The Lantern Vol. 69, No. 1, Fall 2001

• Frets • Burn • The Amish-Man • City Children • Coasting West • Futile • Oxymoron • Fleeting Reflection • Pink Geraniums • Moving • Running: Arcola • Expectations • One Time Deal • We Slept • Faraway Field • My Own Giselle • My Father\u27s Will • Meet Me in Montana • Pride is a Lawn Mower • Gloss • 2% Low Fat • Bits of Tuesday • This is not a Pipe • What Ifs • Reconnection • A Bell Called Emily • The Elevatorhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1159/thumbnail.jp

James and Whitehead: Assemblage and Systematization of a Deeply Empiricist Mosaic Philosophy

This paper contributes to a growing body of philosophical and psychological work that draws parallels between the writings of William James and Alfred North Whitehead. In Part One I introduce Whitehead’s distinction between assemblage and systematization (section 1) and suggest that Whitehead’s philosophy was in part a systematization of James’ psychological and philosophical assemblage (section 2). The systematization is based on a rethinking of the entity/function contrast (section 3) by way of Whitehead’s concept of the actual entity/occasion (section 4). This permits a process-oriented ontological extension and James’ notion of pure experience (sections 5 & 6), which yields a deepened version of radical empiricism (section 7). The four sections of Part Two build a more specific argument that James’ often implicit distinctions between energetic, perceptual, conceptual and discursive modes of experience can be systematized by way of Whitehead’s concepts of causal efficacy, presentational immediacy and symbolic reference. Following the suggestion of Magritte’s famous Ceci n’est pas une Pipe artwork, this yields an analysis of the sum of human experience into four progressively integrated factors: power, image, proposition and enunciation

Becoming dislocated: On Bauman's subjective culture

Three of Zygmunt Bauman’s recent books are assessed to present insights into the recent development of his thought and the challenges it poses to the social sciences, humanities and the wider public. By reading Bauman’s recent work through the influence he takes from Georg Simmel, the former’s disparate recent work is understood as an attempt at the cultivation of critical and ethical engagement through the externalization and objectification of his own subjective culture. The more radical elements of Bauman’s work are emphasized in his attempts to stimulate a counter-culture through encouraging critical analysis of society. It is proposed that he achieves this through ‘polylogic’ discourse and engagement with the public. Sociology is presented as a tool of freedom through ‘defamiliarizing the familiar’ and Bauman’s most powerful tool in this is the demonstration of his particular critical view of the world. The broad-ranging engagement with diverse topics in his recent books enables him to place this critical perspective, rather than a particular topic or issue, at the centre of his work. The metaphorical and other literary devices used by Bauman to stimulate critique and in particular to spur on the radical potential of youth are highlighted as some of his most powerful contributions

This Is Not a Character: Resemblance and Similitude in Etgar Keret’s Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

The article is concerned with reading Etgar Keret’s Suddenly a Knock on the Door (2010) for the character. Shot through with postmodern skepticism about the concept of character, Keret’s stories are particularly well placed to net the contemporary sense of rupture between character and the affirmation of reality.Keret’s depiction of character is analyzed using Michel Foucault’s distinction between Resemblance and Similitude, introduced in his book This Is Not a Pipe. Building on Foucault’s distinction, I argue that Keret dismisses the old equivalence between resemblance and affirmation and brings pure similitudes and non-affirmative verbal statements into play, thereby creating the instability of character and a disoriented characterization. This principle manifests itself in a variety of techniques, in all of which the verbal objects, that are there seemingly representing character, even though they bear a resemblance to what we think is recognizable, are in fact misleading.

The rock: points of view in Bart De Clercq's painting

Images are of the order of monsters. They are beautiful in the same way that they are shocking to the eye. In Édouard Manet’s own words: “Un des plus beaux, des plus curieux, et des plus terribles spectacles que l’on puisse voir, c’est une course de taureaux. J’espère, à mon retour, mettre sur la toile l’aspect brillant, papillotant et en même temps dramatique de la corrida à laquelle j’ai assisté.” In the bullfighting occurring at the moment of looking at images (any image), the fight between the beholder’s eye and the painting’s gaze, in Lacan’s sense, is won by the latter. The toreros, the embodiment of modern warriors for the bourgeois spectators in the second half of the European XIX century, are always destined to symbolic death: the power of the (self-) annihilating gaze of the picture itself wins over the eye in the ritual of exchange between subjects and objects of looking, whose roles mingle, interchange and constantly shift during the realistic and also hallucinatory act of seeing images

On the Philosophical Preconditions for Visual Arguments

The question is what are the preconditions for being able to rephrase visual objects in propositional form and consequently in argumentational terms. The idea is to identify the fundamentals of a linguistic-semiotic analysis of visual objects, which rest on philosophical notions in logic, linguistics and aesthetics

Pipe Dreams: Eternal Recurrence and Simulacrum and Foucault\u27s Ekphrasis of Magritte

Michel Foucault invokes Andy Warhol at the conclusion of This is Not a Pipe; this comes at the end of a chapter entitled \u27Seven Seals of Affirmation,\u27 so that the words must be read with a Nietzschean resonance (recalling Zarathustra\u27s \u27The Seven Seals\u27): A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell, Campbell. I propose to explore the approach to the visual here which proceeds by deploying or presupposing conceptions of similitude, simulacrum, eternal recurrence and affirmation that are variations on thoughts of Nietzsche and Gilles Deleuze. In doing so I will read Foucault\u27s essay on Magritte as an instance of ekphrasis, that is as a verbal text which aims at describing, simulating or evoking a visual work of art. What will be unusual about this variation on the ancient genre of ekphrasis will be Foucault\u27s claim that Magritte\u27s painting already speaks; the consequence is a significant complication in the task of the writer on art

Visual Objects as Part of a Rational Communication Process

In order for visual objects to be fully integrated in argumentation studies, we should be able to show how some visual objects can be part of a rational communication process and be analyzed as part of rational activity, where audiences reason their way to intentions and beliefs via their recognition of the arguer\u27s intention to produce such results. This paper will focus on the way to enable the embedment of some visual objects in argumentation theory