Derrida after the End of Writing

This book explores some of the implications of interpreting Derrida through the new materialist lens of technicity or plasticity, attending to the significance of ethics, religion and politics in his later work. Here the intersection of religion and politics becomes the site for Derrida to develop a “political theology without sovereignty.” By reading Derrida from a new materialist perspective, fresh readings are offered of his ideas of sovereignty, religion, responsibility, and mourning, including engagements with Malabou, Timothy Morton, John D. Caputo, and Karen Barad...Derrida’s philosophy is relevant not just for human ethical language and animality, but to profound developments in the physical and natural sciences, as well as ecology. Here is a new reading of Derrida beyond the conventional understandings of poststructuralism and deconstruction, that is responsive to and critical of some of the newer trends in Continental philosophy

Varieties of Capitalism : Some Philosophical and Historical Considerations

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Cambridge Journal of Economics following peer review. The version of record: Goeffry Hodgson, “Varieties of Capitalism: Some Philosophical and Historical Considerations”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 40 (3): 941-960, January 2016. is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/cje/bev083.The literature on varieties of capitalism has stimulated some authors to challenge notions of ‘essentialism’ and even the concept of capitalism itself. In this essay it is argued that the existence of varieties of capitalism does not rule out the need for, or possibility of, specification or definition of that type. Accordingly, ‘capitalism’ is still a viable term. The critique of ‘essentialism’ is also countered, after clarifying its meaning. In particular, it is pointed out that a suitably-defined ‘essentialism’ does not imply some kind of ontological or explanatory reductionism – ‘economic’ or otherwise. But while adopting what are basically Aristotelian arguments about essences, we need to reject Aristotle’s auxiliary notion that variety generally results from temporary deviations from a representative type or trend. Furthermore, capitalism is a historically specific and relatively recent system: we need to develop a classificatory definition of that system that demarcates it from other past or possible social formations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Pay No More than 45 Copies. The Collection Legacy of the Crass Record, Reality Asylum

This article sets out an auto-ethnographic and theoretical account of the journey of 45 collected author copies of the 1979 Crass Record ‘Reality Asylum’. The principle aim in this piece is to document and theoretically situate the production, reception and individual journeys various pressing variations of the record have encountered. The theoretical account is concerned with how and what ways various traditions in semiotics, fan/audience research, critical theory and Derrida’s concept of Hauntology can be deployed in explanatory terms to account for the enigmatic, haunted journey of the recorded musical artefact. The article also captures this collection prior to public display, prior to them being resold as the collectable sixth, ‘haunted’ pressing of the record

Inflections of the Event: The Death of the Other as Event

This project brings into focus the nature of an event in continental philosophy as it relates to the phenomenon of the death of another person. In this, I offer a description of what is philosophically happening when another person dies for those who survive this person with particular focus on the ontological, ethical, and theological implications of such a death. I maintain that the best such phenomenological description comes through engaging the death of the other in terms of the technical usage of the event in continental philosophy. In short, I argue that the death of the other is an event because such a death is not only the loss of the person but also the loss of the meaning of the world to and with this person. So the death of the other is a death of the world. To argue this, I trace the discussion about the nature of an event from Martin Heidegger’s account of the event through the French reception of this aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy in the works of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion. Moreover, through unfolding these complex accounts on the nature of an event, I develop the relationality that attends this event of the death of the other by focusing on the disclosivity of such death. The death of the other as an event shows us not only the ontological insight that being itself is relational but also that this event impacts our ethical life. When an other dies, we have a responsibility to mourn and remember the other. Through this ontology and ethical impetus of the death of the other, I maintain that we broach an important distinction between modalities of otherness based on the relational involvement that we have with people in our lives. Such a relational, existential difference within alterity spans from the others with whom we have little relation to the others whose relation structures our understanding of the world. By using this existential difference, my account of the death of the other includes the death of not only humans but also animals and even God

Reentering the circle: interpretation, prejudice, and the ontological turn

This work is divided into two parts. The first is a philosophical hermeneutic critique of the ontological turn as it is conceived by two of its central figures: Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen. The critique extends to contributions from other authors, such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. The focus lays mostly on two basic premises of this “turn”. First, the rejection of hermeneutics, which stems from a very shallow understanding of the subject, in particular, by not acknowledging Heidegge's and Gadamer's contributions. Not only is ontological inquiry inextricably connected to hermeneutics, but from a Heideggerian perspective, we are inexorably hermeneutical, as interpretation constitutes our very mode of being as Dasein. Second, the rejection of prejudices and presuppositions, which, as argued, is impossible, as these provide the very conditions upon which humans can come to understand anything. Starting from these subjects, the second part of the work broadens the scope of the discussion and problematizes some central concerns that have run throughout the history of anthropology since the beginning of the twentieth century, culminating in the ontological turn. These are the questions of relativism, incommensurability, ethnocentrism, prejudice, and what I call intropathy. I also explore how the epistemic principles of "objectivity" and "relativism" share the same representationalist foundations, and argue how the ontological turn, despite their authors' claims, still keeps a foot in this stream. Finally, I propose a pragmatist, fully antirepresentationalist alternative for anthropology, based mainly on the ideas of Richard Rorty.Este trabalho está dividido em duas partes. A primeira é uma crítica filosófica hermenêutica da "viragem ontológica", tal como é concebida por duas das suas figuras centrais: Martin Holbraad e Morten Axel Pedersen. Estende-se a contribuições de outros autores, como Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. O foco recai principalmente sobre duas premissas básicas desta "viragem". Primeiramente, a rejeição da hermenêutica, que decorre de uma compreensão muito superficial do assunto, em particular, por não reconhecer os contributos de Heidegger e Gadamer. Não só a investigação ontológica está inextricavelmente ligada à hermenêutica, mas de uma perspectiva Heideggeriana, somos inexoravelmente hermenêuticos, pois a interpretação constitui o nosso próprio modo de ser como "Dasein". Em segundo, a rejeição de preconceitos e pressupostos, a qual, como é argumentado, é impossível, uma vez que estes fornecem as próprias condições sobre as quais os seres humanos podem chegar a compreender o que quer que seja. Partindo destes temas, a segunda parte do trabalho alarga o âmbito da discussão e problematiza algumas preocupações centrais que têm corrido ao longo da história da antropologia desde o início do século XX, culminando com a viragem ontológica. Estas são as questões do relativismo, incomensurabilidade, etnocentrismo, preconceito e aquilo a que chamo intropatia. Exploro como os princípios epistémicos da "objectividade" e do "relativismo" partilham os mesmos fundamentos representacionalistas e argumento como a viragem ontológica, apesar das reivindicações dos seus autores, ainda mantém um pé nesta corrente. Finalmente, proponho uma alternativa pragmatista, totalmente anti-representacionista para a antropologia, baseada principalmente nas ideias de Richard Rorty

Going Postcard: The Letter(s) of Jacques Derrida

In 1980, Jacques Derrida published La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà. At the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the English translation, Going Postcard: The Letter(s) of Jacques Derrida revisits this seminal work in Derrida’s oeuvre. Derrida himself described The Post Card in his preface as “the remainders of a destroyed correspondence,” stretching from 1977 to 1979. A cryptic text, it is riddled with gaps, word plays, and a meandering analysis of the interface between philosophy and psychoanalysis. The contributors who offered the fourteen essays gathered in Going Postcard were each provided with a deceptively simple task: to write a gloss to a fragment from the first part of The Post Card, “Envois.” The result is a prismatic array of commentaries, excursions, and interpretations that take Derrida “to the letter.” The different glosses on lemmas such as genre, erasure, telepathy, philately, and sperm transport The Post Card into the twenty-first century and offer a “correspondence,” if fragmentary, with Derrida’s work and the work to come

'Passionately subjective': challenges to identity in the works of Amy Levy

This thesis is a study of the work of Amy Levy, poet, novelist and essay writer who came to prominence in the 1880s and whose life was cut short by suicide in 1889. As a Jewish woman with literary and professional aspirations and with no apparent desire to marry, Levy’s life challenged contemporary notions of gender, religion, race, and sexuality. She produced three novels, three collections of poetry, and numerous short stories and essays. I analyse Levy’s works as literary products, literary criticisms, and as genealogies of late-Victorian identities. Levy’s scholarly and creative writings reflect a keen awareness of literary and cultural movements, often prefiguring discussions regarding feminism and modernism which would not take place until after her death. I argue that her textual productions analyse the power relations at play in 1880s Britain: what actions and, indeed, subjects, are made possible and impossible by the contemporary field of representation. Levy’s apparent interests in literary traditions and debates, genre, poetic convention and the representation of marginal lives and experiences all concern the intersections between discourse, power, and knowledge. I begin with an examination of gender, class, and space, particularly public or semi-public space, in Levy’s work. Her first novel, The Romance of a Shop, critiques conventional femininity through its inverse relationship between class and spatial mobility for its female characters. This is read alongside the 1888 article, ‘Women and Club Life’. I then consider, with reference also to George Gissing’s The Odd Women, how shifts in class and spatial mobility influence the trajectory of the romance plot. Finally, this chapter considers a range of Levy’s lyric poetry, predominately from A London-Plane Tree and Other Verse, showing how the modern city and street are celebrated spaces, where the boundaries of identity can, if temporarily, be transcended. Next, I go back to Levy’s childhood and adolescence, reading a series of letters written by Levy to her sister Katie Levy and others. I read these letters queerly, resisting the imposition of assumed heterosexuality. Together with a selection of what I call Levy’s “queer poetry”, I argue that these are representations of same-sex desire. Building upon the models of identity formulated in Chapter One, I argue that Levy’s representations of subjectivity are markedly queer: they refuse stability, escape recognition, and find fullest articulation in transience. The final chapter considers Levy’s most complex novel, Reuben Sachs: A Sketch. I examine its representations of Jewishness and gender and, importantly, its techniques of representation, revealing the novel’s self-reflexivity. I show, together with Levy’s writings in The Jewish Chronicle and elsewhere, that Levy actively writes back to a history of Jewish literary representation. Finally, reading the short story ‘Cohen of Trinity’, I observe Levy’s most tragic representation of marginal identity and how representation and associated mis/recognition shape subjectivity. Amy Levy’s work critically engages with the creation of identities and subjectivities, anticipating the disruptive cultural politics more commonly associated with the 1890s.Thesis (M.Phil.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2016

Phenomenology and difference: the body, architecture and race

The aim of the thesis is to consider the position of phenomenology in contemporary thought in order to argue that only on its terms can a political ontology of difference be thought. To inaugurate this project I being by questioning Heidegger's relation to phenomenology. I take issue with the way that Heidegger privileges time over space in "Being and Time". In this way, the task of the thesis is clarified as the need to elaborate a spatio-temporal phenomenology. After re-situating Heidegger's failure in this respect within a Kantian background, I suggest that the phenomenological grounding of difference must work through the body. I contend that the body is the ontological site of both the subject and the object. I use Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty to explore the ramifications of this thesis. I suggest first of all that architecture should be grounded ontologically in the body, and as such avoids being a 'master discourse'. Secondly, by theorising the body and world as reciprocally transformative, my reading of Merleau-Ponty emphasises the ways in which his thinking opens up a phenomenology of embodied difference. It is on the basis of these themes that I develop this thinking in the direction of race, exploring the dialectics of visibility and invisibility in the work of Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin. I argue that embodied difference attests to variations in the agent's freedom to act in the world. If freedom is understood through Merleau-Ponty as being the embodied ground of historicity, we must ask after unfreedom. I suggest that the "flesh" ontology of a pre-thetic community should be rethought as a regulative ideal, the ideal of a justice that can never be given. In this light, phenomenology becomes as much as poetics. Beyond being though of as conservative, phenomenology henceforth unleashes the possibility of thinking a transformative embodied agency