Writing Time: The (Late) Oeuvres of Jacques Derrida and William Kentridge

In order to respond to the infinite provocation of a contemporary thinking of time today, I would like to provide two examples of the relevance of the retreat and the return – indeed, a new conceptualization – of time in the deconstructive writing of Jacques Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign, and in the performative poetics of Kentridge’s ‘extended exploration of time’ in the “The Refusal of Time”/ “Refuse the Hour”. Jacques Derrida, the Algerian-French father of Deconstruction; William Kentridge, the South-African artist, performer, drawer of animated films: as a symptomatic, that is, a phantasmatic coincidence in thinking and creative work, these intellectual figures of our contemporaneity both come to the questioning of time, to specific notions of time, sharing a common focus on the ‘instruments’ that make time in the Western world: the written page of the text; the mobilized stage of the performance. In his reading of Robinson Crusoe’s adventures on the deserted island, crossed by Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of solitude, finitude and the world, Derrida speaks of time by focusing on the image of the wheel; Kentridge, on his part, organizes “The Refusal of Time” and sets the terms of “Refuse the Hour” around the clock, the wheel of Fortuna. For both thinkers, the return of the symptoms related to western time is identified with the time of the encounter with the Other. In Derrida’s writing, it is the absolute other of death, in its relation with what is to-come; in Kentridge’s performances, it is the splitting of the ‘I’ into its double, a series of others who act as the propelling force of the future. In my intervention, I will map the return of the symptoms along the paths that Derrida and Kentridge follow on the page of the book and on the threshold between the studio and the external world, reading their goals in the singular approaches to the (im)possible end of the journey into/through time

A feminist critique of knowledge production

[Italiano]: Il volume è il risultato della stretta collaborazione tra l’Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” e le studiose che hanno organizzato e partecipato al corso post-laurea Feminisms in a Transnational Perspective a Dubrovnik, Croazia. Il libro presenta 15 saggi che concepiscono una critica femminista alla produzione della conoscenza, che contribuisce, oggi, volontariamente o involontariamente, a nuove forme di discriminazione, controllo delle gerarchie ed esclusione. Opponendosi allo scetticismo verso la fattibilità degli studi umanistici e sociali nell’era della ‘banking education’, della commerciabilità e della cosiddetta razionalizzazione tecnologica, questi saggi investigano le pratiche educative dell’istruzione e dell’attivismo non istituzionali. Essi attuano ‘dirottamenti’ metodologici di intervento femminista nei Black studies, Childhood Studies, Heritage studies, Visual studies, e negli studi sulla letteratura, avventurandosi in diverse possibilità di ricerca, quali la messa in discussione di archivi e storie eurocentrici. Alcune autrici riaffrontano il pensiero di Wittig sulla letteratura come un cavallo di troia tra le mura dell’accademia, la macchina da guerra la cui “ideazione e obiettivo è polverizzare le vecchie forme e convenzioni formali”. Altre ricorrono al transnazionalismo minore, alla decostruzione, al femminismo nomadico deleuziano, alla teoria queer, alla storia orale delle donne e alla teoria del sublime femminista. Ciò che connette queste scritture impegnate è la fiducia nell’etica dell’arte e nella conoscenza decolonizzata come potente strumento contro il capitalismo cognitivo e la crescente precarizzazione delle vite umane e delle condizioni lavorative, che va di pari passo con il processo di annientamento degli studi umanistici in Europa. ./[English]: This volume is the result of the close collaboration between the University of Naples “L‘Orientale” and the scholars organizing and participating to the postgraduate course Feminisms in a Transnational Perspective in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It features 15 essays that envision a feminist critique of the production of knowledge that contributes today, intentionally or not, to new forms of discrimination, hierarchy control, and exclusion. Opposing the skepticism towards the viability of Humanities and Social Sciences in the era of ‘banking education’, marketability, and the so-called technological rationalization, these essays inquiry into teaching practices of non- institutional education and activism. They practice methodological ‘diversions’ of feminist intervention into Black studies, Childhood studies, Heritage studies, Visual studies, and studies of Literature. They venture into different research possibilities such as queering Eurocentric archives and histories. Some authors readdress Monique Wittig’s thought on literature as theTrojan horse amidst academy’s walls, the war-machine whose ‘design and goal is to pulverize the old forms and formal conventions’. Others rely on the theoretical assumptions of minor transnationalism, deconstruction, Deleuzian nomadic feminism, queer theory, women’s oral history, and the theory of feminist sublime. What connects these engaged writings is the confidence in the ethics of art and decolonized knowledge as a powerful tool against cognitive capitalism and the increasing precarisation of human lives and working conditions that go hand in hand with the process of annihilating Humanities across Europe

Il Matri-Archivio del Mediterraneo: Grafie e Materie

[Italiano]: Il volume Matri-Archivio del Mediterraneo. Greafie e Materie è il risultato di una giornata di studi organizzata in occasione del lancio della piattaforma digitale M.A.M. nel 2015 presso l’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” (http://www.matriarchiviomediterraneo.org). Tra il 2013-2015 l’Unità di ricerca coordinata dalla Prof.ssa Silvana Carotenuto, e costituita da Beatrice Ferrara, Celeste Ianniciello, Annalisa Piccirillo, Manuela Esposito e Roberta Colavecchio (afferenti al Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali – UNIOR) ha condotto il progetto “L’archivio della performance femminile in area mediterranea. Tentativi digitali (il progetto ha goduto della fonte di finanziamento P.O.R. Campania FSE 2007-2013, Asse IV, Capitale Umano). Sviluppato secondo la prospettiva culturalista e postcoloniale che contraddistingue il gruppo di ricerca, dopo un’approfondita indagine filosofica sulla questione dell’archivio, e in seguito alla formulazione della necessità di intervenire alla creazione di un ‘archivio contemporaneo’, il progetto ha realizzato, in collaborazione con l’azienda software “Intuizioni creative” (Foggia), la piattaforma digitale M.A.M. Il sito web si propone di collezionare, conservare e comunicare le opere contemporanee – ‘Grafie e materie’ (arti visive, fotografia, istallazioni, coreografia, performance, pittura, fumetto, etc.) – realizzate da artiste emergenti nell’area del Mediterraneo. Il volume raccoglie gli interventi di Silvana Carotenuto, Lidia Curti e Giuliana Cacciapuoti, insieme alle interviste condotte dalle ricercatrici con le artiste: Filomena Rusciano, Oni Wong, Alessandra Cianelli, Palù de Andrare and Dacia Manto./[English]: The volume Matriarchive of the Mediterranean. Graphics and Matters is the result of a study day organized for the lunch of the digital platform M.A.M. in 2015 ( http://www.matriarchiviomediterraneo.org). Between 2013-2015, the research unit coordinated by Professor Silvana Carotenuto, and constituted by Beatrice Ferrara, Celeste Ianniciello, Annalisa Piccirillo, Manuela Esposito and Roberta Colavecchio (based at the Department of Human and Social Science, University of Naples “L’Orientale”) has carried out the project “The Archive of Female Performance in the Mediterranean Area. Digital Attempts” (ruled by the Mobility Procedures within the European Program “Networks of Excellence”, and financed by P.O.R. Campania, Asse IV, Human Capital). The project aims to study the problematic of the ‘archive’ in its theoretical, philosophical, and technological meanings, and in terms of archival praxis from a feminist and postcolonial perspective. The result is the realisation of a digital archive collecting artworks of female artists circulating in the Mediterranean area. This volume collects papers by Silvana Carotenuto, Lidia Curti and Giuliana Cacciapuoti, along with the interviews conducted by the researchers with the female artists: Filomena Rusciano, Oni Wong, Alessandra Cianelli, Palù de Andrare and Dacia Manto

Disrupting Historicity, Reclaiming the Future

[Italiano]:Questo volume è il risultato della stretta collaborazione tra l' Università di Napoli "L'Orientale" e gli studiosi che organizzano e partecipano a Dubrovnik, in Croazia, al corso post-laurea Feminisms in a Transnational Perspective. I contributi qui presentati impiegano diversi approcci concettuali alla teoria, alla storia, alla cultura e ai testi, e alla vita delle donne, alle loro esperienze e lasciti, per offrire re-visioni del passato e prospettive del futuro come un atto di responsabilità femminista./ [English]:This volume is the result of the close collaboration between the University of Naples ”L’Orientale” and the scholars organizing and participating in the postgraduate course Feminisms in a Transnational Perspective in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The contributions presented here use different conceptual approaches to theory, history and cultural texts, and to women’s lives, experiences and legacies, in order to offer their re-visions of the past and their prospects of the future as an act of feminist responsibility

Im-possible Derrida: Works of Invention

THE ONLINE - JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE DEVOTED TO 'IMPOSSIBLE DERRIDA' CONTAINS N.9 ARTICLES, COMING FROM AN INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP DEALING WITH DIFFERENT ASPECTS - PHILOSOPHICAL, CULTURAL, LITERARY - OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO DERRIDA AND DECOSTRUCTIO

M.A.M. Il Matriarchivio del Mediterraneo. Grafie e Materie

Il volume include i lavori di lancio della piattaforma digitale M.A.M. (Matri-Archivio del Mediterraneo) al Rettorato dell'Università degli studi di Napoli L'orientale, con saggi che includono i contributi presentati da Lidia Curti e Giuliana Cacciapuoti, insieme agli scambi-dialoghi tra le ricercatrici coinvolte nell'ideazione m.a.m. e alcune artiste che partecipano all'archivio digitale

Llampedusa: scritture oltre la cenere"

The paper reads some creative renderings of the migratory events taking place in the contemporary Mediterranean: Les Clandestines by Youssouf Amin Elalamy (2000), Trilogia del Naufragio by Lina Prosa (2013), with a reference to the video-installation Asmat–Nomi by Dagmawi Yimer (2015). Its main concern is the question of testimony, assuming the critical stand that writing participates to the witnessing of the tragic destinies of migration today by proving its own engagement in poetry and evocation. Narration, theatre and visuality become the loci of a personal and collective involvement that opens up spaces for the elaboration of human suffering and mourning, and together, for the respect of alterity that promises the advent of a different future. “Difference” comes on the stage of the article’s writing through the Derridean deconstruction of the holocaust and its ashes