- » Adrián Navigante, Director Alain Daniélou Foundation Research and Intellectual Dialogue
INTRODUCTION TO THE ALAIN DANIÉLOU FOUNDATION’S FORUM 2021 ON ALAIN DANIÉLOU “LABYRINTH TRACES”The following text reproduces Adrián Navigante’s introduction to Alain Daniélou Foundation’s Forum “Transcultural Encounters 2021”, focused on the work and thought of Alain Daniélou. Alain Daniélou Foundation’s Forum 2021 gathered researchers from different disciplines, from Indology and Tibetology to Philosophy, Anthropology and Musicology. Its main purpose was to reflect on the aspects of Alain Daniélou’s thought that can be an inspiration for the XXI century both on an intellectual and artistic level.
Read » - » Philippe Charlier, Anthropologist and director of research and high education at the Musée du quai Branly, France
BECAUSE THE NIGHT BELONGS TO LOVERS: INTERSECTING PERSPECTIVES ON “CREATURES OF THE NIGHT” BETWEEN THE CARIBBEAN AND JAPANIn this essay, a combination of personal experience and anthropological reflection, Philippe Charlier takes us to the uncanny world of the night in two non-European cultures: the Haitian and the Japanese. Beyond a description of the non-human beings populating the night and interacting with sleeping humans (usually against the will of the latter), the dimension of what is usually called the «supernatural» and its manifold aspects shows some specific features that seem to establish a link between the two cultural spheres and their respective world-configurations. A text of transcultural relevance with subjective overtones.
Read » - » Basile Goudabla Kligueh, Vodou priest, anthropologist and Alain Daniélou Foundation Grantee 2021
IS WEST-AFRICAN VODU “SHAIVITE-DIONYSIAN”? REFLECTIONS ON ALAIN DANIÉLOU AND AFRICARead » - » Françoise Bonardel, Philosopher and writer, professor emerita at the university of La Sorbonne, France.
PACIFICATION OF HEARTS AND MINDS: PREREQUISITE OR CONSEQUENCE OF INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE?In this essay, Françoise Bonardel analyses the problem of human conflict related to cultural differences and the conditions to create authentic inter-cultural dialogue that might provide peace. With the help of authors like Ernst Jünger, Martin Buber and Jan Patočka, Bonardel exhumes a spiritual dimension that cuts across the progressive wasteland of a post-modern culture divided between technocrats and brainless consumers. In this way, she proposes a re-direction of culture based on the ennoblement of the human being and an increasing awareness of the challenge that multiple identities represent.
Read » - » Alain Daniélou
INDIAN AND WESTERN MUSIC FIRST PARTThis article, which is partially reproduced from Daniélou’s notes in the Zagarolo archives (with some editorial adjustments), was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1949. With his distinctive clarity and precision, Daniélou treats the language and the systems of music, Greek and Indian music history, as well as some important questions of musical technique. This article also expresses Daniélou’s personal reflection on music, according to which the distinction between “India” and “the West” in matters of musical theory should be replaced by the conceptual opposition between “modal” and “harmonic” music. This last aspect builds up the core of Daniélou’s normative approach to musical systems as well as his attempt to retrieve the specific value of Indian classical music in the face of what he called “the harmonic pollution” of the modern West.
Read »