Babel : Interpreting the manifest ; confronting chaos
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Date
2017
Authors
Gecelter, Jonathan P.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Abstract
The
physicist,
Albert
Einstein’s
startling
statement,
“There
are
only
two
ways
to
live
a
life,
one,
is
that
nothing
is
a
miracle,
and
the
other,
is
that
everything
is
a
miracle.”
prompted
a
series
of
questions
in
relation
to
my
own
questioning
as
to
the
miraculousness
of
life
itself
and
the
disconcerting
coexistence
of
uncertainty,
apparent
chaos
and
seeming
randomness
of
the
world
around
me.
Paradigms
of
the
mystical
and
the
scientific,
in
the
succeeding
chapters,
compete
and
coalesce
within
a
process
of
interpretation
in
an
attempt
to
investigate
the
structural
ambiguity
of
holding
both
views
simultaneously.
The
scope
of
my
investigation
has
focused
on
an
analytical
interplay
between
the
biblical
narratives
of
Babel
and
Abraham,
with
the
scientific
psychosocial
theory
of
Danah
Zohar’s
Quantum
Self.
These
seemingly
dramatically
different
paradigms
are
used
as
a
lens
to
analyze
the
complex
structure
of
a
series
of
random
or
miraculous
events
in
Alejandro
Gonzalez
Iñárritu’s
2006
film,
titled
Babel.
Ultimately,
the
insights
gained
from
these
texts
and
the
analysis
of
the
film
had
a
profound
effect
on
the
production
of
a
body
of
work,
which
also
engaged,
with
multiple
modes
of
translation
and
interpretation.
Significantly,
in
a
personal
attempt
to
engage
with
a
unified
field
of
meaning
a
criticality
emerged,
which
personally
empowered
me
to
challenge
yet
integrate
my
deep-‐seated
Judaic
beliefs
with
a
contemporary
scientific
paradigm
profoundly
affecting
my
art
practice.
Description
A Masters dissertation, 2017
Keywords
Citation
Gecelter, Jonathan Percy (2017) Interpreting the manifest, confronting chaos, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <http://hdl.handle.net/10539/24448>