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Rating: 
Summary: Paradigm shifting achievement that revalidates Afrocentrism
Review: "The notion of tabu as connoting both 'danger' and 'power' belongs in fact to a venerable tradition. One source of this is the work of Durkheim...a pioneering article on menstrual symbolism published in 1898...Durkheim argued that women established the exogamy rule by periodically BLEEDING so as to repulse the opposite sex...[women] were the immediate agents of religious ideology's segregating action." "...But of course, the model of cultural origins advocated in this book would lead us to trace the underlying abstract logic of the Rainbow Snake...much further back into the Aborigines past--indeed, right back to their first entry into Australia [from central Africa]..." "It would be interesting to study the ideological and political factors which led to Durkheim's insights being virtually ignored for a hundred years." Chris Knight, BLOOD RELATIONS
Chapter 11: "The Raw and The Cooked" and
Chapter 14: "The Dragon Within" " At Yirkalla, in...north-east Arnhem Land [aboriginal Australia]...women's solidarity is still very strong, menstrual blood is regarded as 'sacred'... It is only when this snake power of the women themselves has been established that the conditions are felt appropriate for the climax of the ceremony... '...really we have been stealing what belongs to them (the women) for it is mostly women's business... Women can't see what men are doing...This is because all the Dreaming business came out of women--everything...In the beginning we had nothing...we took these things from women.' "It is one of the severest indictments of 20th Century anti-evolutionist anthropology that its models have led ethnographers to dismiss such profound Aboriginal insights as scientifically valueless." Chris Knight, BLOOD RELATIONS
Chapter 13: "The Rainbow Snake" This is a five star, paradigm-shifting treatise on human cultural origins if there ever was one. Chris Knight's rendering of the four plus million years of primate and proto-human history in BLOOD RELATIONS, right up to the latest 200,000 years that begin true humankind and human culture in central Africa and along the Nile, through to the psychic/motivational bedrock of our conflicted modern society, becomes more impressive, more inclusive--and more impregnable with every chapter and every turn of the page. My test for the far-reaching influence and power of any theorist--particularly of the wannabe revolutionary kind--is three-fold. One, their theory must be completely plausible; i.e. not needing simple revolt from detractors and complimentary but poorly explained aspects of ITSELF to proclaim and rationalize its essential relevance. Two, they must have the ability to completely encapsulate the foundational principles, concepts and findings of the other historical and competitive theories within its discipline as an integral part of its own new perspective; showing their ideas to be the great quantum leap beyond our sense of reality and the all inclusive step toward truth. And third, perhaps most important of all, it has to excite me. There may be things my mind will not be specifically educated enough, multi-lingual enough or quick enough to pick up, but you cannot fool my heart. All these three are BLOOD RELATIONS's great achievement and great contribution. Chris Knight, the brilliant and controversial London anthropologist, does this all in BLOOD RELATIONS with such remarkable clarity and erudition, in fact, attempts to disagree with his findings becomes pointless. His unified field-theory of the prehistoric African woman's role in the formation of human culture is so incredibly well done, and so profoundly earth shattering in its implications, that I read the book twice to fully soak in all the sacred pre-verbal intuitions I have had that it reveals to be historical fact and obvious science. So far the only complaint of BLOOD RELATIONS I could have is the only one possible: he seemingly focuses too much on the Marxist avatar of revolutionary cultural ideas while using it as the lens via which the origins of culture could be best understood. This at times seems to ironically minimize the revolutionary spirit of humankind that produced them. None less than the great Picasso was once quoted in saying "today's artists are tomorrow's politicians;" focusing more on the *artistic* power of the creative human spirit (my bias) may have put his new paradigm in an even more inclusive perspective. Yet even there he establishes, to my knowledge, the first credible dialectic between the devolved, political diseases of 20th century Stalinism/Maoism and the philosophical/scientific postulates of the 19th century Marxism upon which their regimes were originally based. So powerfully, in fact, that the Marxist perspective he examines and explains driving his reevaluation of 20th century anthropology--and, in turn, our entire view of human culture--need not (and in his book does not) come with the kind of intellectual apologies that would otherwise signify an inherent lack of validity. Chris Knight with BLOOD RELATIONS shows unquestionably that women, via sex and the rhythm of menstruation, nurtured the primal creative impulse of civilization and they essentially created human culture. And he shows it to be made up of communal solidarity against oppressors and oppressive situations (be it prehistoric animals or alpha males), symbol-driven creativity, and achieving a certain oneness with the rhythms of nature. This primal social movement that is the womb of human culture, told in every ancient culture's foundational myths, could naturally just as easily explain the birth of democracy and/or capitalism in the historical ages of feudalism as it does the advent of Marxism in the age of capitalism...and what is next for human kind. This is another of the great books of our time whose far-reaching influence in modern culture has not even begun to be felt. One can only imagine what anthropological works throughout history that have been ignored because of intellectual biases will now be reexamined and redeemed through his paradigm shifting work. I would combine this with Barbara Ehrenreich's 1995 work BLOOD RITES, and the 19th Century Gerald Massey's ANCIENT EGYPT, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD as an anthropological trinity of monumental, paradigm shifting proportions that will change your view of humankind-our true past, present and potential-forever. BLOOD RELATIONS is beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant study by a brilliant man!
Review: Dr.Chris Knight was one of my lecturers at university and without fail I would come away from my Anthropology lectures with my head blown away by all the amazing knowledge transfer that occurred. It was all fantastic stuff and all totally confusing until one of those "aha" moments, when all of Chris's and the other anthropologists theories suddenly all fell into place and began to make real sense. The book itself was a key text during our studies with various chapters needing to be read at various times. For that reason I shall not break down the book, rather I shall say that it will be one of the most illuminating and eye-opening books that you will ever read. Maybe not the easiest to read but definitely one of the best. Oh, and you can always impress your friends in the pub of an evening with your knowledge of Marxist paleo-anthropological theories pertaining to the emergence of human culture!
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant study by a brilliant man!
Review: Dr.Chris Knight was one of my lecturers at university and without fail I would come away from my Anthropology lectures with my head blown away by all the amazing knowledge transfer that occurred. It was all fantastic stuff and all totally confusing until one of those "aha" moments, when all of Chris's and the other anthropologists theories suddenly all fell into place and began to make real sense. The book itself was a key text during our studies with various chapters needing to be read at various times. For that reason I shall not break down the book, rather I shall say that it will be one of the most illuminating and eye-opening books that you will ever read. Maybe not the easiest to read but definitely one of the best. Oh, and you can always impress your friends in the pub of an evening with your knowledge of Marxist paleo-anthropological theories pertaining to the emergence of human culture!
Rating:
Summary: The Most Brilliant Anthropological Study Ever Written
Review: The many words used to describe Chris Knight's "Blood Relations" include, monumental, encyclopedic, brilliant, original, ingenious, and a tour-de-force. It is all of these and more! This work is simply the most brilliant and imaginative book about human cultural development ever written. Its range is astonishing. Its arguments are cogently made with great detail. Its synthesis of primatology, socio-biology, and anthroplogy are compelling. Where others have depicted women as the victims of a dominant male hierarchy, Knight reveals how the sex roles and behavior of both men and women developed together in a dialectic relationship. Where others have stressed the loss of oestrus and continuous sexual receptivity in the female, Knight spotlights menstruation and its associated marital and other cultural taboos. Where others stress man the hunter and woman the gatherer, Knight envisions paleo-women as evolving an increasing solidarity to shape the structure of both hunting and gathering. Women are not the passive creatures that are so often depicted by the radical feminists who have an interest in portraying women as the victims of dominant males. Females have been active participants in shaping culture, behavior, and human destiny. As Knight says, "symbolic culture involves very widespread levels of synchronized co-operative action." Somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 years ago, Knight believes, a massive social, sexual, and cultural explosion occurred and he does an ingenious job of providing us with insight into how this may have happened. A major change in reproductive strategy had to take place before males could take off as hunters and leave their women behind. Women synchronized their ovulatory cycles with one another; the concept of the "sex-strike" is the heart of the book. Blood as a symbol of menstruation provides a key to much of human culture and Knight uses it to explain the inner logic of many of mankind's myths and taboos. Because the disruptive effects of sex can be enormous, these controls have played an important role in the development of human culture. The riches of this deeply learned book cannot simply be conveyed in a brief review. It is a work to be read over and over and contemplated. The many insights into human culture and the relationships among the sexes will surely provide any open minded person with a new perspective as to why we are the way we are.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Brilliant Anthropological Study Ever Written
Review: This book was a revelation for me. Having struggled through numerous turgid anthropological works by the likes of Levi-Strauss, Roheim, etc., it was thrilling to read such an ambitious clear-sighted and compelling account of the origins of human culture, together with an excellent critique of much current anthropological thinking. It's worth mentioning that Chris Knight is a marxist, and by that I don't mean vaguely left-wing in the manner of, say, Eric Hobsbawm. He's a real believer...dialectic materialism, the whole works. Clearly Knight believes his marxism is essential to his thesis. I would argue that although this maybe enabled him to see through other anthropological schools - structuralism, functionalism, what-have-you - and to develop his own theories, in the end it's irrelevant to his conclusions. So, wade through the marxist stuff, you can ignore it, it's not to my mind necessary to agree with his ideological beliefs (I don't) to appreciate his arguments, and to agree with much of what he says - or at least to find this a wonderfully stimulating book.
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