Displaying: 41-60 of 459 documents

0.158 sec

41. Symposium: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Cynthia R. Nielsen On Poietic Remembering and Forgetting: Hermeneutic Recollection, “Immortality,” and Diotima’s Historico-Hermeneutic Leanings
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Like human existence itself, our enduring legacies—whether poetic, ethical, political, or philosophical—continually unfold and require recurrent communal engagement and (re)enactment. In other words, an ongoing performance of signi􀏔icant works must occur, and this task requires the collective human activity of remembering or gathering-together-again. In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima provides an account of human pursuits of immortality through the creation of artifacts—including laws, poems, and philosophical discourses—that resonates with Gadamer’s account of our engagement with artworks and texts. This essay explores commonalities between Gadamer and Plato through the complex character of Diotima, whose teachings on the processive character of human existence and her understanding of knowledge as dynamic have largely been ignored.Comme l’existence humaine, notre héritage—qu’il soit poétique, éthique, politique ou philosophique—se développe continuellement et requiert un engagement commun et une remise en question permanente. Autrement dit, une représentation continue d’oeuvres signi 􀏔icatives doit se produire, exigeant l’activité humaine collective de re-mémoration et de ré-assemblement. Dans Le Banquet de Platon, Diotime explore les poursuites humaines de l’immortalité par l’invention d’artéfacts—incluant des lois, des poèmes et des discours philosophiques qui font écho à l’explication de Gadamer sur nos relations avec les oeuvres d’art et les textes. Cet essai s’interroge sur les points communs entre Platon et Gadamer à travers la complexité de Diotime dont l’enseignement sur le caractère ‘processif’ de l’existence humaine et sa compréhension du savoir tel un processus dynamique sont largement ignorés.
42. Symposium: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Tiffany N. Tsantsoulas Sylvia Wynter’s Decolonial Rejoinder to Judith Butler’s Ethics of Vulnerability
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Judith Butler argues for collective liberatory action grounded in ontological vulnerability. Yet descriptive social ontology alone provides neither normative ethical prescriptions nor direction for political action. I believe Butler tries to overcome this gap by appealing to equality as an ethical ideal. In this article, I reconstruct how equality operates in her transition from ontological vulnerability to prescriptive commitments. Then, turning to Sylvia Wynter, I argue Butler’s uncritical use of equality constrains the radical direction of her liberatory goals—􀏔irstly because it cannot mitigate the coloniality of Being, and secondly because she 􀏔igures the locus of critique as an anonymous and equally vulnerable body at the limits of the recognizably human. I conclude with Wynter’s demand for liberatory critique to arise out of speci􀏔ic decolonial locations of rupture from our historically situated, oppressive, and overrepresented genre of being human.Judith Butler soutient une notion d’action libératrice fondée sur la vulnérabilité ontologique. Pourtant, l'ontologie sociale descriptive ne fournit ni de prescriptions éthiques normatives ni de directives pour l'action politique. Je pense que Butler tente de surmonter cette lacune en faisant appel à l’égalité comme un idéal éthique. Dans cet article, je reconstruis la manière dont l’égalité opère dans sa transition depuis la vulnérabilité ontologique jusqu’aux engagements prescriptifs. Puis, avec Sylvia Wynter, j’af􀏔irme que Butler utilise l’égalité d’une manière qui limite la radicalité de ses objectifs libérateurs : premièrement, parce que Butler ne peut pas atténuer la colonialité de l'Être et deuxièmement, parce qu’elle désigne comme lieu de la critique un corps aussi anonyme que vulnérable aux limites de ce que l’on reconnaît comme humain. Je conclus avec la demande de Wynter selon laquelle la critique libératrice doit émerger à p artir d e l ieux d e r upture d écoloniaux s péci􀏔iques à n otre genre humain historiquement situé, oppressif et surreprésenté.
43. Symposium: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Felix Ó Murchadha Timely/Untimely: The Rhythm of Things and the Time of Life
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This article presents an understanding of time and temporality as adverbial. In normal discourse we speak of time as a condition of action, thought, and events: to intervene in a timely fashion, to live anachronistically or to be before her time. Adverbially understood, time is experienced in terms of an oscillation between the timely and the untimely. Crucial to this is rhythm, and access to time so understood is acoustic rather than visual. We hear time, we do not see it, or if we do see time we do so only through its rhythmic, acoustic, and indeed musical structure. Discussing the Book of Ecclesiastes, philosophers such as Nancy and Lefebvre, as well as music theorists, this article articulates the different rhythms of the timely/untimely. It shows time as a living rhythm between the “energy of beginnings” and mechanicity.Cet article présente une conception du temps comme adverbiale. Dans le discours normal, nous parlons du temps comme condition d'action, de pensée et d'événements: intervenir en temps opportun, vivre anachroniquement ou être avant son temps. Le temps adverbialement conçu est vécu en termes d'oscillation entre le temps opportun et le temps inopportun. Le rythme est crucial pour de telles relations et l'accès au temps ainsi conçu est plutôt acoustique que visuel. Nous entendons le temps, nous ne le voyons pas, ou, si en effet nous voyons le temps, ce n’est que de part sa structure rythmique, acoustique, et même musicale. Cet article énonce les différents rythmes de l’opportun et inopportun en traitant du Livre de l'Ecclésiaste et des philosophes tels que Nancy et Lefebvre ainsi qu’ à des théoriciens de la musique. Il montre le temps comme un rythme vivant entre «l'énergie des débuts» et la mécanicité.
44. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Saulius Jurga How Can a Subject Be Reified?: The Role of “Thinglikeness” in Georg Lukács’s Account of Subjectivity in Capitalism
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper examines Georg Lukács’s conception of rei􀏔ied subjectivity under capitalism. I claim that Lukács’s transition from his ethical pre-Marxist notion of the reified subject, to his early-Marxist understanding of capitalist reification of the subject contains the elements of a potential Lukácsian anti-critique of any epistemic or normative reinterpretation of his theory of reification. In particular, the shift in Lukács’s conceptualization of the thinglikeness of objects implied in his dialectical social theory points to a historically precise interpretation of the subject’s reification. The paper also suggests that Lukács’s project of dereification is rooted in the affective experience of reified subjects.Cet article examine la conception lukacsienne de la subjectivité réifiée en régime capitaliste. Mon propos est de montrer que le passage de la notion éthique pré-marxiste du sujet réifié à une compréhension marxiste précoce de la réification capitaliste du sujet chez Lukács contient des éléments d’une critique lukacsienne potentielle de toute réinterprétation normative de sa théorie de la réification. Le tournant dans la conceptualisation lukacsienne de l’apparente « choiséité » (Dinghaftigkeit) des objets, implicite dans la dialectique de sa théorie sociale, fait signe vers une interprétation historiquement précise de la réification du sujet. L’article suggère également que le projet lukacsien de la dé-réification est enraciné dans l’expérience affective des sujets réifiés.
45. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Thomas Telios Resisting the Creativity Narrative: Cornelius Castoriadis on the Fundaments of Capitalist Subjectivity
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
After its proliferation as a primarily psychological term in the literature of the late 1960s, creativity has since advanced to a core notion also for sociology. The first part of the paper tackles “the creativity narrative” according to three paradigmatic readings brought forward by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, Maurizio Lazzarato, and most recently Andreas Reckwitz. Despite the insightful accounts that those readings provide concerning the entanglement of creativity to capitalist ways of production, the practical consequences they offer regarding how to contest this entanglement are debatable. Therefore, in the second part of the article a fourth understanding of creativity is invoked that was proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis. As argued, the radicality of this concept lies in defining creativity as a mode of production of the subject’s psyche as a collective co-existence from which broader, necessarily collective practices can be derived.Après sa prolifération en tant que notion psychologique dans la littérature des années 1960, la créativité est aussi devenue une notion fondamentale pour la sociologie. La première partie de l’article aborde le « récit de la créativité » à partir des trois lectures paradigmatiques proposées par Luc Boltanski et Ève Chiapello, Maurizio Lazzarato et, plus récemment, par Andreas Reckwitz. Malgré le fait qu’elles éclairent de manière signi􀏔icative l’enchevêtrement de la créativité aux modes capitalistes de production, les conséquences pratiques que ces lectures tirent sur les contestations possibles de cet enchevêtrement sont sujettes au débat. C’est pourquoi, dans la deuxième partie de ce texte, une quatrième compréhension de la créativité est proposée à partir de Cornelius Castoriadis. La radicalité de ce concept repose sur sa dé􀏔inition en tant que mode de production du psychisme du sujet compris en tant que co-existence collective, à partir de laquelle des pratiques plus larges et nécessairement collectives peuvent découler.
46. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Dave Mesing From Structuralism to Points of Rupture: George Jackson and the Tactics of the Subject
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper considers the ontological and political implications of the concept of the subject within structuralism. I turn first to Balibar in order to articulate structuralism as a tendency or movement rather than fixed set of positions, using some indications he has provided in order to demonstrate how thoroughly embedded the subject is as a problem within this tendency. I argue that Laclau and Mouffe’s work on hegemony deepens the political stakes of this problem while also introducing the grammar of strategy in an ambivalent and underdefined manner. Considering some possible options for understanding strategy within a structuralist framework, I contend that a stronger theoretical account of strategy is necessary. In order to provide some outlines for such a project, I conclude the analysis by emphasizing the contribution that George Jackson’s writings can provide to this framework, suggesting that the role of the subject should be assigned to tactics.Cet article analyse les implications ontologiques et politiques du concept structuraliste de sujet. En me tournant dans un premier temps vers les indications de Balibar concernant l’intrication profonde du problème du sujet au sein du structuralisme, je montre que ce dernier devrait être compris comme une tendance ou un mouvement plutôt que comme une position philosophique définitive. Je montre ensuite que le travail de Laclau et Mouffe sur l’hégémonie permet d’approfondir les enjeux politiques de ce problème, tout en introduisant de manière ambivalente et prédéfinie la grammaire de la stratégie. En considérant quelques options possibles pour comprendre la stratégie dans une perspective structuraliste, je soutiens la nécessité de l’approcher théoriquement de manière plus puissante. En guise d’esquisse d’un tel projet, je conclus mon analyse avec la contribution qu’y apportent les écrits de George Jackson, en suggérant que le rôle du sujet devrait revenir à la tactique.
47. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Fabio Bruschi Racist Subjectivation, Capitalism, and Colonialism: Decolonizing Thought Beyond Education
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This article highlights the impasses of anti-racist struggles that understand racism as an opinion or a prejudice and use education as their only means for addressing it. Racism should rather be understood as a socio-historical subjective structure rooted in the process of constitution of the division of labour on a global scale through colonialism, a process that was crucial to the institution of capitalism. This is why we will put forth the importance of rejecting the narrations that camouflage colonization with the idea of civilization, and the necessity to produce decolonial counter-histories. We will thus claim that such an endeavor should start from the struggles of racialized peoples against the different forms of coloniality—that is, from the refusal by racialized peoples of the representations that are imposed on them, and from their repositioning on the basis of their alterity. Only the position of a powerful alterity can in fact make possible a real equality.Cet article met en évidence les impasses des luttes antiracistes qui conçoivent le racisme comme une opinion ou un préjugé et utilisent l’éducation comme le seul moyen d’y remédier. Le racisme devrait plutôt être compris comme une structure socio-historique subjective qui s’enracine dans le procès de constitution de la division mondiale du travail par le colonialisme, un procès qui a été décisif pour l’institution du capitalisme. C’est pourquoi nous mettrons en avant le caractère problématique des récits qui recouvrent la colonisation de l’idée de civilisation et la nécessité de produire des contre-histoires décoloniales. Il s’agira alors de montrer que, pour ce faire, il faut partir des luttes des racisés contre les différentes formes de colonialité—c’est-à-dire du refus par les racisés des représentations qui leur sont adressées et de leur repositionnement à partir de leur altérité. Seule la position d’une altérité puissante peut, en effet, rendre possible une égalité réelle.
48. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Jean-Luc Nancy, Thomas Lewis Preface to the Translation
49. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Jean-Luc Nancy, Thomas Lewis Nietzsche: “Yet Where Are the Eyes to See It?”
50. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Yasemin Sari Arendt and Nancy: Revolution and Democratic Responsibility
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In light of the recent political events, it is clear that democracy itself has come to be contested and modified in a plethora of democratic practices that have expanded the very articulation of equal citizenship. My argument in this article is twofold: first, I rearticulate Arendt’s conception of “revolution” found in her On Revolution by insisting on its “beginning” and “founding” dimensions for the appearance of freedom. Coupled with Jean-Luc Nancy’s insight into a “spirit of democracy” that does not reside in its “form, institution, regime,” I then develop a principle of democratic responsibility that consists in opening up a revolutionary space that enjoins us to become a demos. Such revolutionary space does not necessarily entail a “successful revolution,” but more so an attitude towards our existence together.À la lumière des événements politiques récents, il est clair que la démocratie elle-même en est venue à être contestée et modifiée en une myriade de pratiques démocratiques qui étendent l’articulation de la citoyenneté égalitaire. Mon argument dans cet article est double. Premièrement, je réarticule la conception arendtienne de « révolution » telle qu’on la retrouve dans De la révolution en insistant sur ses dimensions de « commencement » et de « fondation » pour l’apparition de la liberté. À l’aide de l’idée, articulée par Jean-Luc Nancy, d’un « esprit de la démocratie » qui ne réside pas dans une « forme, institution, ou régime », je développe, dans un deuxième temps, un principe de responsabilité démocratique qui consiste à ouvrir un espace révolutionnaire dans lequel nous sommes appelés à devenir un demos. Un tel espace n’implique en rien le « succès » de la révolution mais plutôt une attitude envers notre existence en commun.
51. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Daniel I. Harris Nietzsche on the Soul as a Political Structure
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
A critic of metaphysically robust accounts of the human self, Nietzsche means not to do away with the self entirely, but to reimagine it. He pursues an account according to which the unity of the self is born out of a coherent organization of drives and yet is not something other than that organization. Readers of Nietzsche have pointed to a so-called “lack of fit” between this theoretical account of the self, according to which the self is nothing apart from the organization of drives, and Nietzsche’s practical account of human agency, which often seems to require that the self be something more than mere drives. I suggest Nietzsche’s interest in Greek agonistic norms of contest sheds light on this apparent incongruity. Agonistic relationships, insofar as they cultivate contest among diverse forces, are for Nietzsche one appropriate model for the subjectivity of beings whose psychology is similarly characterized by contest among diverse forces—that is, beings like us.Nietzsche est un critique des théories métaphysiques de l’ego. Cependant, il a l'intention de ne pas entièrement éliminer l’ego, mais de le réinventer. Selon Nietzsche, l’ego est le produit d'une organisation cohérente des pulsions et pourtant il n'est pas autre chose que cette organisation. Certains ont souligné une contradiction entre ce récit de soi et le récit de l'action humaine de Nietzsche, qui semble souvent exiger que le soi soit autre chose que de simples pulsions. Je suggère que l'intérêt de Nietzsche pour le concours grec soit important pour cette discussion. Selon Nietzsche, la contestation, parce qu'elle organise diverses forces, est un modèle approprié pour la subjectivité des personnes, dont la psychologie est caractérisée de la même manière par la lutte entre diverses forces.
52. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Christopher Cohoon Extravagant Generosity: Plotinus, Nietzsche, Levinas
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper proposes a heterodox reading of Levinas’s Otherwise Than Being by means of a hitherto unacknowledged lineage run-ning from Plotinus through Nietzsche to Levinas. Its claim is two-fold. (1) Throughout Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and especially in its important speech on the “gift-giving virtue,” Nietzsche corporealiz-es and ethicizes Plotinian emanationist metaphysics, borrowing from it the notion of an auto-generosity that is extravagant and non-substantial. (2) Levinas’s late conception of embodied ethical giving in Otherwise Than Being borrows from this borrowing, al-beit in a way that draws more deeply on the logic of emanationism than Zarathustra does. Interpreting Levinas through Plotinus and Nietzsche in this way provides access to a version of his late ac-count of embodied ethical giving that is much stranger than the ul-tra-humanist version typically foregrounded both in the literature and in his self-presentation.
53. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Morganna Lambeth Heidegger, Technology, and the Body
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
While the human body is not a point of focus in Heidegger’s later philosophy of technology, I argue that considering our contempo-rary relationship to our own bodies provides crucial support to Heidegger’s account. Heidegger suggests that, in our contemporary age of technology, humans are taken to be “human resources”: like natural resources and technological devices, humans should be available for efficient and flexible incorporation into any number of projects. I argue that the contemporary attitude toward the human body provides evidence confirming this suggestion. Moreover, I identify the body as a unique site of resistance to the age of tech-nology, an anomaly to the technological paradigm, as the body con-stantly resists our attempts to transform it into a resource.
54. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Christine Daigle Introduction: Selfhood, Embodiment, Materiality
55. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Ada S. Jaarsma, Suze G. Berkhout Nocebos and the Psychic Life of Biopower
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
“Nocebo,” a term coined in the mid-twentieth century, refers to the onset of negative side effects in individuals who anticipate harm from biomedical treatment. Sylvia Wynter invokes nocebo effects as racializing phenomena that demonstrate the injurious impact of colonial practices. By soliciting insights from Nocebo Studies, as well as Wynter and Achille Mbembe, this article explores decolonial philosophies of selfhood, especially in terms of the meaning-making expressivity of selves. This conversation between Nocebo Studies and Wynter proffers ways to engage with nocebo effects as mani-festations of the structures of colonial violence, while undercutting biomedical accounts of nocebos that presuppose an overly generic human body.
56. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Corinne Lajoie A Critical Phenomenology of Sickness
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper takes Porochista Khakpour’s personal narrative of chronic illness, disability, and addiction in Sick: A Memoir (2018) as a starting point to reflect on social and material features of sick bodily subjectivity. In ways heretofore largely unexplored by tradi-tional phenomenologies of illness, I ask what different modalities of the body come to light if we move beyond the privatization of dis-ease as a biological dysfunction and instead bring into focus its re-lation with conditions of existence that make and keep some of us sick.
57. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Emile Fromet De Rosnay Agamben’s Posthuman Mediality: Ethics, History, and Language
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Posthumanism’s abandonment of language and embrace of natural sciences can impede thinking about “selfhood, embodiment, mate-riality.” The role of language in a posthuman context involves a tri-ple consideration: ethics, history, and enunciation. The ethical di-mension works through the biopolitical risk of determinism. Any ethical “situatedness” must account for history. Finally, working through Agamben’s thought via Benvenistian linguistics (which in-fluence Agamben), I examine the interplay of ethics and history with respect to enunciation as an alternative to the legacy of de-construction. The claim here is that the gaps between embodiment and materiality, and the singularities of experience and ethics, in-volve history and language as “pure means.”
58. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Émilie Dionne The Pluri-Person: A Feminist New Materialist Figure for a Precarious World
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Precarious times have material consequences. Yet, feminist new materialist approaches demonstrate that the concepts of the “ma-terial” and of “matter” are radically different than what is com-monly held in the Western tradition. This article argues that femi-nist new materialism provides practical, essential, and ethical tools for political action in dynamic and entangled worlds. In such worlds (e.g., the Anthropocene), it is critically needed to establish an ethics of responsiveness, a culture of ethical living and dying with others. Yet, this ethic must respond to and acknowledge our relational, entangled, dynamic, and agentic ontology. In response to this, this article proposes the “pluri-person,” a political figure that mobilizes contributions of feminist new materialism to produce an ethical, ontology-making, everyday practice/response to “Precari-ous Times.”
59. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Mauro Senatore “Who is Nietzsche?”: Derrida, Heidegger, and the Autobiographical Question
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This article focuses on the constellation of texts in which Derrida engages with the autobiographical question raised by Heidegger in his lectures on Nietzsche. It argues that Derrida takes this question (“Who is Nietzsche?”) as the point of departure not only of two di-verging approaches to the problem of the signature of the philoso-pher, but also of the two texts that he devotes to the exploration of these approaches. In these texts, distancing himself from Heidegger, Derrida interprets Nietzsche’s treatment of his proper name as a new logic of the living and a new thought of self-reference.
60. Symposium: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Dylan Shaul Recognition and Hospitality: Hegel and Derrida
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This article imagines an alternative outcome to Hegel’s life-and-death struggle for recognition, one commensurate with Derrida’s critique of Hegel’s allegedly reserved negativity. Rather than pro-ducing lord and bondsman, the struggle is shown to be capable of producing a host and a guest, operating under the relation of hos-pitality. Pitt-Rivers’s reinterpretation of Boas’s classic ethnographic account of Inuit hospitality provides a model for the emergence of the alternative outcome. Derrida’s equation of deconstruction with hospitality illustrates its fundamental differences from Hegelian dialectics, expanding the significance of the struggle and its out-comes to the meaning of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole.