A Small, Additonal, Added–on Life Speaking. Remarks on the Vitalism in Giorgio Agamben's Critical Theory

Agamben’s thought gives us an interesting set of tools and references to critically analyse the logic of sovereignty haunting even the best intentions of Western biopolitics. As an alternative to the inherently disastrous logic of inclusive exclusion, he puts forward a strong vitalist, ontological way of thinking. This paper is an enquiry into whether that alternative is really valid. As far as his publications allow (since the “pars construens” of his Homo Sacer project is still to be published), the answer to this question must be negative. A careful reading of the passages on language in both Homo Sacer I and III (Remnants of Auschwitz), is illuminating in this regard. This is because the passages on language in which Agamben develops his alternative logic (for instance, the ones on bearing witness) do not overcome the logic of sovereignty denounced in the usual – representationalist – way of thinking the biopolitical. Those passages give no adequate answer to the representationalist way of treating the same problems, saying that the logic of sovereignty – of inclusive exclusion – is  the logic we have to deal with even to find solutions for the disaster that logic has provoked and is still able to provoke

Religie zonder eigenschappen. Over Jan Oegema, De stille stem

status: publishe

Een hardnekkig virus. Psychoanalyse en het primaat van de verbeelding

Waarover gaat het in de psychoanalyse? Niet zozeer over het onbewuste bijvoorbeeld, over de verdrongen seksualiteit of het libidinale driftleven, maar de vooral voor een nieuwe manier om tegen dit alles aan te kijken. Zij staat voor een nieuwe definitie van wat überhaupt denken en weten is. Voor haar is het punt van waaruit we de werkelijkheid benaderen (en dus ook aan wetenschap doen) niet langer een rots van zekerheid, maar een inherent problematische hypothese. Dat punt valt dus niet op te vatten als het zelfverzekerde cartesiaanse subject waar we sinds het aantreden van de moderniteit in de 17e eeuw van uitgaan. Als de psychoanalyse ergens over gaat, dan over het feit dat dit punt – dit ‘subject’ – aan deconstructie toe is. Dat punt is nooit wat het lijkt en steeds bedrieglijker dan we denken. Meer nog, dit bedrieglijke is juist zijn ‘normale’ conditie. De psychoanalyse is een van de weinige theorieën die dat ten volle onderkent.status: publishe

A Drop of Water in the Sea. Reflections on Michel de Certeau’s Every Day Life Spirituality

Does spirituality replace the bygone divine foundation of life and reality? Does it provide sense in a world where sense has lost its self-evidence? This is a very broad definition of spirituality and it applies to many of its manifestations. Yet, what if it is just the other way round? What if spirituality is not an attempt to found a new kind of sense in our modern, inherently senseless world, but is, on the contrary, an acknowledgment of that loss of sense, as well as a way to lose oneself in the world become senseless? What if this is the real meaning of what a long Christian tradition defines as becoming ‘a drop of water in the ocean’? And what if Christianity as such, in order to be faithful to its own mission, has to disappear ‘as a drop of water in the sea’? This is the basic question underlying Michel de Certeau reflection on Christianity. It is as if Christianity, to remain faithful to its ‘spirituality’, has to disappear into a kind of ‘everyday life spirituality’, in which the references to its Christian origin are imperceptible. This article examines in detail one of Certeau’s important texts on Christianity and concludes that the question remains unresolved. To save the ‘drop of water’ from disappearing in the ‘sea’, to prevent the ‘sea’ from becoming a devouring monster, a reference to the Christian inheritance will be indispensable for any of our modern forms of spirituality. Thus the thesis defended in this essay. That thesis has important repercussions on how to define the nature of modern ‘spirituality’.status: publishe