‘Skatterlings of a Stone’: Finnegans Wake and the Moment of Philosophical Critique in Megalithic Archaeology

This essay is an interpretation of aspects of the Neolithic of Atlantic Europe (c5000-c2000 BC) through the lens of James Joyce’s novel, Finnegans Wake, and an interpretation of his novel, dialectically, through this archaeological optic, complying with Theodor W. Adorno’s injunction to ‘treat profane texts like holy scripture’. This is the occasion to reflect on the coded ‘theological moment’ in the thought of Adorno and Walter Benjamin to activate shifting constellations of Archaeology, Literature and Philosophical critique. At best, the paper constitutes ‘a onestone parable, a rude breathing on the void of to be’ (FW 100.26-27) and, for better or worse, is one of ‘the “rejected stones” of the seemingly non-existent “impossible”‘ (Bielik-Robson 2020b: 65).

So goes the introduction to the uploaded text on the academia dot edu site… I’m uploading a pdf of it here (with some minor amendments and corrections) in the interest of open access.

‘Skatterlings’, the text, is based on a presentation to The Marrano Phenomenon Conference, organised by Agata Bielik-Robson, which took place in Warsaw, in September 2019. I’d been asked to participate in this conference by Agata on the strength of staging an encounter between the cryptotheological approach developed by her and the strange conjunction between James Joyce’s writings and an archaeoastronomical phenomenon associated with Portuguese Neolithic tombs. That text, A Ruby and Triangled Sign upon the Forehead of Taurus: Modalities of Revelation in Megalithic Archaeoastronomy and James Joyce’s Novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, was published here. I remain grateful to Agata for giving me the opportunity to publish and present material which would otherwise have languished in obscurity and helping to open the door to an interstitial territory I continue to navigate.

‘Skatterlings’ was initially written as a contribution to an edited conference volume. Once it became evident that it was not to be included in that volume (when I found it was published in 2022 as The Marrano Way: Between Betrayal and Innovation) I allowed the draft to drift over the word-count, fractally, and gave up on any further attempts to ‘Derridaize’ the text, as had previously been requested, in line with what I surmise would have been the ‘house style’. I hastily uploaded that document onto academia dot edu.

Here it is, duly corrected and amended.

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Between Fractured Landscape and Neurological Event: A Philosophical Configuration of Anomalous Experience

I make no bones of the fact that the following essay was rejected out of hand by a psychical research journal of record for being ‘philosophical heavy’ (sic) after what must have been a thorough reflection of 36 hours or less over a weekend. Familiarising myself since with the conventions of that publication it’s obvious why such an – admittedly convoluted – exercise in philosophical critique would be out of synch with the static cognitive ideals which govern such research. There was really nowhere else I could have gone with this material and in response to the rejection I uploaded a pdf of the essay to academia dot edu. I’ve come to realise that that platform still presents insurmountable barriers to many, requiring an account to be opened, so I’m belatedly uploading the pdf here so it’s more accessible. As with anything Microsoft Edge-related, caution should be exercised – don’t (as I nearly did) accidentally set it as your default browser!

Here’s the abstract:

This essay investigates the anomalous character of two neurological episodes undergone by the author. Their perceived correspondence with periods of directed focus on archaeological and topographical themes has connotations beyond their ostensible neurobiological origins. These heterogeneous elements comprise a dynamic experiential complex, implicated in the induction of meaningful coincidence. The nonidentity of this indissoluble, contradictory ‘something’ with the static cognitive ideal of the concept elicits an approach informed by principles of philosophical presentation elaborated, respectively, by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). I draw on their theologically inflected attempt to retrieve the truth content in the object, which eludes identification and classification in customary philosophical and scientific determinations of the object of knowledge. That the proper approach to the unknown object is, rather, a self-forgetful immersion in it, and possession by it, implies a mimetic style of interpretation that takes shape immanently to the strange encounter with phenomena. Attempting to glimpse, in their subsequent development, essential qualities in the sphere where neurology and topography coincide, I stage a retrospective choreography of individually opaque elements, to spark ‘auratic’ moments of sudden reciprocal insight, illuminating the transitory promise of fulfilment which is repeatedly broken to preserve its truth. For Adorno, the immediate, definitive resolution of tensions riddling this constellation is impossible in the non-redeemed world. Hence, descending into the abyss of significances, I trace intimations of a latent transcendence, which has found refuge in art and registers in anomalous experience, its evanescent glow imbuing the ‘esoteric’ form of this essay.

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