Veličastno telo: agambenovska ne-nerazodevajoča se golota v umetnosti

“The Glorious Body” explores Agamben’s conception of art—through his notion of the messianic as it comprises “nudity” to infer his idea of the nude. Agamben’s “ontology of nudity” heals the fracture between poiesis and praxis that paved the dreary way to aesthetics, giving a key role in this process to the nude figure in art. Insofar as art may be rediscovered through “nudity,” art can awaken us to the intimate contact of poiesis and praxis in life itself, allowing us to reclaim our poetic status in the world by constituting our lives as “form-of-life.” Agamben’s messianic nudity (in art, through the nude), moreover, effects the inoperativity of sovereignty by precluding presupposition—that which a veil relies on—by simply italicizing what already exists. Sovereignty is thus disempowered, as it depends on the presupposition of an exception that Agamben’s messianic vision held within nudity rules out.Pričujoče besedilo preiskuje Agambenovo pojmovanje umetnosti, opirajoč se pri tem na njegov pojem mesijanskega, kolikor le-ta vključuje »goloto«, zato da bi na tej podlagi izpeljalo njegovo idejo o golem. Agambenova »ontologija golote« zaceli razpoko med poiesis in praxis, ki je odprla uničevalno pot k estetiki, pri čemer je osrednjo vlogo v tem procesu dodeljena goli figuri v umetnosti. Če je umetnost mogoče ponovno odkriti prek »golote«, pa nas lahko umetnost po drugi strani naredi dovzetne za tesni stik med poiesis in praxis v samem življenju, s čimer nam omogoči, da zahtevamo obnovo našega poietičnega statusa v svetu prek konstitucije naših življenj kot »form življenja«. Toda Agambenova mesijanska golota (v umetnosti – prek golote) hkrati povzroči neoperativnost suverenosti, s tem da izključi predpostavko – tisto, na katero se opira tenčica – zgolj s tem, da poudari to, kar že obstaja. Suverenost s tem izgubi svojo moč, saj je odvisna od predpostavke izjeme, ki jo Agambenova mesijanska vizija, kolikor ostaja znotraj golote, ravno izključuje

Kristeva's Severed Head in Iraq: Antoon’s The Corpse Washer

This paper offers a Kristevan reading of Antoon's The Corpse Washer. Although this text focuses specifically on Arab/Muslim culture, which cannot be translated into a racial category, this reading is meant to show the pertinence of Kristevan psychoanalytic theory in a non-Western context.  One might go about linking such psychoanalytic work on non-Western writing to “race” in two ways.  Insofar as The Corpse Washer demonstrates the validity of Kristevan psychoanalytic theory for non-Western art/artists, it implies the universality of that theory, despite ethnicity, race, religion, etc.  Or if we presuppose the universality of Kristevan psychoanalytic theory, we may think of such work as testing the assumption that psychoanalysis can traverse all such culturally constructed boundaries

The Thought Specular: Kieslowski’s White and Streitfeld’s Female Perversions

On self-mutilation, fetishism and Kristev

Libidinal heterodoxy: heterosexuality, hetero-masculinity, and “transgression”

The central intention of this article is to challenge orthodoxies regarding hetero-masculinity—orthodoxies which have tended to constitute it as a static monolith and queer as the only potential site for a less oppressive sexuality. In questioning such orthodoxies, I consider the possibilities for (libidinal) heterodoxy in relation to hetero-masculinity. The term heterodoxy enables thinking about hetero-masculinity differently. In developing an alternative approach to hetero-masculinity, I turn to the question of how a transgressive hetero-masculinity might be conceptualized. Such a question complicates our understandings of sexuality and social change and opens up new, more positive theoretical and empirical directions which move beyond existing orthodoxies.Chris Beasle