Where Images Make Their Wonder: An Introduction

The essay is an introduction to "Image / Images: A Debate between Philosophy and Visual Studies", the third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts. It draws a brief account of how images have been considered by key authors in the framework of both analytic philosophy and visual studies

‘The National Security Strategy of the USA’ ou la rencontre improbable de Grotius, Carl Schmitt et Philip K. Dick

L’oeuvre de Philip K. Dick a consisté avant tout à imaginer et à mettre en scène, à partir de données du présent, la possibilité de différents mondes sociaux. La croyance aveugle de l’Homme en une science humaine prédictive, les enjeux de pouvoir liés à la connaissance, l’idée que la « réalité » puisse être un construit – et un construit manipulable – sont autant de problèmes que l’auteur de Rapport Minoritaire partage sans le savoir avec les débats et les réflexions épistémologiques en Relations Internationales. Cet article propose une lecture de la Stratégie de Sécurité Nationale des Etats-Unis (National Security Strategy) à travers la nouvelle de science fiction de Philip K. Dick, en s’arrêtant sur l’articulation de trois idées : l’idée de l’attaque « préemptive », l’idée de la guerre juste et enfin l’idée de l’état d’exception à l’échelle internationale. Sans grande surprise sans doute, la façon dont ces idées s’articulent permettra de mettre en lumière la dimension non seulement unilatérale mais bien impériale de la logique de sécurité des Etats-Unis.Philip K. Dick’s work consisted in imagining from present data the possibility of different social worlds. The human and blind belief in a predictive human science, the power stakes linked to knowledge, the idea that « reality » can be built – and manipulated – are problems the author of Minority Report shares, without knowing it, with the International Relations debates and epistemological reflections. This article suggests a reading of the US National Security Strategy through Philip K. Dick’s new Science Fiction, by articulating three ideas: the idea of a pre-emptive attack, the idea of a fair war and finally the idea of the state of exception at the international scale. The way these ideas articulate allow, with no surprise, to put the light on the not only unilateral but also imperial security logic of the United States

Chiara Fumai. Medium, Media, Medium.

Chiara Fumai was one of the most relevant Italian artists of her generation, her work having been shown at both the Venice Biennale’s Italian Pavilion and Documenta. In her practice, the performer often quoted feminist texts while playing the role of a woman possessed. I give an account of Fumai’s use of video, comparing it to Rosalind Krauss’s essay Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism. I explain the artist’s work as a dialectic overcoming of the analogy the critic institutes between the notion of art medium and the figure of the Medium. Highlighting that both Fumai and Krauss see Acconci’s early works as a benchmark, I illustrate how the two built an archeology of contemporary mediality

Chronique bibliographique. A propos de Crises extrêmes. Face aux massacres, aux urgences civiles et aux génocides

Le Pape M., Siméant J., Vidal C., Crises extrêmes. Face aux massacres, aux urgences civiles et aux génocides, Paris, La Découverte, 2006. L’ouvrage collectif Crises extrêmes s’inscrit dans le cadre du Groupe de recherche éponyme co-dirigé depuis 2003 par Marc Le Pape, Johanna Siméant et Claudine Vidal. Il est le fruit d’un travail interdisciplinaire réunissant sociologues, juristes, anthropologues, politistes et philosophes et dont le but est d’» observer non pas la logique propre des crises ..

Why Joseph Margolis Has Never Been an Analytic Philosopher of Art

In this paper, we support a continuistic reading of Joseph Margolis' philosophy, defending the claim that in the 1970s, Margolis tackled the issues suggested by the analytic philosophy of art from an original theoretical perspective and through conceptual tools exceeding the analytical framework. Later that perspective turned out to be a radically pragmatist one, in which explicitly tolerant realistic claims and non-reductive naturalism converged with radical historicism and contextualism. We will endorse this thesis by focusing on two important concepts appearing in Margolis' aesthetics essays from the late 1950s to the 1970s: the type-token pair and the notion of cultural emergence. On the one hand, we will emphasise Margolis' indebtedness to Peirce's first formulation of the type-token distinction, involving a strong interdependence between the two elements of the pair, as well as an anti-essentialistic, historicised, and contextualised notion of type. On the other hand, we will delve into Margolis' exploration of the concept of emergence and cultural emergence, involving a genuinely pluralistic view of ontology, as well as a non-reductive, continuistic form of naturalism. Finally, we will connect the criticism of the so-called closure of the physical world with Margolis' anti-autonomistic stance in defining artworks

Syria on our minds – fear of youth radicalisation across the European Union

Counterterrorist and counter-radicalisation policies not only have the potential to undermine the democratic principles, institutions, and processes they seek to preserve but also to produce unintended consequences

National Programmes for Mass Surveillance of Personal Data in EU Member States and their Compatibility with EU Law

In the wake of the disclosures surrounding PRISM and other US surveillance programmes, this study makes an assessment of the large-scale surveillance practices by a selection of EU member states: the UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Given the large-scale nature of surveillance practices at stake, which represent a reconfiguration of traditional intelligence gathering, the study contends that an analysis of European surveillance programmes cannot be reduced to a question of balance between data protection versus national security, but has to be framed in terms of collective freedoms and democracy. It finds that four of the five EU member states selected for in-depth examination are engaging in some form of large-scale interception and surveillance of communication data, and identifies parallels and discrepancies between these programmes and the NSA-run operations. The study argues that these surveillance programmes do not stand outside the realm of EU intervention but can be engaged from an EU law perspective via (i) an understanding of national security in a democratic rule of law framework where fundamental human rights standards and judicial oversight constitute key standards; (ii) the risks presented to the internal security of the Union as a whole as well as the privacy of EU citizens as data owners, and (iii) the potential spillover into the activities and responsibilities of EU agencies. The study then presents a set of policy recommendations to the European Parliament