From mineralogy to philology: researching the stone anthropograms

From Aristotle and Albert the Great and up to modern geological surveys the studies of stones and minerals as non-human forms of existence turned out to be more or less theoretically loaded with anthropomorphism. Stone as one of the first materials for technical and writing tools (from the Stone Age) used to provide elementary and radically passive prototypes for the works of art. A special provocation to create art consists precisely in those precious stones and crystals that strike the imagination as facts of beauty, bringing a person into a special state of mind (fascination in terms of Caillois). In his concept of the fantastic and in classification of games, Caillois criticizes the structuralist interpretation of magical universalism: the involvement of any object in the magical practices of mana circulation rather serves as a reflection of its specific objectification (Baudrillard) in modern commodity-money relations, rather than reveals the prospect of understanding of the function of the “demon of analogy.”

Due to Caillois’ argument against the concept of mimesis in the biological theories of the nineteenth century, we can better understand perspectivism in poststructuralist anthropology and adequately assess the philosophical and anthropological claims of all kinds of hermeneutics of reading and writing as well. Paradoxically, the same demon of analogy comes to the fore in the specific hermeneutics of reading texts, when we carry out disjunctive syntheses and build certain figures, or anthropograms of meaning, which serve as serifs, reminders of the desired image of ourselves. Imaginary anthropograms can lead to geophilia (Jeffrey Cohen) or geophilosophy (Valery Podoroga), but in each case, one should bear in mind the risk of falling into extremes — from hypostasis of fantastic hyperobjects, dreaming about the greatness of epochs of Titans, to the transformation of raw material into faceted souvenirs of a collector of trinkets.