asked the muleteers if they were not robbers, and was told that they
were gens d’armes, whose business it was to guard the road from
robbers. Travelling in Sicily was formerly very dangerous, but it is
less so at present.
By-and-by we came to a very rocky place, where I saw a deep
gully passing right across the road. I was about to dismount and lead
my mule over it, not imagining he would think of passing it with a
rider on his back,—when he gave a sudden leap and bounded over
the chasm in an instant, alighting on his fore feet with such a shock
that he pitched me completely over his head. Luckily one of my feet
caught in the stirrup, and this hindered me from being thrown straight
forward and dashed head first upon the rock, which would have
killed me in an instant. But the catching of the stirrup gave me a whirl
to the left, so that I fell against the low branches of a wild fig-tree,
and escaped with only a slight bruise. The men behind jumped off
their beasts and ran to pick me up, judging me to be dead, or my
limbs broken at least; but I was on my feet before they had time to
help me. On learning the cause of the accident, they advised me, in
future, always to keep my seat, however difficult the road might
appear, for they assured me a mule knew much more than a man
about these matters. I ran after my beast, which, I found, had not
gone far; he was standing stock-still, waiting for me, and doubtless
understanding the whole affair perfectly well. I could not help thinking
that he gave a roguish twinkle of the eye as I got on his back again;
but this might be fancy.
We continued our course through this wild region for an hour or
two longer, when we came to a pretty high ridge of hills. We
clambered slowly up the ascent, and on reaching the top, a most
magnificent view burst upon my sight. A wide bay stretched out its
blue waters before us, beyond which rose, sublimely, the huge bulk
of Mount Ætna, its towering summit clad in a sheet of snow, which
glistened like silver in the bright sun. At the foot of the mountain I
could just discern a cluster of white spots at the edge of the shore,
which they informed me was the city of Catania. It was about twenty
miles distant. The lower part of Ætna was almost black, but I could
see no smoke rising from the crater; it was too far off for this, the
distance being nearly fifty miles. Further off, over the sea, we saw
the mountains of Calabria, capped with snow, and half hidden by the
clouds.
As we descended the hills and approached the sea-shore, the
road grew worse and worse. We climbed over broken rocks, gullies,
and the beds of mountain torrents, and through wild thickets of
bushes, where we could hardly squeeze our way. After a while, we
came to a field where laborers were ploughing: this was the first
instance of agricultural labor I had yet seen on the journey. The oxen
were fine stout animals, with immensely long horns; the plough was
of wood, and the clumsiest machine of the kind I ever saw. The
rough, rocky chain of hills now sloped away into a fine champaign
country, where the soil appeared very rich. As we proceeded, the
color of Mount Ætna gradually changed; its black sides were now
spotted with dark red patches, which proved to be small mountains
that had burst out of the great one, in fiery eruptions. Presently, we
could distinguish the smoke proceeding from the crater at the top; it
streamed off like a white cloud horizontally, but with so slow a
movement that it gave me some idea of its immense distance. It was
one of the grandest sights I ever beheld.
About one o’clock the road wound through a thick wood of olive-
trees, upon an eminence. Going down this steep descent, we found
at the foot a little hamlet, consisting of four or five houses and an oil-
mill. We stopped here to rest our mules, and I strolled round the
place. The mill was a tall, square tower of stone; great numbers of
oil-jars lay scattered about upon the ground: the sight of them made
me think of the Forty Thieves. In one part of the mill, I found a large
quantity of oranges packed in boxes for shipping; very probably they
found their way to Boston in the course of the spring. The houses
were rude stone edifices, of one story. I went into one of them for
curiosity: the door stood wide open. In the kitchen, I found a great
clumsy fireplace like a blacksmith’s forge, and two or three awkward
wooden stools, but nothing like a table, except a sort of dresser, on
which stood an earthen dish or two, and a few cups. Heaps of straw
were lying about, and a few trumpery things, all at sixes and sevens.
Pigeons were roosting overhead and flying about the room. It was
the oddest looking kitchen I was ever in. Another room had a bed
and a chair; and these were all the articles of furniture which the
house contained.—Such is the description of an ordinary country-
house in this part of the world. Could one of these Sicilian peasants
be put in possession of the house of a New England farmer, and
behold his chairs and tables, his silver spoons and crockery, his
desks and bureaus, and other comfortable and ornamental furniture,
he would think himself a rich man. But the Sicilian, although he
dwells upon a soil three times as fertile as that of New England, and
which is never encumbered with ice or snow, remains poor amidst all
the bountiful gifts of nature. A mild climate makes him indolent, and
he uses just strength enough to scratch the ground and throw the
seed into it; the fertility of the soil does all the rest; and the most of
his time is spent in doing nothing, or in unproductive amusement.
Two or three cows stood chewing their cud by the road; half a
dozen ragged peasants lay on the ground, lazily basking in the sun,
and two or three others were watching their donkeys, who were
drinking out of a stone trough. A few half naked children were
playing about the house; and everything presented a picture of
shiftless poverty and indolent neglect. It struck me as very
remarkable, that Providence should so impartially balance the good
and evil distributed throughout this world. To one people are given a
delicious climate, fertile soil, and the richest productions of nature;
while they are denied the gifts of industry, enterprise, and
perseverance, which are equally productive sources of wealth. To
another people are given an unfriendly climate and hard soil; but
these very things force them to labor and exert their faculties,
causing in the end industrious and persevering habits, ingenuity and
skill, which are more valuable than mines of gold. It is only by
travelling and seeing other countries, that we can learn to be
contented with our own.
CHAPTER VII.
Perilous adventure in crossing a river.—A Sicilian ferry-boat.—
Enormous size of Ætna.—Inhabitants of the mountain.—
Another accident with the mules.—Arrival at Catania.
Having rested our mules and munched a bit of dinner, we set out
again, meaning to arrive at Catania before night. We passed by
some beautiful green fields and groves of olives, but a short time
afterward the track led us toward the sea, and we came to a bare,
sandy plain. Here was a river in our way, with a wretched straw hut
on the bank, inhabited by a man who kept a ferry-boat. We
dismounted and crossed in the boat, but the mules were led up the
stream to go over a ford at some distance. After passing this stream,
we found the country wilder than ever: it consisted of sand-hills,
overgrown here and there with low bushes and coarse grass, like the
land at Cape Cod. Presently we came to another river, where there
was no boat, nor house, nor human being, to be seen. One of the
muleteers approached the stream with a long pole, to sound the
depth of the water. It was not very deep, but the bottom was a
quicksand, and the sounding-pole sunk into it till he found there was
no firm bottom. He went up and down the bank, trying other places,
but could not find a spot that was passable.
We were now in a great perplexity. I could not imagine any
possible means of getting across; the muleteers held a noisy talk
together about what was to be done, and at last led the way along
the bank down stream. I asked where we were going, and was told
that at the mouth of the river was a sand-bar, firm enough to allow us
to cross upon it. In about a quarter of an hour, we came to the sea-
shore. There was a smooth, sandy beach all along the coast, and
the tide ran out of the river with a pretty rapid current. The bar was
several feet under water, and the heaving of the sea, with the rapidity
of the tide, made a great surf. I thought it a very dangerous thing to
ride out into the ocean through the surf of a sand-bar, for the
purpose of crossing a river, but there was no other way, and we
pushed on. The head mule was frightened as he entered the sea,
and seemed unwilling to proceed. One of the muleteers dismounted,
and led him by the bridle into the surf, wading up to his middle in the
water. By a good deal of coaxing and pulling, he made him advance.
The mules are so accustomed to follow one another in a string, that
the head one is sure to lead all the rest wherever he goes, so the
whole file of them plunged in after him. When I had got a
considerable distance out on the bar, my animal became frightened
at the waves that were tumbling about his legs, and he sidled off into
deep water. I expected hardly anything less than to be drowned, for,
on finding the water rising up to his back, he grew so bewildered that
he was unable to tell which way he was going, and would have
carried me directly out to sea if I had not pulled in the reins with all
my might, and brought him to a full stop. After allowing him to
recover his breath a little, I drew his head round in the proper
direction, and forced him onward; by repeated trials, I regained a
shallower spot, where he grew more quiet, and finally got to land. All
the others crossed the bar in safety.
The country after we passed the river was sandy and wild,
abounding in marshes and lagoons, where we saw a great many
wild ducks. Late in the afternoon we came to another stream, much
broader and deeper than any of the others. There was a large
ferryboat like a mud-scow, which carried us over, mules and all. The
animals made a terrible uproar on board, kicking, pushing and biting
each other at a furious rate. The boat had neither oars nor sail, but
was moved by a rope stretched across the stream from shore to
shore. The banks of the river were soft and clayey, and there was a
clumsy sort of wharf for a landing-place, made of sticks and bushes
tied together.
This river was anciently named Syn[oe]thus; at present it is called
Giarretta. It is remarkable for containing amber, which is carried
down to the sea in its waters, and afterwards thrown up on the beach
by the waves, for many miles along the coast. A great many persons
are constantly searching along the beach for this precious material.
After my arrival at Catania, I saw a fisherman who had just picked up
four or five highly valuable lumps. They were of a beautiful yellow
color, and of the most transparent clearness I ever saw. It is well
known that this article is made into beads and other ornamental
work, but the nature of its origin has never been satisfactorily shown.
From the masses being often found in the shape of tears or globules,
like bulbs of turpentine or gum, it was formerly supposed to be some
hardened vegetable matter; but no tree has ever been discovered
exuding amber. Sometimes insects are imbedded in the lumps, and
this has led many persons to imagine that the insects manufacture it,
as the bees make wax. It is remarkable that it is never found
originally on land, and nowhere except on the sea-beach. This part
of the Sicilian coast, and the Prussian shore of the Baltic, produce
the most of it. It is also found on the shores of the Adriatic and the
coast of Maryland.
It was some time before we got ready to start from the ferry after
crossing. The mules had become so antic from their squabble in the
boat, that they continued to bite and kick and jostle one another,
squealing and whirrying most terribly. Several of them threw off their
loads in the hurly-burly, and we were forced to bang them lustily with
sticks before they would be quiet. At last we mounted and set off
again, and I was glad to hear that there were no more rivers to cross
on the way to Catania. A little boy, who sat on one of the mules
between two great packs, kept singing all the way. Some of the flat
marshy spots were all overgrown with canes, such as we use for
fishing rods: they were fifteen or twenty feet high. The country
people make use of them to prop their vines, as we set up poles for
beans. I saw many laborers in the vineyards along the road, setting
the vine-props; these are taken down when the grapes are gathered,
and the tops of the vine-stalks are cut and dried for fuel. During the
winter, the vine looks like a dead and worthless stump, but it sprouts
anew in the spring, and by midsummer shoots up to the top of the
pole.
Every step of our journey brought us nearer to the great volcano,
which more and more excited my wonder as I approached it. I could
now plainly distinguish the numerous hills which stud its whole lower
surface like warts. Many villages appeared scattered about in
various parts of the mountain. I never before had any idea of its
enormous magnitude. There are thousands of people who live at a
great height upon this mountain, and have never been off it during
their lives. Yet it is always smoking at the summit, and often bursts
out in fiery eruptions, that lay waste whole towns and destroy many
of the inhabitants.
Long after the sun had set to us, I continued to see the snowy top
of Ætna brightened with his declining rays. As it grew dark, our road
led us down to the sea-shore again, and we travelled many miles
along the sandy beach. The mules were sadly tired with their long
journey; every five minutes one of them fell from utter weariness and
inability to sustain his load. The muleteers set them on their legs
again, gave them a sound beating, and drove them onward. In the
dark, I rode against the mule who was trotting before me: the beast,
either being more vicious than the others, or rendered cross by
fatigue, gave a kick, which was intended for my animal, but missed
him, and struck me on the left leg. The pain of the blow was so great
that I fell instantly from the saddle upon the ground, and should have
been left there in the dark, if I had not bawled out loudly. The whole
train was stopped when the accident was known. My first belief was
that my leg was broken; upon feeling the bone, however, no fracture
could be perceived; and, after a good deal of chafing, the pain
somewhat abated, and I was helped again into the saddle. I jogged
on slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for fear of another accident,
having had adventures enough to satisfy me for one day. This affair
delayed our progress so that we did not reach Catania till late in the
evening, when it was much too dark to see anything of the city. I
must therefore reserve my description of the place for the next
chapter.
Balboa discovering the Pacific.

How Things Count As The Same Memory Mimesis and Metaphor Adam B Seligman Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Things Count As The Same Memory Mimesis and Metaphor Adam B Seligman Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Things Count As The Same:

Memory, Mimesis, And Metaphor Adam

How Things Count as the Same

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

List of Illustrations vii

1. What Counts as the Same? 5

2. How Memory Counts as the Same 33

3. Mimesis, or “Society Is Imitation” 53

6. Memory, Metaphor, and a Double Bind 118

7. Sign, Ground, and Interpretant 135

1.1. Yin-​yang symbol 12

How Things Count as the Same

2 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

Plutarch’s folk etymology—​“syn-​Crete-​ism” meaning an alliance of the Cretans—​

4 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

In brief, “memory” creates sameness through the sharing of narrative forms,

What Counts as the Same?

Culture and Its Categories

6 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

coherence we construct categories, which we understand to be shared, sometimes

What Counts as the Same? 7

8 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

What Counts as the Same? 9

10 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

life proceeds via boundaries of group membership, participation, and exclu-

Minding the Gap

What Counts as the Same? 11

12 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

Figure 1.1 Yin-​yang symbol.

It is because every one under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty, that

What Counts as the Same? 13

14 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

A program one of us directs, Communities Engaging with Difference and

What Counts as the Same? 15

Ways to Count as the Same

16 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

so, as we discussed in the introduction, is to follow Plutarch’s advice: “brothers”

Figure 1.2 Sign, object, interpretant, and ground.

What Counts as the Same? 17

18 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

What Counts as the Same? 19

Figure 1.3 Chiang Yee, Lapwings over Merton Field.

20 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

Figure 1.4 Gentile Bellini, The Sultan Mehmet II.

What Counts as the Same? 21

22 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

• How do we share and what do we count as the same in order to belong to

What Counts as the Same? 23

Notice the locution here: “how do we manage to construct.” We do not believe

24 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

Jan Assmann has developed some of these ideas further by distinguishing

What Counts as the Same? 25

26 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

Mimesis and Ritual

What Counts as the Same? 27

28 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

Chinese rituals by both the Republican and Communist governments. In other

What Counts as the Same? 29

30 How T hings Coun t as t he Sa me

1.1. Yin-yang symbol 12

Plutarch’s folk etymology—“syn-Crete-ism” meaning an alliance of the Cretans—

What Counts as the Same? 7

What Counts as the Same? 9

What Counts as the Same? 11

Figure 1.1 Yin-yang symbol.

What Counts as the Same? 13

What Counts as the Same? 15

What Counts as the Same? 17

What Counts as the Same? 19

What Counts as the Same? 21

What Counts as the Same? 23

What Counts as the Same? 25

What Counts as the Same? 27

What Counts as the Same? 29

What Counts as the Same? 31

out-groups. It allows the possibility of at least temporary boundary crossing,