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Pilgrimage, Patterns, and Water: Reflections
and Conceptual Elaborations on Three ISCIA
SARChI Chair Engagement Events
About this paper, presented at The As an organising and facilitating
Tributaries Project Colloquium (Nov member of the three pilgrimages
20), David writes: “In 2019 three (which means I attended them all), I
water pilgrimages were organised would like to reflect on the events
by … [a small team working with the from the perspective of a
ISCIA Chair]. Three different groups philosopher whose formative years
of participants (a.k.a. ‘water theory-wise were heavily influenced
pilgrims’) met on the two equinoxes by the question of the role of
and the one winter solstice of the philosophy in the context of the
year, to embark on a several-stop ecological crisis. Some insights from
journey from sea to source, Pierre Hadot, Slavoj Zizek, and Alain
including visits to a wastewater Badiou will feature in the paper,
treatment facility, a lighthouse, an and I will explain how some aspects
estuary with an ecologically fraught of the pilgrimages can be seen to
history, and to the pristine source have practical implications for the
of the estuary in the Groendal role of philosophy in and beyond
Nature Reserve near Port Elizabeth. the context of the ecological crisis.
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