Fabrizio M Ferrari
Biographic Data
| ID | 576934 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fabrizio M Ferrari |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fabrizio M |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferrari |
| SIGNATURE | FERRARI F M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1648-4180 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
On the Formal Compatibility Between Ontic Emergence and Physicalism
This paper argues that Ontic Emergence (OE) and physicalism are formally compatible. I prove that the ‘from Closure ’ version of Kim's Supervenience Argument against OE is (trivially) valid only under specific but formally unjustified presuppositions. Hence, I prove that the argument is ultimately invalid. Finally, I emphasise that such formal presuppositions are equivalent to peculiar metaphysical tenets and, then, identify the minimal formal co…
Formal Issues of Trope-Only Theories of Universals
Substance metaphysics is incompatible with the causal closure of the metaphysical realm
The present paper argues that substantialist metaphysics are in tension with the physicalist idea that the universe is causally closed. The argument is a rather specific one and proceeds through three steps. The first step consists in arguing that monistic substance metaphysics allow for the existence of entities that cannot belong to the intended first order domain. This result sensitively depends on the nature of substances as invariant entitie…
An argument against nominalism
La nascita del riso nella tradizione śivaita del Bengala medievale
In questo articolo, andremo ad analizzare il mito della nascita del riso (dhānyer janma) nei testi in medio bengali attribuiti a Rāmāi Paṇḍit, il primo officiante del culto di Dharmarāj. Tale narrativa, che vede protagonista una forma di Śiva agreste (kr̥ṣak debatā), è stata a lunga considerata una tarda interpolazione dovuta alla diffusione della cultura śivaita bengalese a scapito di culti ritenuti indigeni. La nostra analisi intende dimostrare…
Towards a dual ontology
The main aim of this work is to depict the interconnection of the most relvantformal concepts of modal logic and category theory, i.e., bisimulation andduality, arising from the mathematical analysis of physical processes and toshow their relevance with respect to some foundational issues related to the actual ontological debates. Current foundamental physics concerns the non-linear thermodynamics of the quantum eld, whose range is made of far fr…
Illness Is Nothing But Injustice
This article seeks to reflect on how concepts such as "ritual," "illness," and "health" are intertwined in the practice of Bengali healers and their customers. By objecting to past and present logics that ascribe to folk healing an innate subalternity because of context (e.g., the village), mode of transmission (e.g., orality), gender and social background of votaries (e.g., low-caste, working-class sectors), my analysis discusses health-seeking …
Charming Beauties and Frightful Beasts
The study of non-human animals as other-than-human persons (including animal-spirits and divine animals) has marked a significant shift in the ethics and politics of the academic study of religion. Charming Animals and Frightful Beasts investigates how South Asian religions, with their sacred narratives, ritual and non-ritual practices and performances, bear witness to the active presence of non-human animals as both culture makers/bearers and sy…
Beyond Order and Madness. Death and the Hereafter in the Ethnographies of Ernesto De Martino
The paper discusses the views of Ernesto De Martino on thanatology. Although De Martino worked extensively of mortuary rituals and myths and beliefs related to death, little has been said about his last interview, Rapporto sull’aldila (Report on the hereafter). The author explores here the philosophical and anthropological argument of De Martino vis-a-vis themes such as ritual, presence and labour, and the way they relate to death as a cultural c…
The Animal Question in South Asia
The Silent Killer
Sitala ('the Cold One'), a mother goddess worshipped in Northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, is traditionally represented as a beautiful young lady riding a donkey. But the ass is a rather marginal character in both oral narratives and devotional/auspicious literature. Unlike the majority of divine mounts in classic and popular Hinduism, the animal has no proper name and is speechless. Vernacular and Sanskrit literatures do not indulge…
Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma. Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative
Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma. Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 768 pp. £45.00. ISBN 9780195394238 (hardback)
Initiation, ‘Re-birth’ and the Emergent Congregation
Smallpox was eradicated in India on 23 April 1977. But despite the action of colonial authorities first, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication later, the cult of Śītalā, the ‘smallpox goddess’, has persisted. Śītalaā is still celebrated to prevent diseases such as fevers, measles, malaria and tuberulosis. Further, with the spread of acquired imnuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the…
The Animal Question in South Asian Religions
Mystic Rites For Permanent Class Conflict
Locating itself amidst current debates on post-modern analyses of mysticism, particularly academic debates on the Bauls of Bengal, this article discusses issues of cultural transformation as a result of gentrification and globalisation. It combines the author’s ethnographic research and a methodology mainly derived from Italian Marxist critique (Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto de Martino, Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno). The article examines the reificat…
Aghor Medicine
Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India, by Ron Barrett. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2008. xxii + 216 pp., £39.95 (hb), £15.95 (pb). ISBN 978-0-520-25218-9 (hb), ISBN 978-0-520-25219-6 (pb)
Love Me Two Times.’ From Smallpox to Aids
Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s but the cult of Sitala, the Bengali ‘smallpox goddess’, has resisted. With the spread of AIDS some modifications occurred. Sitala is increasingly worshipped as an AIDS-goddess. Devotees look at contagion as a (desirable) form of possession and believe their faith will protect them. As it was for smallpox, when variolation was preferred to vaccination, the contact with the goddess is looked upon as a form of lo…
Surrendering to the Earth
The essential traits of the Dharma cult are grounded in the folklore of the agricultural people of Rarh (West Bengal). The annual worship of Dharma, the gajan, is here examined on a gender basis. By considering fertility as the leitmotif of the cult and Dharma worship the masculinization of an ancestral female cult, I shall focus on the presence of blood as the discriminator in ritual acts. I argue that while female devotees foster and care for t…
Playing with corpses and worshipping skulls
The paper describes the concluding rite of the gajan, a major hierogamic celebration of West Bengal. The night before the end of the festival, ascetic devotees dance with rotten human corpses and human heads in honour of Dharma Thakur, a local fertility deity. After giving a description of the ritual, I try to enlighten the relation between the fertility leitmotif of the gajan and its climax: the danse macabre (dance of death). The practice of sp…
ŚrīDharmeśvara of Vārānasīand the Cult of Dharma Thākur of Bengal
This article is the result of a small research project running parallel to my major endeavour: a doctoral thesis on the Dharma [UNKNOWN]Thākur cult of Bengal. This includes the analysis and translation of its most ancient liturgical text, the 'Sūnya Purā[UNKNOWN]naof Rāmāi Pa[UNKNOWN]n[UNKNOWN]dit, and a study of the development of the cult in different religious and anthropological environments. In particular, I aim to portray the original non-A…
Illness Is Nothing But Injustice
This article seeks to reflect on how concepts such as "ritual," "illness," and "health" are intertwined in the practice of Bengali healers and their customers. By objecting to past and present logics that ascribe to folk healing an innate subalternity because of context (e.g., the village), mode of transmission (e.g., orality), gender and social background of votaries (e.g., low-caste, working-class sectors), my analysis discusses health-seeking …
Mystic Rites For Permanent Class Conflict
Locating itself amidst current debates on post-modern analyses of mysticism, particularly academic debates on the Bauls of Bengal, this article discusses issues of cultural transformation as a result of gentrification and globalisation. It combines the author’s ethnographic research and a methodology mainly derived from Italian Marxist critique (Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto de Martino, Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno). The article examines the reificat…
ŚrīDharmeśvara of Vārānasīand the Cult of Dharma Thākur of Bengal
This article is the result of a small research project running parallel to my major endeavour: a doctoral thesis on the Dharma [UNKNOWN]Thākur cult of Bengal. This includes the analysis and translation of its most ancient liturgical text, the 'Sūnya Purā[UNKNOWN]naof Rāmāi Pa[UNKNOWN]n[UNKNOWN]dit, and a study of the development of the cult in different religious and anthropological environments. In particular, I aim to portray the original non-A…
Surrendering to the Earth
The essential traits of the Dharma cult are grounded in the folklore of the agricultural people of Rarh (West Bengal). The annual worship of Dharma, the gajan, is here examined on a gender basis. By considering fertility as the leitmotif of the cult and Dharma worship the masculinization of an ancestral female cult, I shall focus on the presence of blood as the discriminator in ritual acts. I argue that while female devotees foster and care for t…
Playing with corpses and worshipping skulls
The paper describes the concluding rite of the gajan, a major hierogamic celebration of West Bengal. The night before the end of the festival, ascetic devotees dance with rotten human corpses and human heads in honour of Dharma Thakur, a local fertility deity. After giving a description of the ritual, I try to enlighten the relation between the fertility leitmotif of the gajan and its climax: the danse macabre (dance of death). The practice of sp…
Love Me Two Times.’ From Smallpox to Aids
Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s but the cult of Sitala, the Bengali ‘smallpox goddess’, has resisted. With the spread of AIDS some modifications occurred. Sitala is increasingly worshipped as an AIDS-goddess. Devotees look at contagion as a (desirable) form of possession and believe their faith will protect them. As it was for smallpox, when variolation was preferred to vaccination, the contact with the goddess is looked upon as a form of lo…
Aghor Medicine
Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India, by Ron Barrett. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2008. xxii + 216 pp., £39.95 (hb), £15.95 (pb). ISBN 978-0-520-25218-9 (hb), ISBN 978-0-520-25219-6 (pb)
Initiation, ‘Re-birth’ and the Emergent Congregation
Smallpox was eradicated in India on 23 April 1977. But despite the action of colonial authorities first, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication later, the cult of Śītalā, the ‘smallpox goddess’, has persisted. Śītalaā is still celebrated to prevent diseases such as fevers, measles, malaria and tuberulosis. Further, with the spread of acquired imnuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the…
The Animal Question in South Asian Religions
Mystic Rites For Permanent Class Conflict
Locating itself amidst current debates on post-modern analyses of mysticism, particularly academic debates on the Bauls of Bengal, this article discusses issues of cultural transformation as a result of gentrification and globalisation. It combines the author’s ethnographic research and a methodology mainly derived from Italian Marxist critique (Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto de Martino, Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno). The article examines the reificat…
Charming Beauties and Frightful Beasts
The study of non-human animals as other-than-human persons (including animal-spirits and divine animals) has marked a significant shift in the ethics and politics of the academic study of religion. Charming Animals and Frightful Beasts investigates how South Asian religions, with their sacred narratives, ritual and non-ritual practices and performances, bear witness to the active presence of non-human animals as both culture makers/bearers and sy…
Beyond Order and Madness. Death and the Hereafter in the Ethnographies of Ernesto De Martino
The paper discusses the views of Ernesto De Martino on thanatology. Although De Martino worked extensively of mortuary rituals and myths and beliefs related to death, little has been said about his last interview, Rapporto sull’aldila (Report on the hereafter). The author explores here the philosophical and anthropological argument of De Martino vis-a-vis themes such as ritual, presence and labour, and the way they relate to death as a cultural c…
The Animal Question in South Asia
The Silent Killer
Sitala ('the Cold One'), a mother goddess worshipped in Northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, is traditionally represented as a beautiful young lady riding a donkey. But the ass is a rather marginal character in both oral narratives and devotional/auspicious literature. Unlike the majority of divine mounts in classic and popular Hinduism, the animal has no proper name and is speechless. Vernacular and Sanskrit literatures do not indulge…
Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma. Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative
Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma. Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 768 pp. £45.00. ISBN 9780195394238 (hardback)
Illness Is Nothing But Injustice
This article seeks to reflect on how concepts such as "ritual," "illness," and "health" are intertwined in the practice of Bengali healers and their customers. By objecting to past and present logics that ascribe to folk healing an innate subalternity because of context (e.g., the village), mode of transmission (e.g., orality), gender and social background of votaries (e.g., low-caste, working-class sectors), my analysis discusses health-seeking …
Towards a dual ontology
The main aim of this work is to depict the interconnection of the most relvantformal concepts of modal logic and category theory, i.e., bisimulation andduality, arising from the mathematical analysis of physical processes and toshow their relevance with respect to some foundational issues related to the actual ontological debates. Current foundamental physics concerns the non-linear thermodynamics of the quantum eld, whose range is made of far fr…
La nascita del riso nella tradizione śivaita del Bengala medievale
In questo articolo, andremo ad analizzare il mito della nascita del riso (dhānyer janma) nei testi in medio bengali attribuiti a Rāmāi Paṇḍit, il primo officiante del culto di Dharmarāj. Tale narrativa, che vede protagonista una forma di Śiva agreste (kr̥ṣak debatā), è stata a lunga considerata una tarda interpolazione dovuta alla diffusione della cultura śivaita bengalese a scapito di culti ritenuti indigeni. La nostra analisi intende dimostrare…
An argument against nominalism
Substance metaphysics is incompatible with the causal closure of the metaphysical realm
The present paper argues that substantialist metaphysics are in tension with the physicalist idea that the universe is causally closed. The argument is a rather specific one and proceeds through three steps. The first step consists in arguing that monistic substance metaphysics allow for the existence of entities that cannot belong to the intended first order domain. This result sensitively depends on the nature of substances as invariant entitie…
Formal Issues of Trope-Only Theories of Universals
On the Formal Compatibility Between Ontic Emergence and Physicalism
This paper argues that Ontic Emergence (OE) and physicalism are formally compatible. I prove that the ‘from Closure ’ version of Kim's Supervenience Argument against OE is (trivially) valid only under specific but formally unjustified presuppositions. Hence, I prove that the argument is ultimately invalid. Finally, I emphasise that such formal presuppositions are equivalent to peculiar metaphysical tenets and, then, identify the minimal formal co…
Philosophy (13 works) · History (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Theology (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Religious Studies (6 works)