Books
Return of the Centaurs
$49.99
Postage calculated at checkout
“Those who classify things, those men of science whose science is only that of classification, generally do not know the number of classifiable things is infinite, and that therefore they cannot be classified. But what shocks me is that they do not know of the existence of unknown classifiable things, things of the soul and of consciousness that fall between the cracks of knowledge.”
[Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet]
Paul Carter is an internationally renowned writer, artist, and cultural heritage specialist. The author of many books, he has written extensively about white settler societies, their foundational myths and the ways these inform the places they create and the national narratives that hold them together.
Return of the Centaurs
A Field Guide
| Weight | 0.2 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 30 × 24 × 1 cm |
| Size | Centaur |
What about bringing the Centaurs back? They fascinate poets, archaeologists, inventors of video games. But, to judge from the old stories, when Centaurs meet humans, they are usually killed. With this violent history, why would Centaurs want to come back? To welcome the Centaurs (and not to kill them), we need to see them differently. Perhaps we need to see ourselves as the Centaurs see us. Return of the Centaurs is a ‘field guide’ to looking at the world as it looks back at us. It is an affectionate parody of empirical science’s lack of self-reflection. Through visionary drawings and poetic descriptions, twenty-four vanished species of Centaur come back to life. Perhaps they have always been here, but we were too broken, too self-absorbed, to notice them. A few Centaurs linger in zoos of the imagination: captives of art galleries and museums. In the spirit of the ‘new museology’, Paul Carter’s Centaurs are hypotheses for a citizen science that can liberate and re-wild them. Centaurs are not hybrids. We split nature in two (inner and outer). Centaurs make sense when we begin self-healing. When we start seeing the pattern of the whole, they will come back. Return of the Centaurs is a playful guide to doing this, a book of laughter and tears, compassion and satire. Published by Artem Publishing, Naples, 2024.