ABSTRACT
This middle and central chapter of the book contrasts the central term charis with its opposite, the technological effort to eliminate the charis content of reality and replace it by imitative automatisms. It starts by discussing the term steresis, rooted in the ideas of Aristotle and recently also discussed by Heidegger and Agamben, which captures a delayed, automatised movement, eventually leading to sterility, using a classic essay by Heinrich von Kleist. It then moves to the underground, troglodyte structures in Cappadocia, Central Anatolia (Turkey), especially in Kaymakli. The massive underground troglodyte structures of Cappadocia, with their air shafts and water tunnels, were serving transformational purposes, and through works of classical Greek thinking and mythology, including prominently Hesiod, Empedocles, the Kabeiroi and Hermes, can be associated with efforts of soul snatching. The Cappadocia underground structures can be considered as pioneering efforts to install systematic automatised technology.
