Deon Liebenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 3641192 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deon Liebenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deon |
| FAMILY NAME | Liebenberg |
| SIGNATURE | LIEBENBERG D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The IIE Vega School, De Waterkant, Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9048-7304 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
‘Primordial’ social harmony and the political power of language
According to various scholars, immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies have institutions that actively counter the acquisition of individual political power and property, thereby maintaining the egalitarian structure and concomitant prosociality of their societies – once property becomes institutionalised, differences in status, authority or rank can become culturally entrenched, creating a differentiated, hierarchical society. This article ar…
Primitivism as Resistance in the Art of Kevin Brand
Culture, Nature, Mind and Womb
Using Philippe Descola's treatment of the culture-nature dichotomy as a starting point, I argue that indigenous conceptions of the relationship between culture and nature are bound up with conceptions of time, space, and, particularly, gender. All of these issues are treated here in terms of the Female Cosmetic Coalition model to argue that the conceptions of culture and nature discussed by Descola refer to nature as found in the present age - a …
Empty Landscapes
The Novalis Ubuntu Institute (1994)
The Trickster as Personification of Primordial Chaos
The very widespread occurrence of the trickster figure in myth and folklore has prompted scholars to explain this fascinating character in terms of universal features of the human mind or the human condition. This, however, has the effect of obscuring the sophistication of the cosmological thought that generally underpins the character and behaviour of this character. This article argues that the trickster's flagrant disregard for boundaries, cat…
Functionalism Versus Spirituality in Two Modernist Afrikaans Protestant Churches of the Western Cape
The Power of Mimetic Performance
The very widespread belief in the supernatural agency of cultural objects and actions is arguably underpinned by a mode of thought that entails the concept, widely and variously expressed in myth, ritual, and related cultural phenomena, of the priority of culture over nature, as well as related concepts of primordial wholeness or an initial undifferentiated state. This is explained here in terms of Merlin Donald’s theory of cognitive evolution, s…
Ambivalence, Contradiction, and the Differentiation of Primordial Wholeness in Amazonian Cosmological Thought
In spite of the fact that the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology has championed the cause of indigenous cosmologies in Amazonia and elsewhere, the selective use of ethnographic material to promote this cause has had the effect of obscuring some of the most remarkable qualities of these intellectual systems. It will be shown here that the widely divergent interpretations of the Ge myth of the bird-nester, as presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro…
Primordial androgyny and gender politics
The theme of primordial androgyny is fundamental to male initiation rites and related myths in both Melanesia and Amazonia. The same theme also plays a central role in Australian and African hunter-gatherer rites and myths. Following Chris Knight's treatment of these myths and rites, along with the model developed by him, Camilla Power and Ian Watts for the origins of human culture, this article argues that primordial androgyny - along with the r…
Menstruation, moon and the hunt
Camilla Power’s reconstruction of a source cosmology for African huntergatherers focuses on the lunar/menstrual character of the invariant syntax of myth as described by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Luc de Heusch and Chris Knight, and its relationship to the hunt. The ritual return to primordial chaos and related concepts, as found in African hunter-gatherer initiation rites, are central to her reconstruction. This article compares the African material d…
Cosmology Performed, the World Transformed
By analyzing myths from around the world to build an argument regarding the relation between cosmology and community, Amazonian myths are set within a broader set of mythic imageries. Lévi-Strauss showed how a structural description of myth should fully incorporate the entire set of variant arrangements through which its elements or terms could be related to one another. Despite the criticism to which his approach has been subject, the notion tha…
The Rainbow-Snake and the Birds' Plumage
Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his great work, Mythologiques, demonstrates that the theme of the continuous and the discrete is an important feature of Amerindian myth. This paper develops his investigation of this fascinating theme further, showing that it is a pervasive principle of Amerindian myth and that it emerges in the most unexpected settings and guises. Apart from being basic to mythic thought in the Americas, it is also found in many other pa…
The Bird-Nester, the Jaguar and the Fire-Theft
The Rainbow-Snake and the Birds' Plumage
Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his great work, Mythologiques, demonstrates that the theme of the continuous and the discrete is an important feature of Amerindian myth. This paper develops his investigation of this fascinating theme further, showing that it is a pervasive principle of Amerindian myth and that it emerges in the most unexpected settings and guises. Apart from being basic to mythic thought in the Americas, it is also found in many other pa…
Ambivalence, Contradiction, and the Differentiation of Primordial Wholeness in Amazonian Cosmological Thought
In spite of the fact that the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology has championed the cause of indigenous cosmologies in Amazonia and elsewhere, the selective use of ethnographic material to promote this cause has had the effect of obscuring some of the most remarkable qualities of these intellectual systems. It will be shown here that the widely divergent interpretations of the Ge myth of the bird-nester, as presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro…
The Trickster as Personification of Primordial Chaos
The very widespread occurrence of the trickster figure in myth and folklore has prompted scholars to explain this fascinating character in terms of universal features of the human mind or the human condition. This, however, has the effect of obscuring the sophistication of the cosmological thought that generally underpins the character and behaviour of this character. This article argues that the trickster's flagrant disregard for boundaries, cat…
Primordial androgyny and gender politics
The theme of primordial androgyny is fundamental to male initiation rites and related myths in both Melanesia and Amazonia. The same theme also plays a central role in Australian and African hunter-gatherer rites and myths. Following Chris Knight's treatment of these myths and rites, along with the model developed by him, Camilla Power and Ian Watts for the origins of human culture, this article argues that primordial androgyny - along with the r…
The Rainbow-Snake and the Birds' Plumage
Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his great work, Mythologiques, demonstrates that the theme of the continuous and the discrete is an important feature of Amerindian myth. This paper develops his investigation of this fascinating theme further, showing that it is a pervasive principle of Amerindian myth and that it emerges in the most unexpected settings and guises. Apart from being basic to mythic thought in the Americas, it is also found in many other pa…
The Bird-Nester, the Jaguar and the Fire-Theft
Cosmology Performed, the World Transformed
By analyzing myths from around the world to build an argument regarding the relation between cosmology and community, Amazonian myths are set within a broader set of mythic imageries. Lévi-Strauss showed how a structural description of myth should fully incorporate the entire set of variant arrangements through which its elements or terms could be related to one another. Despite the criticism to which his approach has been subject, the notion tha…
Menstruation, moon and the hunt
Camilla Power’s reconstruction of a source cosmology for African huntergatherers focuses on the lunar/menstrual character of the invariant syntax of myth as described by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Luc de Heusch and Chris Knight, and its relationship to the hunt. The ritual return to primordial chaos and related concepts, as found in African hunter-gatherer initiation rites, are central to her reconstruction. This article compares the African material d…
Primordial androgyny and gender politics
The theme of primordial androgyny is fundamental to male initiation rites and related myths in both Melanesia and Amazonia. The same theme also plays a central role in Australian and African hunter-gatherer rites and myths. Following Chris Knight's treatment of these myths and rites, along with the model developed by him, Camilla Power and Ian Watts for the origins of human culture, this article argues that primordial androgyny - along with the r…
Functionalism Versus Spirituality in Two Modernist Afrikaans Protestant Churches of the Western Cape
The Power of Mimetic Performance
The very widespread belief in the supernatural agency of cultural objects and actions is arguably underpinned by a mode of thought that entails the concept, widely and variously expressed in myth, ritual, and related cultural phenomena, of the priority of culture over nature, as well as related concepts of primordial wholeness or an initial undifferentiated state. This is explained here in terms of Merlin Donald’s theory of cognitive evolution, s…
Ambivalence, Contradiction, and the Differentiation of Primordial Wholeness in Amazonian Cosmological Thought
In spite of the fact that the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology has championed the cause of indigenous cosmologies in Amazonia and elsewhere, the selective use of ethnographic material to promote this cause has had the effect of obscuring some of the most remarkable qualities of these intellectual systems. It will be shown here that the widely divergent interpretations of the Ge myth of the bird-nester, as presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro…
The Novalis Ubuntu Institute (1994)
The Trickster as Personification of Primordial Chaos
The very widespread occurrence of the trickster figure in myth and folklore has prompted scholars to explain this fascinating character in terms of universal features of the human mind or the human condition. This, however, has the effect of obscuring the sophistication of the cosmological thought that generally underpins the character and behaviour of this character. This article argues that the trickster's flagrant disregard for boundaries, cat…
Empty Landscapes
Primitivism as Resistance in the Art of Kevin Brand
Culture, Nature, Mind and Womb
Using Philippe Descola's treatment of the culture-nature dichotomy as a starting point, I argue that indigenous conceptions of the relationship between culture and nature are bound up with conceptions of time, space, and, particularly, gender. All of these issues are treated here in terms of the Female Cosmetic Coalition model to argue that the conceptions of culture and nature discussed by Descola refer to nature as found in the present age - a …
‘Primordial’ social harmony and the political power of language
According to various scholars, immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies have institutions that actively counter the acquisition of individual political power and property, thereby maintaining the egalitarian structure and concomitant prosociality of their societies – once property becomes institutionalised, differences in status, authority or rank can become culturally entrenched, creating a differentiated, hierarchical society. This article ar…
Philosophy (9 works) · History (7 works) · Mythology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Biology (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Literature (4 works)