Thomas Flynn's work on Sartre and Foucault, the first of a two-volume project, offers a unique opportunity for examining an existential theory of history. It occasions rethinking existential-social categories from the vantage point of the poststructuralist turn. And it contributes to developing existential variants of critical theory. The following questions guide me in each of the three above areas. First, how is human history intelligible, given not only our finite sense of ourselves but also claims that we have reached the (...) end of history? Second, with the poststructuralist eclipse of dialectics, can we render existential categories in social terms and vice versa? Third, critics decry grand theorizing even in fallibilist reason, e.g., of Habermas, while others are worried by the normative deficits of poststructuralist nominalism, e.g., of Foucault. Can existential variants of critical social theory, anticipated before Sartre by Marcuse, split the difference? (shrink)

The ‘body’ has remained the pivotal and essential mechanism for analysis within disability scholarship. Yet while historically conceptualized as an individual’s fundamental feature, the ‘disabled identity’ has been more recently explained as a function of ‘normalcy’ through social, cultural political, and legal discriminations against difference and deviancy. Disability studies’ established tradition of consultation with philosophical endeavour remains apparently unwilling to exploit or utilize Martin Heidegger’s understanding of ‘Being’ and interpretation of Dasein as a possible framework for unravelling the complexities of (...) contemporary discrimination and oppression of those others. This paper in tracing Heidegger’s explanation of humankind, inspired by arguments proposed by Cerbone (Int J Philos Stud 2:209–230, 2000) and in consultation with Levin (The body: classic and contemporary readings, Blackwell, Malden, 1999), Aho (2009), Malpas (Heidegger’s topology: being place, world, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2008), and Rae (Hum Stud 33:23–39, 2010) among others, will interpret the ‘embodied’ reality of ‘Being,’ of being-disabled-in-the-world as primarily involved within the practical context and structured according to impersonal, normative social norms, rather than detached, theoretical contemplation or observance. (shrink)

While Freud and Heidegger were antipathetic towards one another’s ideas, a number of commentators have argued that the Freud–Heidegger relation is actually quite complementary. This paper contributes to this position by engaging with the relationship through the mediation of their respective views on the ‘origins’ of sexuality; a topic that is implicit to Freudian psychoanalytic theory and which is often taken to be absent from Heidegger’s, with the consequence that it has been ignored when bringing them into conversation. Having shown (...) that in the 1928 lecture course The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Heidegger does in fact address the question of sexuality in relation to the neutrality of Dasein outlined in the previous year’s Being and Time, I bring Freud and Heidegger into conversation on the question of the ‘origins’ of sexuality to suggest that there is a strong affinity between the two on this issue, insofar as both argue against any form of sexual essentialism by depending upon a processual ontology and affirming an originary sexual indeterminateness, which in the case of Freud takes the form of an initial bisexuality and in the case of Heidegger an ontological sexual neutrality, before concluding that, while Freud’s initial bisexuality forecloses sexuality within a binary framework, Heidegger’s notion of an ontological sexual neutrality does not, and so goes furthest in laying the ground for a rethinking of sexuality in non-essentialist, non-binary terms. (shrink)

This essay examines Irigaray's analysis of politics and the political implications of her critique of sacrificial orders that repress difference/matter. I suggest that her descriptions of a fluid “feminine” can be read as an alternative symbolic not dependent on repression. This idea is politically promising in opening a possibility for justice and a nonantagonistic intersubjectivity. I conclude by assessing Irigaray's concrete proposals for sexuate rights and a civil identity for women.

It is commonly assumed that only women, and in particular women who have recently given birth, are able to breastfeed. However, through induced lactation, adoptive mothers, fathers and trans people have begun breastfeeding with greater frequency. Although breastfeeding is often regarded as a paradigmatic example of sexual difference, it actually exposes the instability of binary categories of sex. Luce Irigaray insists that sexual difference demands a new poetics, a language that is dynamic and fluid, capable of expressing difference while always (...) keeping open the possibility of transformation and change. This article extends Irigaray’s work in order to theorise breastfeeding from a perspective that is both feminist and queer. (shrink)

I argue that Irigaray's linguistic research is not merely supplementary to her theoretical writing, but, in its depiction of sexed linguistic “styles,” illuminates Irigaray's call for a new syntax. I show the effect of this research on her analysis of the unconscious meaning of interrogative expressions. 1 address the question of Irigaray's standing as a social scientist and argue that attention to her method reveals her positive program in this domain.

My essay incorporates Irigaray's notion of the sensible transcendental, a dynamic attempt to reconstitute the body/mind dualism which founds Western thought, into a reading of the practice of European concert dance. I contend that Irigaray's efforts toward articulating a language of the body as active agent have much to offer analyses of dance practice, and develop this claim through a reading which reflects philosophically on the changing nature of my own dance activity.

This paper explores the meaning of interpretation in the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist and intellectual. As a performing art, music illustrates the cognitive and practical dimensions of interpretation. While emphasizing the pre-interpreted character of musical reception and performance, both authors point to the fact that difference, alterity, and negativity lie at the heart of creative interpretation, cultivation and self-knowledge. The notion of ecstasy, understood as a type of self-forgetfulness that represents a radical form of (...) encounter with alterity, provides the basis for a conception of subjectivity as grounded on linguistic, historical and cultural conditions, albeit not reducible to them. I maintain that the notion of ecstatic subjects is a powerful alternative to both the self-centred notion of subjectivity and its anti-humanistic counterpart in accounting for human agency. (shrink)