1,532 research outputs found

    The pathos of finitude: Ordinariness, solitude, and individuality in non-philosophy

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    Although sometimes construed as a mere negation of philosophical discourse, François Laruelle maintains that there is a positive side to his project of “non-philosophy.” Often, this takes the form of a defense of the “ordinary man” [sic], a faceless individual, without qualities, defined by their absolute finitude. Laruelle claims to articulate a rigorous science of man, capable of thinking the human individual in their essence, outside the philosophical interpellation to which they are usually submitted. This science intends to finally break apart the post-Kantian empirico-transcendental doublet, which is, for Laruelle, emblematic of the divided, fragmented, and alienated figures with which philosophy has always (mis)represented man. It does this by striving to relinquish all empirical and figural content in the name of an uncompromising formalism – a purely transcendental method. And yet, in spite of this intention, a preoccupation with subjective finitude, and the pathos derived from it, is both retained and amplified, describing an invariably fraught relationship between the ordinary man and the extraordinary world furnished by philosophy. Ultimately, non-philosophy offers less a science of ordinary individuals, and more an ethos for academic philosophers, guiding its readers toward a specific subject position, achieved through an ongoing labor of abstraction

    Minoritized Knowledges: Agency, Literature, Temporalities

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    Abstract “I am not erudite enough to be interdisciplinary, but I can break rules.” Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, xiii “Minoritized Knowledges: Agency, Literature, Temporalities,” queries an agency exercised by literature in excess of authorial intention as well as the text itself, which is transforming in its unoriginality, as a convergence of exploited, minoritized knowledges. The six chapters engage multiple fields as discourses rather than territories. “Nonidentity and Vectors of History,” brings Critical Theory’s notion of nonidentity into dialogue with key literary work by authors including Claudia Rankine and Elfriede Jelinek. The historical principle of nonidentity illuminates a convergence in their writing, which facilitates understanding history as vectors of trauma rather than modes of domination. Chapter 2. “Literary Agency and Minoritized Grammar'' addresses the political work of contemporary poets, including Fred Moten, contesting the sequestering of alternative minoritized grammars in poetic terms. Limiting alternative grammar to poetic experimentation perpetuates melancholy and epistemic hegemony. Chapter 3. “Economies of Sacrifice,” situates the work historically, where sacrifice emerges as central to western hegemonic logic. Recent feminist and queer mobilizations of the figure of Antigone highlight how sacrifice undergirds western tradition/s of exploitation and increasingly generates economies of violence that mobilize current knowledge markets. Chapter 4. “Unfinished Knowledge,” sets the stage by underscoring the convergence of partial, situated and unfinished knowledges in the works of Black, feminist and queer theorists for which literature is key. Such incomplete epistemologies continue to be underestimated and ambivalently received. Chapter 5. “The Folly of Narrative,” engages with current critical re-readings of literary realism, to draw out alternative epistemological figures and temporalities that contest the logic of sacrifice. Chapter 6. “Literary Agency and Minoritized Knowledges” revisits the history of western ideas decentering eurocentrism’s deployment of certainty qua mastery and completion under the guise of knowledge. Pivoting from the convergence of decolonial queer feminist critique, I elaborate alternative epistemological figures, including counter-grammar, nonidentity and folly. By undermining dominant dichotomous epistemologies and inviting diasporic study, these figures challenge epistemic injustice. The contrast between epistemologies of exploitation versus decolonization is not dichotomous but performative. Hence, it is situated, situational, contextual, temporal, historical and (dis)located

    Edward C. Hegeler and the Open Court Publishing Company

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    Dionysus against the Crucified: Nietzsche, Sovereignty, and the Power of Nihilism

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    Is international law nihilistic? Being produced from nihilism and driven by it? And are even we nihilistic – we Critical scholars who stand beyond the end of history? Not a break from the past but a continuation? That is the gambit of this thesis: to explore the nihilistic inner life of international law, through the root and stem of its creation and development, right up until the contemporary movement towards Critical approaches to the discipline. Through the embracing scope of nihilism, I argue that each of these turns and evolutions can be tracked back to a single logic. The first Volume of this thesis is dedicated to the theorisation of nihilism and how it could be existentially connected to international law. Using the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, I link nihilism to what I term the ‘civilising psychosis’: a process (or sickness) by which the production of the human and the state is co-constitutive. Through this bond, it becomes possible to argue that the structures of nihilism, and the civilising psychosis, frame and condition the development of legal concepts. In Volume II, I take the civilising psychosis and apply it to the creation of the European global order of sovereign states. Here I suggest that transformations within sovereignty doctrine have been devices of managing and rearticulating the civilising psychosis. Applying literary techniques, this Volume takes the form of a ‘A play in three acts’. Within it, I follow the civilising psychosis, first, in the domestic generation of sovereignty, through to the use of sovereignty in 19th century imperialism, before bringing the civilising excesses of this latter period into confrontation with Critical scholarship. Through the violence of this encounter, I intend to begat recognition and disorientation. Rather than marking a departure from the civilising psychosis, such scholarships could be its most visceral manifestation

    (b2023 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE similarities between the ideas of some people (2006-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!)

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    (b2023 to 2014) The UNBELIEVABLE similarities between the ideas of some people (2006-2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in physics (quantum mechanics, cosmology), cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy (this manuscript would require a REVOLUTION in international academy environment!

    The Significance of Things: A Theological Account of Sorrow Over Anthropogenic Loss

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    This thesis proposes that sorrow over anthropogenic loss can bear moral authority in both its experience and expression, and further that this sorrow is most fittingly expressed as prayer. I introduce a metaphysical account of sorrow as a morally charged condition which constitutes a critical correction to contemporary accounts of emotion. I apply this account to anthropogenic loss via a theological anthropology which presents humans as priests of creation. There are two motivations for this thesis: correcting a theological gap in treatments of feeling about anthropogenic loss and offering a constructive moral theological anthropology. These motivations are related. Anthropogenic loss is a particular context which nevertheless reveals fundamental truth about the vocation of the human. Against the context of psycho-social research into ‘feeling’ prompted by climate change and ecological collapse, I investigate the definitional challenge presented by ‘emotions’ in this literature. I introduce the passion of sorrow via Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, late medieval readings of Christ’s passion, and the Black theological tradition. These distinct traditions share an appreciation of sorrow in Christian moral formation, particularly when expressed as prayer. I then apply this account of sorrow to anthropogenic loss. In dialogue with Bruno Latour, I address the culturally conditioned nature of human feeling about the loss of non-human creatures, proposing that this is not a barrier to its moral role because creation consists of sign-making and sign-receiving agents. Our cultural creaturely identity does, however, require a governing narrative in which to interpret these signs and guide our response; the theological anthropologies of Maximus the Confessor and Jean-Louis ChrĂ©tien frame humans as priests of creation. Finally, I look to sign-making and sign-reception beyond the Church. Hannah Arendt’s description of world-making as communicative action guides my claim that prayerful sorrow over anthropogenic loss is politically efficacious, and therefore belongs in public

    The Cinematic Daydream as a Tool of Political Emancipation: Plus-de-Jouir, Aufhebung and the Parallax

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    In this research, we will start by expo- sing the paradox of ‘surplus enjoyment’ (the Lacanian plus-de-jouir), showing that its parallax structure of lack and excess is also applicable to the pheno- menon of (surplus) repression. Linking his concept with the Hegelian Aufhebung, understood as a ‘failed negation of negation’ or a ‘negation of negation’ as failure, we will focus in detail on the central example illustrating our theoretical positions, which is Iciar Bollain’s film Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain). In analyzing its narrative structures that address the neocolonial reality, we will tend to approach indirectly, by reading the medium of cinematic narration, the ‘neocolonial question.

    Real-time affect detection in virtual reality: a technique based on a three-dimensional model of affect and EEG signals

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    This manuscript explores the development of a technique for detecting the affective states of Virtual Reality (VR) users in real-time. The technique was tested with data from an experiment where 18 participants observed 16 videos with emotional content inside a VR home theater, while their electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded. Participants evaluated their affective response toward the videos in terms of a three-dimensional model of affect. Two variants of the technique were analyzed. The difference between both variants was the method used for feature selection. In the first variant, features extracted from the EEG signals were selected using Linear Mixed-Effects (LME) models. In the second variant, features were selected using Recursive Feature Elimination with Cross Validation (RFECV). Random forest was used in both variants to build the classification models. Accuracy, precision, recall and F1 scores were obtained by cross-validation. An ANOVA was conducted to compare the accuracy of the models built in each variant. The results indicate that the feature selection method does not have a significant effect on the accuracy of the classification models. Therefore, both variations (LME and RFECV) seem equally reliable for detecting affective states of VR users. The mean accuracy of the classification models was between 87% and 93%

    Necrolabour: A postqualitative contextualisation of contemporary work in respect to the philosophy of Georges Bataille

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    A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.This thesis represents a reading, existential at its base, of the protean space of contemporary labour, under the lens of French philosopher Georges Bataille (1897–1962). A historical overview of the understanding of labour reveals the contemporary moment as positioned on the threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Anthropocene. A moment, which in the context of this thesis, is best described in eschatological terms and is defined by the notion of permeability. The fading boundaries between labour, life, employment or unemployment, the distinction between product and producer, the empirical real and the virtual, all these ideas seem to merge into what can be described as the overloading of the Cartesian body/mind divide, introducing a host of unexplored ontologies and subjectivities. The thesis traces the movement towards a paradoxical post-work society, where nothing is classed as pure work and yet everything is a form of labour. This is labour that is immaterial, affective, and most importantly, post-human. The contemporary labourer—an embodied osmosis between the human and the machine—navigates through a ‘life-productive’, subordinated to the wage relations, opaquely managed by the spectral machine that is the algorithm. The work of Bataille, strongly engaged with historical concepts of work, sovereignty and existentialism, offers a rich commentary whose absence has been detrimental in regard to labour theory. An oversight whose importance becomes evident when juxtaposing the modern consideration of the human, the citizen, and the worker as interchangeable, with Bataille’s designation of work as the origin of the human animal. This thesis picks up the thread that the late Mark Fisher first unravelled regarding the omnipresence of capitalism and the lack of any alternative suggestion. The concept of necrolabour results from an interdisciplinary approach that goes beyond relating Bataille to a particular philosophical tradition, in favour of an applied reading of Bataille’s thought. Utilising a Postqualitative methodology, this thesis argues for an AcĂ©phalic (in reference to the secret society of AcĂ©phale Bataille founded), approach to labour and extends Achille Mbembe’s concept of Necropolitics from the purely political to the sphere of work. AcĂ©phalic thought offers a radical yet pragmatic way to confront contemporary existence. Proposing a ‘within and against’ mode, our working lives—and by extension, the existential framing of ourselves—are to be encountered
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