Inspired by research on the Rwanda genocide and the decapitation, in July 2008, of a passenger on a Canadian Greyhound bus, this occasional paper explores the shared agitation with which we may respond to two seemingly disparate instances of evil such as these. Arguing against discontinuous claims that distinguish between pre- and post-metaphysical conceptions of evil pivoting around the figure of Kant, the article identifies three logics suggestive of continuity in Western thought on evil: negativity, functionalism and the messianic. Focusing (...) on the theme of negativity, the article argues that the essentially apophatic doctrine of the privation of evil is reconstituted in postmodern thinking as the liminal nature of evil. While acts of evil relate to what is both/either mathematically or qualitatively sublime, and while this experience may account for our agitation, we nonetheless employ figures like ‘hubris’, the ‘uncanny’ and the ‘state of exception’ to traverse the liminal in order to interpret instances of human praxis which, given their liminal nature, will always remain brute fact. The article argues that these figures, in particular the temporal structure implicit in Freud’s account of the uncanny, can usefully be explored to account for the agitation with which we respond to instances of evil as diverse as the two that inspired this article. (shrink)

An abstract, like the introduction, stands in a problematic relationship to the text. Written last but read first, it seeks to capture the essence of a text or at least, to draw the reader's attention to main and supportive arguments. But arguments don't necessarily unfold in terms of premises and conclusions, supportive and main arguments. When they don't, the idea of prefacing a text with an abstract and introduction becomes problematic. There is nothing new in this. Many philosophers, Hegel and (...) Derrida to name but two, have written extensively on this question. That said, it gains renewed actuality for a paper that argues, among many other things of equal importance, for a distinction between the work of ubuntu and the discourse on ubuntu. The former is irreducible to the latter in the sense that, given the discursive invention of Africa, it will always remain heterogenous to our attempts to name it. We can at best circumscribe this difference and all the attempts we have historically made, and must in future continue to make, at framing the debate in order to speak of ubuntu. What is to be ‘abstracted' from such an argument is at best the pure, self-conscious logic of circumscription – of which the ‘abstract' will be but the first frame, the epigraph inscribed at the beginning the second, and so forth. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 2008: pp. 367-385. (shrink)

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is a philosophical exposition of violence informed by two theoretical positions which confront complexity as a phenomenon. These positions are complexity theory and deconstruction. Both develop systemsbased understandings of complex phenomena in which relations of difference are constitutive of the meaning of those phenomena. There has been no focused investigation of the implications of complexity for the conceptualisation of violence thus far. In response to this theoretical gap, this thesis begins by distinguishing complexity theory as a (...) general, trans-disciplinary field of study from critical complexity theory. The latter is used to develop a critique and criticism of epistemological foundationalism, emphasising the limits to knowledge and the normative and ethical dimension of knowledge and understanding. The epistemological break implied by this critique reiterates the epistemological shift permeating the work of, among others, Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this context, critical complexity theory begins to articulate the idea of violence on two levels: first, as an empirical, ethical problem in the system; and, secondly, as asymmetry and antagonism. Violence in this second sense is implicated in the dynamic relations of difference through which structure and meaning are generated in complex organisation. The sensitivity to difference and violence shared by critical complexity theory and deconstruction allows for the parallel reading of these philosophical perspectives; and for the supplementation and opening of critical complexity theory by deconstruction within the architecture of this thesis. This supplementation seeks to preserve the singularity of each perspective, while exploring the potential of their points of affinity and tension in the production of a coherent philosophical analysis of violence. Deconstruction offers a more developed understanding of violence and a wealth of related motifs: différance, framing, law, singularity, aesthetics and others. These motifs necessitate the inclusion of other philosophical voices, notably, that of Nietzsche, Arendt, Kant, Levinas, and Benjamin. In conversation with these authors, this thesis links violence to meaning, to its possibility, to its production and to the process by which meaning comes to change. Given these links, violence is conceptualised in relation to the notion of difference on three distinct levels. The first is the difference between elements in a complex system of meaning; the second is the notion of difference between systems or texts around which boundaries or frames can be drawn; and the third is the notion of difference between meaning and the absence of meaning. This discussion examines the relationship between this violence implicated in the constitution of meaning and the more colloquial understanding of violence as atrocity, as rape, murder and other socially, politically and ethically problematic expressions thereof. It is to empirical violence, following Derrida and Levinas, that we are called to respond and to intervene in the suffering of the other. The ethical and political necessity of response anchors this discussion of violence. And, it is towards the possibility of an adequate response – the possibility of an ethics sensitive to its own violence and a politics that is directed at the eradication of empirical violence – which this discussion navigates. (shrink)