Violence is signaled by a mark of discontinuity, interruption, rupture. The tripartite temporality of violence, with its strong focus on the present, points to the originary violence. Moreover, the violent event is structuring the order of the action sequences in an actual violent (embodied) interaction. The interactional dynamics in violent encounters between co-present actors shapes the specific forms of the experiencing in (and of) the violent interaction. Based on how violence is experienced in an interactive situation, the phenomenon of violence (...) articulates itself according to three coordinates: directedness, co-performativity and de-capabilisation. The outlining of the structure of the lived experience of violence is revealing something irreducible in it. To understand the experience of violence as such, I propose that we accept the idea of violence per se and depart from the idea that the acts of violence are essentially moral actions. The core of the ethical-moral discussion concerning violence should be grounded instead on the moment of conversion identifiable when we take into account the reaction to violence. (shrink)

Joining the university context in the middle of the 19th century, Philology served as a comprehensive basis for what nowadays is meant by literary and linguistic studies. Depending on the specialization tendency that would settle down in the academic context, each of these areas followed separate or even divergent paths, losing, to a great extent, the contact with its initial basis. Despite this state of affairs, Philology has displayed a strong capacity of resistance, maintaining its traditional dimension active or going (...) through metamorphoses that resulted from the incorporation of new technologies, as well as from the epistemological adjustment that enabled it to overcome its first positivist stages. Trying to find a new place inside the general framework of Social Sciences and Humanities, literary studies need to recover its order and credibility, two factors that the new face of Philology can inspire. The present study aims at reconstructing the most recent trajectory undergone by this field of research and education, by identifying a space of reconnection that already seems to be adequate and beneficial. (shrink)

In times of a felt need to justify the value of the humanities, the need to revisit and re-establish the public relevance of the discipline of history cannot come as a surprise. On the following pages I will argue that this need is unappeasable by scholarly proposals. The much desired revitalization of historical writing lies instead in reconciling ourselves with the dual meaning of the word history, in exploring the necessary interconnection between history understood as the course of events and (...) as historical writing. Despite the general tendency of the last decades to forbid philosophizing about history in the former sense (at least in departments of history and philosophy), I think that to a certain extent we already do so without succumbing to substantive thought. We already have the sprouts of a speculative although only quasi-substantive philosophy of history that nevertheless takes seriously the postwar criticism of the substantive enterprise. In this essay I will first try to outline this quasi-substantive philosophy of history that attests to the historical sensibility of our times; and second, I will try to outline its consequences regarding history as historical writing. Finally, in place of a conclusion I will suggest that historical writing is not as much a contribution to public agendas as it is the very arena in which public life is at stake. (shrink)

Запропонована розвідка – феноменологічне описування досвіду думки як досвіду вільного самовизначення філософа у поєднанні його фахової діяльності, життєвих обставин і текстів як проектів самореалізації філософуючого у намаганні віднайти себе, заявити про свою присутність у світі. Філософське описування розглядається як описування пізнавальної ситуації, у яку включений сам філософуючий, коли описування співпадає з самоописуванням, екзистенціальною напругою мисленнєвого процесу в досвіді самореалізації. Філософський текст передає стан, пережитий філософом-творцем, тобто те, що з філософом відбулося, тож філософський текст свідчить на користь присутності філософа-творця у світі (...) й для світу. У цьому сенсі філософський твір – перформативний, спрямований на реалізацію думки, для того вона себе й демонструвала, аби впливати на контексти. Зроблено акцент на проблемі становлення філософської логіки сучасної культури та засадах, на яких вона формується, що дозволяє розширити розуміння специфіки сучасної раціональності. (shrink)

Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experience with music as the result of encountering sound/music in the context of a specific situation. By presenting a transdisciplinary sub-field of empirical (concert) studies, we unfold this theory for (...) one such frame: the classical concert. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, a selective literature review is conducted to look for evidence on the general plausibility of the single elements of this emerging theory and to identify desiderata. We refer to common criticisms of the standard classical concert, and how new concert formats try to overcome alleged shortcomings and detrimental effects. Finally, an empirical research program is proposed, in which frames and frame components are experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience. Such a research program will provide empirical evidence to tackle a question that is still open to debate, i.e., whether the diversified world of modern-day music listening formats also holds a place for the classical concert – and if so, for what kind of classical concert. (shrink)

In response to the interruption of all levels of education following COVID-19, we start by underlining the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Next, we inquire into the question of presence in physical and virtual classrooms, and offer a discussion of presence as “being-here-now,” a “movement toward becoming,” and as gelassenheit or “releasement toward things.” We highlight the materiality of communication, and the performative production and transformation of the classroom space. Finally, we illustrate how performative writing enhances the (...) sense of being-here-now, and facilitates the co-inhabiting of online learning spaces that lack co-presence of bodies in the same physical environment. (shrink)

This article analyses the topic of presence in modern and contemporary religious art by means of the work of two artists. Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory (1951-1962) will be compared to the Buddhism-inspired works of Antony Gormley. Sutherlands Christ in Glory is intended to show Christ’s presence to the involved observer: the invisible Christ can become present through interaction with Christ in Glory in the same way that Christ becomes present through prayer. Viewed in connection with other works by Gormley, (...) Land, Sea, and Air II (1982) is intended to show presence to the viewer, the body as presence. This concerns an attitude of quiet concentration and awareness in connection with the ‘elemental’ world. Theologically speaking, the difference between Christ in Glory and Gormley’s works is as follows: the Christian tradition views the human being as a creation of God. He or she lives in his or her presence only in dependence on God. For Gormley, it has to do with a presence without God the creator. The human being is present as body and awareness in a world in which everything is uncertain. There is an unmistakable difference in their views of presence, but that does not mean, as we will see, that Gormley’s work cannot be fruitful for the Christian religion. Gormley’s Sound II in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral points the involved observer to the importance of the renewal of life after baptism through meditation as an important part of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

In discussions of the conservation of culturally significant architecture, awareness about issues of temporality and its theoretical import has been approached from varied, partial, perspectives. These perspectives have usually focused on accounts of temporality that focus on the past and the present—and more rarely the future—without considering either the complete spectrum of human temporality or its ontological bases. This article addresses this shortcoming with a phenomenology of conservation grounded on the fundamental attitudes of cultivation and care. After a phenomenological and (...) existentialist analysis of Cesare Brandi’s thought—focusing on his paradigmatic Theory of Restoration—his attitude comes forth as a limited instance of the modern conservation attitude that is concerned exclusively with architecture as art. This attitude results in a limited temporal intentionality. Following Ingarden and Ricoeur, the existential approach here applied to the deduced dimensions of the space and time of Dasein—in Heidegger’s terms—outlines the grounding of conservation on an existential interpretation of the more fundamental notions of cultivation and care. This interpretation suggests a solution for the modern impasse with an existential account of both the artistic grounding of architecture and its characterization as the place that temporally accompanies Dasein. Architecture thus emerges as a manifold being, constituting existentially the space for the authentic human being, whose temporal consciousness compels it to cultivate and care about that space, thus enriching the possible approaches to conservation as a collective endeavor. (shrink)

Most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century portrait paintings have eyes staring outward at the beholder. A minority of these eyes have slightly elevated pupils in comparison to the iris. These off-centre pupils are not the norm, but they occur regularly in works by skilful European portrait painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article takes a closer look at selected portrait paintings by Danish artists Jens Juel and Constantin Hansen and argues that the discrepancy between the pupils and the rest of (...) the paintings creates an illusion of movement or presence when looking the paintings in the eye. The discrepancy creates an aesthetic effect corresponding with Merleau-Ponty’s concept of internal discordance. According to Merleau-Ponty, visual art can create the illusion of movement by portraying its parts in different moments. These internal discordances make the painting “move” because the beholder unconsciously creates a fictive link between the parts thereby expanding time in space. The article combines presence theory (Jean-Luc Nancy and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht), phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) and art theory and perception theory (James Elkins, Dominic McIver Lopes and Michael Fried) in order to study the effects and possible reasons for creating pupils out of sync with the rest of the painting. (shrink)

In classroom teaching, material objects like the blackboard play an important role. Yet qualitative research on education has largely ignored this material dimension of education and focused on interaction and discourse. Both dimensions are, however, closely related to each other. Material objects are embedded in classroom discourse and are transformed into knowledge objects by speech acts, and in turn structure discussions and constitute a point of reference for school lessons. Drawing on ethnographic research on classroom lessons in mathematics and science (...) classes in German high schools, we propose a perspective that recognizes both the materiality of teaching and its interactive dimension. (shrink)

This paper proposes a conceptual framework of multiversional narrative processing, or multiversionality. Multiversionality is the consideration of multiple possible event sequences for an incomplete narrative during reception, from reading a novel to listening to the story of a friend’s day. It occurs naturally and is experienced in a wide range of cases, such as suspense, surprise, counterfactuals, and detective stories. Receiving a narrative, we propose, is characterized by the spontaneous creation of competing interpretive models of the narrative that are then (...) used to create predictions and projections for the narrative’s future. These predictions serve as a mechanism for integrating incoming information and updating the narrative model through prediction error, without completely eliminating past versions. We define this process as having three aspects: (1) constrained expectations, (2) preference projection, and (3) causal extrapolation. Constrained expectations and preference projections respectively create the bounds and subjective desires for a narrative’s progress, while causal extrapolation builds, reworks, and maintains the potential models for understanding the narrative. We offer multiversionality as a novel framework for thinking about narrative, social cognition, and decision making that presents adaptive benefits and future directions for empirical study. (shrink)

Conversation about expected translation into Ukrainian of Gumbrecht's book Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford UP: Stanford, 2004).

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes different positions on the relationship between politics and the experience of time, both those which defend the legitimacy of institutions and those which claim to liquidate them. Recognizing the links between certain theological arguments and certain modalities of time and politics, the article describes and analyzes three different theses: the one that defends institutions against the erosion of subjectivity in capitalist societies, the one that proposes a mystical anarchism with a messianic profile and, finally, the thesis that (...) argues for the need to accelerate the contradictions of capitalism in order to overcome it and, at the same time, to preserve its conquests. Finally, I vindicate certain experiences that involve and prioritize the body against sense or meaning. To do this, I make use of some ideas of Agamben and Hans U. Gumbrecht. (shrink)

Résumé Lors d’un procès, les questions introductives en début d’interrogatoire peuvent aider non seulement à mettre le témoin à l’aise, mais également à le personnaliser, c’est-à-dire de le présenter sous un jour particulier, ce qui peut jouer sur sa crédibilité et l’empathie du décideur à son endroit. Cet article vise à mettre en évidence les mécanismes discursifs sous-jacents à ce processus et à illustrer empiriquement comment les réponses aux questions introductives y participent. À l’aide de l’approche ventriloque de la communication, (...) un extrait du témoignage d’un ex-maire de la ville de Montréal à la Commission Charbonneau est analysé en profondeur. L’analyse que nous proposons contribue à mieux comprendre ce qui se joue lors d’un témoignage, celui-ci devenant, selon notre perspective, ce lieu constamment disloqué dans lequel plusieurs figures se mettent à littéralement faire des choses et dire des choses afin qu’un témoin gagne ou perde la faveur du décideur. (shrink)

This review of the Ukrainian translation of H. U. Gumbrecht’s best-known work brings out the strengths and weaknesses of the translation and the peculiar reception of Gumbrecht’s key ideas in Ukraine. It also critically assesses Gumbrecht’s own original and often contradictory points. I question the relevance of Gumrecht’s meaning / presence distinction for reconstructing the history of the philosophical tradition, as well as for analysing our complex relation to the world. I also demonstrate the weakness of his biased attempts to (...) paint his opponents as relativists. Besides, I contrast Gumbrecht’s meaning / presence dualism with John Dewey’s theory of experience. The latter conceives experience as a dialectical relation between “doing” and “undergoing”. This juxtaposition shows that Gumbrecht’s theory cannot give a satisfactory account of the mechanisms of everyday or aesthetic experience due to its lack of consistent “everyday” epistemology. Moreover, his vague concept of “presence” and its unequivocal appraisal conflict with his own concept of the chronotope of “broad” or “complex” present, as presented in the selected essays of The Time Is Out of Joint. Eventually, I conclude that Gumbrecht’s eclectic terminological apparatus, as well as uncritical and biased reconstruction of the tradition preclude any serious philosophical engagement. However, it does not undermine the significance of his particular insights and theoretical instruments for cultural analysis. (shrink)

The article analyzes the main aspects of the interpretation of philosophical thinking by the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowskі. He is more known as a brilliant disputant on the history of Marxism and the prospects for the further development of Marxist theory, but his thoughts on the nature and functions of philosophical thinking in the broadest sense are of no less importance, since they address the painful issue of the autonomy of thinking. The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the (...) principles that, according to the philosopher, would allow thinking to maintain its autonomy under the pressure of ideas and ideologies. Utopia and nihilism in the interpretation of L. Kolakowskі appear as temptations of the modern world. It is in the quest for defending from these “monsters” that the philosopher comes to the conclusion that the basis of utopia and nihilism are certain ideas about the truth. Through the prism of this theoretical discovery, he reveals the importance of consensus, tolerance, compromise, and non-consistency as epistemological tools of support or undermining of ideologies. The basic epistemological model the philosopher used has been reproduced by means of theoretical reconstruction. This is the attitude of the subject to the truth, which is realized in two ways: to either master the truth on the basis of certain beliefs or neglect the truth on the basis of other beliefs. With the help of this model, the philosopher comes to understanding that dogmatism and unification are not only utopian diseases but also nihilists. The reason for this is loyalty to one’s own truth, that is, thinking without gaps based on unchanging principles and aimed at reproducing certain institutional and social constants. Instead, inconsistency as a principle forms a completely different setting, the advantage of which is that it extends to itself and frees a thinker from the need to be or not to be consistent, but does not relieve the search of truth and meaning, without which human existence is impossible, according to L. Kolakowskі. The reconstruction was carried out on the basis of analysis of articles and essays of various years, combined with the development of concepts of utopia and nihilism as alternative projects of human existence, rooted in the epistemological directions of the subject. (shrink)

Dmytro Shevchuk, Maksym Karpovets ABSTRACT: Performance theory is one of the methods that can explain dynamic and unpredictable social phenomena. The basics of our research are to be found in the artistic practices that destroyed previous classical patterns in art, while overcoming its boundaries. Accordingly, performance as a practical phenomenon has become the basis for ….

Vilém Flusser's Vampyroteuthis Infernalis reenacts and actualizes the time-honored tradition of a mental experiment that purports to efface the boundaries between man and animal. This ancient conceptual device, known in Baroque times as physica naturalis, seeks to illuminate the world of culture by means of its approximation with the world of nature. Instead of opposing poles, nature and culture become reflecting mirrors where man can acknowledge his ties to nature and the animal kingdom. More than just a rhetorical trope, the (...) so-called allegory of natural history comprises what could be defined as a "philosophy of animality," espoused by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilbert Simondon and Jacques Derrida. In Vampyroteuthis, Flusser resorts to a strange marine creature in order to elaborate a sophisticated meditation on human existence and our relationship with the technological apparatuses we incessantly devise. The goal of this paper is to examine the recent history of the allegory, tracing its developments in the works of contemporary scholars, such as Siegfried Zielinski, Manuel de Landa and Vilém Flusser himself. Moreover, it investigates the applicability of the "philosophy of animality" within the field of film theory, suggesting an approach to filmic experience that focuses on the "material" aspects of cinema and regards the spectator's body as a site for the translation of images into affect and sensation. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a preliminary study of the various ways in which ‘ruin’ has significance for organization studies. One important motif associated with both modern and romantic treatments of ruins concerns the revelatory impressions they make. In this respect the tradition of ruin writing will talk of their ‘beauty’, their ‘strangeness’ or their capacity to ‘intimidate’, which somehow never fails to strike a responsive nerve in us. In order to attend to this elusive phenomenon we must necessarily breach (...) some of the self-imposed boundaries of our ‘discipline’. Taking up this challenge we follow W. G. Sebald in his use of contiguity as both method and textual structuring device, allowing us to drift across iconic ruin images, ruin theories and our own ruinous research experiences. This helps us learn how to ‘dwell’ in the ruin – without any impatient reaching after fact or explaining away ruins in the terms of an established tradition of theorizing in organization – and open up new analytic spaces and associations for organizational researchers. These concern specifically a distinctive approach to time, history and memory; an increased awareness of the multiplicity of forces impinging on organization, forces from which we so easily retreat behind the cordon sanitaire of organization-studies-as-usual; and a cognisance of how the very way we write is a mode of doing organization that is crucial for our ability and willingness to look into ‘all corners of reality’ so that we might better grasp organizational phenomena. (shrink)