Simian Empire

European artists have long cultivated the tradition of the singerie genre, deploying monkeys as satirical substitutes to expose the folly and pretensions of human behaviour. In seventeenth-century Japan, by contrast, the simian trinity of Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru embodied a moral exemplum, translating ancient Buddhist teachings on the governance of the senses into an accessible visual form. My difficulty in contemporising the ancient trinity, without disrupting its moral authority, contrasted with the ease in updating the singerie. My identification of today’s Simian Empire is rendered almost effortless by their distinctive banner-like caps. To guard against any suspicion of anti-intellectualism, its members are careful to select their epithets from that weighty repository of erudition: The Reader’s Digest Lexicon of Difficult Words. [admittedly, I have not used this source exclusively in my selection]

Singerie Lexicon

A deipnosophist is skilled at dinner table conversation.

Lusus Naturae; freak of nature. Margaret Atwood utilizes the term to depict the tendency of society to isolate their members whose physical features look different from the rest. The main character is a girl who is rejected, called horrible, and nicknamed a monster because she suffers from porphyria (Atwood 265)

Ochlocracy: government by the mob; mob rule

The Pierian Spring of Macedonia was sacred to the Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science.

Fissiparous: tending to break or split up into parts: divisive. fissiparous tendencies within a political party.

Ned Ludd is the legendary person to whom the Luddites attributed the name of their movement. In 1779, Ludd is supposed to have broken two stocking frames in a fit of rage.

Salaud: French generic derogatory term for swine, scoundrel or creep but originally used by Sartre in the specific political  sense of someone who refuses to take responsibility for their acts, demonstrates bad faith and self-deception, a denial of human freedom, abdication of responsibility towards oneself and others.

Hetrodox can describe someone actively challenging or opposing accepted doctrines.

Accidie or accedie has been variously defined as a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. spiritual sloth; apathy; indifference.

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