This article argues that psychoanalytic notions of affect – including ideas of anxiety and melancholia, as well as deconstructive concepts of auto-affection – offer a feminist ethico-politics and a notion of affect as interface. Beyond the confines of the experiential and the positivist, both psychoanalysis and deconstruction provide insights into affect as a technology that understands the subject as porous. I consider works by Derek Jarman and Shirin Neshat to demonstrate the importance of the ethico-politics of affect as interface in (...) contemporary cultural production. Both artists, in the process of considering the spectacular nature of notions of feminist and queer, use images of interface as a way of delimiting the spectacular nature of being and demonstrating the singularity of the event, the desire to fix through framing, and the parergonal nature of framing. The presence of the subject is questioned even as an auto-affection is suggestive of a spectral demand of the ethico-political. In the case of Jarman’s Blue, the denial of image as face in favour of the screen as interface is interrupted by sound and voice, which gesture toward representation as impossible but necessary. In the case of Neshat, the persistence of the photographic – the highly aesthetic self-portrait as mugshot – foregrounds face as interface, as one that questions presence through the insistence of a representational apparatus. (shrink)

Kant is famous for his universalist moral theory, which emphasizes human dignity, equality, and autonomy. Yet he also defended sexist and (until late in his life) racist views. In this essay, I address the question of how current readers of Kant should deal with Kant’s sexism and racism. I first provide a brief description of Kant’s views on sexual and racial hierarchies, and of the way they intersect. I then turn to the question of whether we should set aside Kant’s (...) sexism and racism or ‘translate’ his egalitarian principles into inegalitarian ones. I argue for a third position, namely, that we should highlight the tensions that pervade Kant’s theory. In the final section, I argue that the use of inclusive language and female pronouns in recent discussions of Kant’s moral and political philosophy carries significant risks. I end by articulating several preconditions for fruitfully using Kant’s moral principles to criticize sexism and racism. (shrink)

This paper deals with Derrida's analysis of Kant's Critique of Judgment in his essay 'Economimesis'. I argue that Derrida's analysis of Kant's aesthetics can be used to describe the aporia within Kantian politics between rebellion and progressive revolutionary acts. The focus of my argument falls on examining how the recent debate over Derrida's ethics can be usefully considered from the background of this treatment of Kant. In particular, the analysis Derrida gives of Kant's aesthetics commits him to a series of (...) conceptual constraints that can be detected in his recent commentaries on 'forgiveness' and 'hospitality'. I suggest that these recent commentaries on political topics also depart from his earlier practice of ethics in 'Economimesis' as a 'witnessing' of the particular. This departure can be clearly seen once the Kantian background to Derrida's recent writing is set out. (shrink)

The article examines the peculiarities of the relationship between phenomena of freedom and tradition in the discourse of deconstruction. In this case, the tradition stands primarily as philosophical tradition, a critical questioning about which underlies Derridian thought. The latter in a great measure is a philosophical reflection on just the philosophical heritage ("philosophy of philosophy"). The author carries out her own analysis of the relationship between deconstruction and philosophical tradition in connection with the problem of freedom. In this respect, she (...) uses the Derridian concept-metaphor of translation (passage), drawing on Mark Crepon’s historico-philosophical findings. Considering the peculiarities of the thematization of concepts of freedom and tradition in deconstructive discourse, the author reveals a connection between the problems of (a) limits of philosophy (as one of the cornerstone issues of Derridian discourse) and (b) the specific correlation between the phenomena of freedom and tradition. It has been established that it is the ideas of other and translation (passage) that stand as links enabling such a connection. For the history of philosophy of the second half of the 20th century, it is important to correctly understand the Derridian concept of tradition. The article proves that Derrida's interpretation of this concept (1) is significantly determined by the factor of other, (2) is based on the paradoxical interaction of tradition and freedom, (3) causes and enables deconstructing of the opposition between freedom and violence. As a result, it is established that deconstruction, which is apparently guided by the goal of liberation from tradition, in essence turns out to be a freedom for tradition, if the latter is interpreted in the semantic context set by the concepts of translation (or transition), other and limit. (shrink)

In his critical and his later work, Kant recommends apathy to the moral agent faced with pathological phenomena. Notoriously, Kant even rejects compassion (Mitleiden) as pathological. A deconstruction of Kant's 'apathology', i.e. of his systematic treatment of compassion, reveals disgust as quasi-transcendental affect at the roots of the moral agent's apathy.

The article takes critiques of the entanglement of law with violence as a point of departure for exploring the possibility of a ‘tertium of law’. It thereby seeks to overcome the dichotomous basic assumptions that see law as always oscillating between an apology for violence on the one hand, and a utopia of reason on the other. The text analyses the possibility of this ‘tertium’, a ‘legal force’ beyond legal violence and legal reason, in four steps, drawing on the work (...) of Jacques Derrida and authors of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, in particular on Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. It argues that in a first step law needs to be dissociated from the State. The violence of law, however, does not stem solely from law’s ties with State power. Law itself is violent even where it is not State law. The second step of legal critique thus needs to consist in the commemoration of legal violence, followed by a third that demands the transformation of violence to force. These three instances of critique are the precondition for a last and essential step according to which a critique of law must facilitate the transcendence of legal violence by taking law and its promise of justice at its word in order to turn this promise against law itself. (shrink)

In her book, Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett thinks through what ontological, political, and ecological questions would look like if humans could admit that matter and nonhuman things are living, creative agents; the contributors to this issue of Evental Aesthetics begin to think through what aesthetic questions would look like.

Kant’s Critique of Judgment is a storehouse full of provocative concepts and structures, which is why, since at least the 1970’s, many contemporary Kant scholars and philosophers of other sorts have attempted to mine and explicate this text to varying degrees of success. Among these concepts and structures, there are a few that continue to evade complete elucidation. One of the most well tread, albeit still contested, grounds that appears in the third Critique is “purposiveness without purpose.” Picking up from (...) some recent interpretations of Kantian aesthetics, I contend that it is possible to discover at least three forms of purposiveness without purpose in aesthetic judgments. A second concept, the sensus communis, I will contend, is as important as the three sites of purposiveness without purpose. In fact, I will show how the sensus communis, in its ternary form, can be mapped onto the three sites of purposiveness without purpose; the two concepts cannot be separated. Finally, this mapping will allow for an attempt at what I could refer to as an “inconstruction” of the Deduction of Aesthetic Judgments that will engage many of the long-standing questions surrounding this text. (shrink)

In this thesis I provide an interpretation of Kant's theories of knowledge, nature, and being in order to argue that Kant's ontology is a productive ontology: it is a theory of being that includes a notion of production. I aim to show that Kant's epistemology and philosophy of nature are based on a theory of being as productivity. The thesis contributes to knowledge in that it considers in detail Kant's ontology and theory of being, topics which have generally been ignored (...) or misunderstood. In arguing for Kant's productive ontology, I argue against Heidegger's interpretation of Kant, which states that Kant understands being as "produced permanent presence" or as divinely created materiality. Based on Kant's definition of being as positing, I argue, by contrast to Heidegger, that Kant understands being as the original productive relation between subject and object. This can also be expressed as the relation between formality and materiality, or between epistemic conditions and existence, that is productive of objects of experience. Being is not producedness but a relation of productivity, through which both subject and object are themselves productive. The subject is productive in its spontaneity, and nature, determined as dynamical interaction, is interpreted as productive. The subject, I will argue, does not understand nature as produced, but approaches it with a comportment towards its production as object of experience. Because of its own subjective productivity - spontaneity or "life" - the subject has a "productive comportment" towards nature. Ontology, I claim, concerns the realm of the productive relation of being, the realm of the relation between epistemic conditions and existence, and therefore the realm of possible experience. This marks Kant as divergent not only from what Heidegger calls "the ontology of the extant", but also from the concept-based ontology of the German rationalists. The general aims of the thesis are, first, to argue that being for Kant is the original relation between subject and object, and that ontology concerns this relation; second, to argue that ontology and being are understood in terms of production and productivity; and third, to argue that Heidegger is wrong to ascribe to Kant an understanding of being as "produced pennanent presence". I approach these aims by examining a number of Kant's texts in detail, focusing particularly on Kant's theses about existence and being in The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God and the Critique of Pure Reason; on Kant's philosophy of nature and dynamical matter in the Transcendental Analytic and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science; on Kant's doctrine of experience and objectivity in the Transcendental Deductions; on ontological reflection and the productive comportment of "life" in the Critique of Judgment; and on Kant's final theory of matter, life and production in the Opus Postumum. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida returns relentlessly to the question of literature which is already a prominent concern in early texts such as Writing and Difference. The focus of this article is the conception of literature in ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’, in which Derrida discusses filiation with reference to Abraham and Isaac, the fundamental necessity of secrecy and the notion of the pardon. Above all, it is Kafka's Letter to His Father which perhaps provides a paradigm for defining literature. In this (...) specular address, the promise of a heritage is in the balance. Writing incessantly on Kafka, Maurice Blanchot also reflects on literature. The notion of literature put forward by Derrida in ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’ is considered in this article, as well as reflections by Blanchot, to show what might be at stake in Kafka's Letter to His Father. (shrink)

Este ensayo se propone como una lectura tentativa de “Fors. Les mots anglés de Nicolas Abraham et Maria Torok”, texto que Jacques Derrida publicase en 1976 como prefacio al libro de Nicolas Abraham y Maria Torok, Cryptonymie. Le verbier de l’homme aux loups. A través de una suerte de mecanismo compositivo, se plantea que “Fors”, como operación bifaz de un doble cortante, pone en cuestión el campo de la institución psicoanalítica. A la vez, texto indispositivo e indigesto, expone el límite (...) de la asimilación introyectiva y cuestiona todo sistema de apropiación, neutralización, silenciamiento y/o recuerdo-interiorizante. Como un vómito interno, se trata, así, del “Yo” que porta al otro –al otro mortal en el yo y fuera del yo–, de aquello que instituye un fracaso en el cumplimiento de la asimilación. Se hacen lugar las cuestiones de la cripta, el lugar, la muerte –el otro como muerto vivo–, la cifra, el límite entre incorporación e introyección, el duelo imposible, así como un trazado de la operación del analista como poeta-traductor. “Fors” –fueros, salvo, excepto–, resta intraducible, indigerible, como marca una tópica fuera de sí. Deja la tarea de la traducción sin aforo, fuera de quicio, desaforada en una experiencia sin reserva ni fuero interno, infiel, desmedida, autoinmune, como un trabajo que no puede sino perder sus fueros, sus exenciones, sus privilegios. No estamos sino desaforados en traducción. Nuestra estancia en la transposición de la lengua: el desafuero. (shrink)

The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics offers a comprehensive overview of Latin American aesthetic and conceptual production addressing the more-than-human environment at the intersection between art, activism, and critique. Fields include literature, performance, film, and other audiovisual media as well as their interactions with community activisms. Scholars who have helped establish environmental approaches in the field as well as emergent critical voices revisit key concepts such as ecocriticism, (post-)extractivism, and multinaturalism, while opening new avenues of dialogue with areas including (...) critical race theory and ethnicity, energy humanities, queer-*trans studies, and infrastructure studies, among others. This volume both traces these genealogies and maps out key positions in this increasingly central field of Latin Americanism, at the same time as they relate it to the environmental humanities at large. By showing how artistic and literary productions illuminate critical zones of environmental thought, articulating urgent social and material issues with cultural archives, historical approaches and conceptual interventions, this volume offers cutting-edge critical tools for approaching literature and the arts from new angles that call into question the nature/culture boundary. (shrink)

In this volume, leading scholars in Asian and comparative philosophy take the work of Joel J. Kupperman as a point of departure to consider new perspectives on Confucian ethics. Kupperman is one of the few eminent Western philosophers to have integrated Asian philosophical traditions into his thought, developing a character-based ethics synthesizing Western, Chinese, and Indian philosophies. With their focus on Confucian ethics, contributors respond, expand, and engage in critical dialogue with Kupperman’s views. Kupperman joins the conversation with responses and (...) comments that conclude the volume. (shrink)

Disgust (Ekel, dégoût) is a state of high alert. It acutely says "no" to a variety of phenomena that seemingly threaten the integrity of the self, if not its very existence. A counterpart to the feelings of appetite, desire, and love, it allows at the same time for an acting out of hidden impulses and libidinal drives. In Disgust, Winfried Menninghaus provides a comprehensive account of the significance of this forceful emotion in philosophy, aesthetics, literature, the arts, psychoanalysis, and theory (...) of culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Topics addressed include the role of disgust as both a cognitive and moral organon in Kant and Nietzsche; the history of the imagination of the rotting corpse; the counter-cathexis of the disgusting in Romantic poetics and its modernist appeal ever since; the affinities of disgust and laughter and the analogies of vomiting and writing; the foundation of Freudian psychoanalysis in a theory of disgusting pleasures and practices; the association of disgusting "otherness" with truth and the trans-symbolic "real" in Bataille, Sartre, and Kristeva; Kafka's self-representation as an "Angel" of disgusting smells and acts, concealed in a writerly stance of uncompromising "purity"; and recent debates on "Abject Art.". (shrink)

This essay returns to Jacques Derrida’s 1975 essay, “Economimesis,” to account for its unacknowledged Marxist language. Focusing on Derrida’s analysis of the mouth in the Critique of Judgment, this...

In L’animal que donc je suis Jacques Derrida suggests that the question of what would be proper to the animal should ‘change tune’. I read this extraordinary passage, in which Derrida calls for us to lend an ear to an ‘unheard-of music’ that neither emancipates the non-human nor condemns it to inarticulate noise, in conjunction with the nexus of animality, telephony and the cri de la littérature that unfolds in Hélène Cixous’s writing, exploring the significant role assumed by the sonorous (...) in these descriptions of non-human life. For Cixous, the telephonic power of near-instantaneous substitution and of prostheticity is inseparable from the sounds produced by the coterie of animals that populate the writings of these two authors. What is intriguing is that this bestiary is almost always said with a certain homonymy or homophony. Hence this article traces what I dub an ‘homofaunie’ echoing Cixous’s series of puns and neologisms such as ‘(t)elefaun’ and ‘(t)elephantasy’ that capture Derrida’s attention. The article asks what is at stake for theorizing non-human life – not just animal but also plant and so-called inanimate life – if the mode of questioning is to be redirected by a specifically aural attunement in which listening itself is retuned under the guidance of untranslatable homophony. (shrink)

A distinctive characteristic of Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony is its insistence on the denial of an essence or ground of the subject. This element of their theory is derived from their notion of antagonism, in which a relation with a ground is brought into question by revealing its contingency. This article argues that the political dimension of this argument makes sense only in the context of Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of modernity. However, the universalizing of modernity as the (...) form of hegemony reduces the ontological notion of antagonism to a dialectical or empirical notion of contradiction. This article examines two key moves in this process: first, the reduction of the subject to Lacan’s account of the subject; and second, the reduction of modernity to an ontotheologicalpolitical structure derived from Lefort as the support of the hegemonic subject. From this the article examines Laclau’s response to the exhaustion of political modernity in the figure of complexity, from which antagonism is evacuated through the hegemony of the category of myth. Finally, the article discusses a nonhegemonic approach to antagonism derived from the work of Foucault, Wolin and Rancière. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo presenta una revisión detallada de la deconstrucción de la subjetividad estética moderna ensayada por Jacques Derrida en su confrontación con la célebre e influyente Kritik der Urteilskraft de Kant y, a la vez, sitúa esta empresa en el contexto mayor del corpus derridiano por medio de la explicitación de la vasta red conceptual que la sostiene. En último término, lo que aquí se explora -siguiendo siempre a Derrida- es una comprensión de la experiencia estética como sustracción, como (...) fractura del campo subjetivo por efecto de la introducción de una presencia irreductible.: This article presents a detailed account of the aesthetic subject’s deconstruction as developed by Jacques Derrida in his confrontation with Kant’s famous and influential Critique of judgment. At the same time, it places this enterprise in the context of Derrida’s corpus by making explicit the vast conceptual network that lies behind it. In the last analysis, what is here explored - following Derrida’s lead - is an understanding of aesthetical experience as subtraction, as a breach into the subjective field through the introduction of an irreducible non-presence. (shrink)

Perhaps one of the most troubling passages in all three of Kant’s Critiques is a short, confusing passage in which Kant claims that a judgment of taste must precede the feeling of pleasure. Many interpreters have argued that such a claim necessitates a viciously circular argument. But this circularity might not be vicious at all. In fact, this revolving shape actually leads to the most important site of the entire Analytic: the logic of the “without” as in the famous “purposiveness (...) without purpose.” From an alternative position we will see that this spiraling shape repeats throughout the text, especially the four moments of the Analytic of Beauty. We will try to distinguish this aesthetic spiral from the classic hermeneutic circle, then return to the circular order of precedence in aesthetic judgment. Finally, we will try to clarify what is universally communicated in the demand on others involved in a judgment of taste. (shrink)