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The Indigenous Healing Tradition In Calabria, Italy, Stanley Krippner, Ashwin Budden, Roberto Gallante, Michael Bova

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In 2003, the four of us spent several weeks in Calabria, Italy. We interviewed local people about folk

healing remedies, attended a Feast Day honoring St. Cosma and St. Damian, and paid two visits

to the Shrine of Madonna dello Scoglio, where we interviewed its founder, Fratel Cosimo. In this

essay, we have provided our impressions of Calabria and the ways in which its native people have

developed indigenous practices and beliefs around medicine and healing. Although it is one of the

poorest areas in Italy, Calabria is one of the richest in its folk traditions and alternative modes of …

Questioning "The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction": A Stroll Around The Louvre After Reading Benjamin0, Jonathan Davis

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article I claim that Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" merits renewed critical attention. Just as Dada had confronted art with anti-art, so Benjamin hoped his essay would confront aesthetics with an anti-aesthetic. I examine Benjamin's capsule history of the aura and show it to be misleading, criticize the essay's underdeveloped ontology of painting and sketch an alternative, and draw attention to the surprising proximity of Benjamin's notion of value to that of neoliberal thought. I conclude with a critique of Benjamin's cultural politics.