13 research outputs found
But You Donât Get Used to Anything:Derrida on the Preciousness of the Singular
This chapter argues against the view that Derridaâs emphasis on change makes him complicit in the neoliberal requirement of flexibility that results both in precarity and in the dominance of English. To the contrary, the essay argues that Derridaâs idea of diffĂ©rance includes the view that openness both involves loss and is always partial (since incision involves excision), that the singular is precious, and that deconstruction is justice since it is alert to what is excluded even by efforts at inclusiveness. Examples of the preciousness and loss of the singular are circumcision (where incision is excision), hospitality (in which unconditional hospitality has material limitations and conditions), subjectivity (which is never based on full presence), language (which both is my own and comes from an other), and neighbourhoods (since they continue only by incorporating new people). Deconstruction, the essay concludes, need not be complicit in neoliberal dominance but, properly understood, makes us aware of the power dynamics by which the openness of plurilingualism can lead to the dominance of English.Deborah Achtenberg, âBut You Donât Get Used to Anything: Derrida on the Preciousness of the Singularâ, in Untying the Mother Tongue, ed. by Antonio Castore and Federico Dal Bo, Cultural Inquiry, 26 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023), pp. 11-24 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-26_1
Essential Vulnerabilities
In Essential Vulnerabilities, Deborah Achtenberg contests Emmanuel Levinasâs idea that Plato is a philosopher of freedom for whom thought is a return to the self. Instead, Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other. Nonetheless, Achtenberg argues, Plato and Levinas are different. Though they share the view that human beings are essentially vulnerable and essentially in relation to others, they conceive human vulnerability and responsiveness differently. For Plato, when we see beautiful others, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of what is, by the vision of eternal form. For Levinas, we are disrupted by the newness, foreignness, or singularity of the other. The other, for him, is new or foreign, not eternal. The other is unknowable singularity. By showing these similarities and differences, Achtenberg resituates Plato in relation to Levinas and opens up two contrasting ways that self is essentially in relation to others
Force Inside Identity: Self and Other in AmĂ©ryâs âOn the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jewâ
In a statement too strong even to summarize his own views, Jean-Paul Sartre famously declares in âExistentialism is a Humanismâ that âman is nothing other than what he makes of himself.â It is bad faith, according to him, to attribute what I am to my family, culture, condition, etc., because through awareness of what I am and have been, I can determine whether what I am will continue into the future. Human being, as a result, is nothing but what he or she has chosen or decided.Â
In âOn the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew,â Jean AmĂ©ry rejects that view.He explicitly rejects the idea that âI am what I am for myself and in myself, and nothing else.â In doing so, he is one of a group of Jewish thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, who reject Sartreâs ideas about Jewish identity and identity more generally, ideas expressed particularly in Reflections on the Jewish Question but amplified by views expressed in âExistentialism is a Humanismâ and Being and Nothingness.Those in the group go out of their way to express their gratitude to Sartre for writing on âthe Jewish questionâ after the war--Sartre who wrote because he saw no mention of the 77,000 Jews in France who were deported and murdered by the Nazis
The habitus and the critique of the present. A Wittgensteinian reading of Bourdieuâs social theory
I tackle some major criticisms addressed to Pierre Bourdieuâs notion of habitus by
foregrounding its affinities with Ludwig Wittgensteinâs notion of rule-following. To this end, I
first clarify the character of the habitus as a theoretical device, and then elucidate what features
of Wittgensteinâs analysis Bourdieu found of interest from a methodological viewpoint. To
vindicate this reading, I contend that Wittgensteinâs discussion of rule-following was meant to
unearth the internal connection between rules and the performative activities whereby rules
are brought into life. By portraying rules as tools that allow agents to stabilize and renegotiate
practices, I illustrate the active role social agents play in the production of shared accounts of
practices. I conclude by showing that, if viewed through this prism, the habitus proves to be
meant to provide guidance on how social theory helps historicize and denaturalize the social
world
Essential Vulnerabilities
In Essential Vulnerabilities, Deborah Achtenberg contests Emmanuel Levinasâs idea that Plato is a philosopher of freedom for whom thought is a return to the self. Instead, Plato, like Levinas, is a philosopher of the other. Nonetheless, Achtenberg argues, Plato and Levinas are different. Though they share the view that human beings are essentially vulnerable and essentially in relation to others, they conceive human vulnerability and responsiveness differently. For Plato, when we see beautiful others, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of what is, by the vision of eternal form. For Levinas, we are disrupted by the newness, foreignness, or singularity of the other. The other, for him, is new or foreign, not eternal. The other is unknowable singularity. By showing these similarities and differences, Achtenberg resituates Plato in relation to Levinas and opens up two contrasting ways that self is essentially in relation to others
Force Inside Identity: Self and Other in AmĂ©ryâs âOn the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jewâ
In a statement too strong even to summarize his own views, Jean-Paul Sartre famously declares in âExistentialism is a Humanismâ that âman is nothing other than what he makes of himself.â It is bad faith, according to him, to attribute what I am to my family, culture, condition, etc., because through awareness of what I am and have been, I can determine whether what I am will continue into the future. Human being, as a result, is nothing but what he or she has chosen or decided.Â
In âOn the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew,â Jean AmĂ©ry rejects that view.He explicitly rejects the idea that âI am what I am for myself and in myself, and nothing else.â In doing so, he is one of a group of Jewish thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, who reject Sartreâs ideas about Jewish identity and identity more generally, ideas expressed particularly in Reflections on the Jewish Question but amplified by views expressed in âExistentialism is a Humanismâ and Being and Nothingness.Those in the group go out of their way to express their gratitude to Sartre for writing on âthe Jewish questionâ after the war--Sartre who wrote because he saw no mention of the 77,000 Jews in France who were deported and murdered by the Nazis