Twice-Two: Hegel’s Comic Redoubling of Being and Nothing

Following Freud’s analysis of the fragile line between the uncanny double and its comic redoubling, I identify the doubling of the double found in critical moments of Hegelian dialectic as producing a kind of comic effect. It almost goes without saying that two provides greater pleasure than one, the loneliest number. Many also find two to be preferable to three, the tired trope of dialectic as a teleological waltz. Two seems to offer lightness, relieving one from her loneliness and lacking the complications of a third who comes in between. And yet, we learn through Marx and Freud that the double (even the double of tragedy and farce) borders on something closer to horror than comedy. In the following, I would like to explore why four is funnier than two in my staging of dialectic as the doubling of the double or, to borrow a movie title from Laurel and Hardy, “Twice Two” (Roach et al. 1933a). I will begin by exploring the formulations of the double in the form of a pair of opposites and in the form of a pair of twins. The literary tropes of the double as the odd couple, on one side, and the twins, on the other, appear to serve very different narrative functions, which incite different kinds of affective responses from the audience. However, the form of the opposed double sometimes conceals the realization that the empty or fragmented content of the first is only reduplicated in the second. The “straight man” of the odd couple cannot see himself in his counterpart “the comic.” The redoubling of the double, however, forces not only the audience, but the original double on stage to confront what was already present, but unrealized, from the beginning. To illustrate this redoubling of the double within the opening of Hegel’s Science of Logic, I consider two short films by Laurel and Hardy in which the comic duo redoubles itself. The formula (2 x 2) produces a comic excess through the dialectical redoubling of there uncanny double

Epoché as the Erotic Conversion of One into Two

This essay interprets the epoché of ancient scepticism as the perpetual conversion of the love of one into the love of two. The process of one becoming two is represented in Plato’s Symposium by Diotima’s description of the second rung of ‘the ladder,’ by which one ascends to the highest form of philosophical devotion (Pl. Sym. 209e-210e). Diotima’s ladder offers a vision of philosophy as a total conversion of both the lover and the object of love (or philosopher and object of knowledge). I suggest that scepticism, however, is found in the frustration of Platonic ascension, which results in a partial conversion. Because the process of conversion (from the love of one to the love of One) remains suspended midway, the sceptic’s transformation is erotic—this is to say, driven by a desire that is characterised by a split (which may be identified between subject and object, between incompatible objects of desire or knowledge, or within the subject herself)

“Antigone’s Stance amongst Slovenia’s Undead.”

Memorialization in the form of the architectural statue can suggest that our stance towards the past is concrete while memorials in the form of repeated social activity represent reconciliation with the past as a continual process. Enacted memorials suggest that reconciliation with the past is not itself a thing of the past. Each generation must grapple with its inherited memories, guilt, and grief and self-consciously take its own stance towards that which came before it. This article considers Dominik Smole’s post World War II rewrite of Antigona as an enacted memorial within the context of socialist Yugoslavia. The practice of restaging Antigona in Slovenia may be seen as the practice of meta-memorialization, which routinely returns to the past while openly weighing the dangers of awakening the unburied dead against the dangers of letting the unaddressed conflicts of the past sleep

Položaj Antigone među slovenskim besmrtnicima

Memorialization in the form of the architectural statue can suggest that our stance towards the past is concrete while memorials in the form of repeated social activity represent reconciliation with the past as a continual process. Enacted memorials suggest that reconciliation with the past is not itself a thing of the past. Each generation must grapple with its inherited memories, guilt, and grief and self-consciously take its own stance towards that which came before it. This article considers Dominik Smole’s post World War II rewrite of Antigona as an enacted memorial within the context of socialist Yugoslavia. The practice of restaging Antigona in Slovenia may be seen as the practice of meta-memorialization, which routinely returns to the past while openly weighing the dangers of awakening the unburied dead against the dangers of letting the unaddressed conflicts of the past sleep.Rad razmatra preradu Antigone Dominika Smolea u razdoblju nakon Drugoga svjetskog rata kao izvedbeno sjećanje u kontekstu socijalističke Jugoslavije. Praksa ponovnog postavljanja Antigone u Sloveniji može se iščitati kao praksa metamemorijalizacije koja se opetovano vraća prošlosti, dok otvoreno procjenjuje opasnost od buđenja nepokopanih mrtvih u odnosu na opasnost od puštanja nerazriješenih sukoba iz prošlosti na miru

Walking Away, Walking in Circles, Writing Lists

Aumiller writes lists to externalize what overwhelms her. To be in control. To master and move on. Yet, her lists circle back to her. The process of writing the same list every day or the same act of writing the list is a looping. She returns to herself, to the parts she can remember and to the parts she can’t remember, but also can’t leave behind.Rachel Aumiller, ‘Walking Away, Walking in Circles, Writing Lists’, in The Case for Reduction, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 281-83 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25_18

Haptic Reductions:A Sceptic’s Guide for Responding to the Touch of Crisis

This chapter identifies two contrasting methodological reductions utilized in philosophical scepticism: withdrawal/doubt [R–]; immersion/attention [R+]. Moving toward a feminist ethics grounded in phenomenological scepticism, Aumiller explores how reduction relates to experiences of personal and global uncertainty such as a pandemic. Reduction involves our entire embodied being, challenging how we are fundamentally in touch with the world. How we respond to being disrupted makes all the difference.Rachel Aumiller, ‘Haptic Reductions: A Sceptic’s Guide for Responding to the Touch of Crisis’, in The Case for Reduction, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 39-61 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-25_03

Naming Touch

What is the relationship between naming and touching? This symposium explores the haptic effects of names as well as the attempt to name haptic experience through the lens of anthropology, performance studies, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. The experience of language, specifically of names, shapes subjectivity by impacting one’s relationship to one’s body and the bodies of others. Designators indexing race, class, gender, religion, and status configure haptic relations. How do given names affect the ways one is touched from infancy onwards? How are other names received throughout one’s life — such as nicknames, slurs, or praises — inscribed upon the skin? How do these names open up or constrain the kinds of haptic experiences one can have with other subjects or collectives? Naming touch can bring visibility to different kinds of haptic experiences, presumably allowing for greater protection, knowledge, communication, and heightened sensations and emotions. Yet naming touch can also stigmatize, normalize, and suppress haptic desires and experiences. What is the effect of naming touch? Are there kinds of touch that evade being named, such as those related to violence, trauma, or intense pleasure? What does the attempt to translate these haptic experiences do to language itself?Naming Touch, symposium, ICI Berlin, 28–29 June 2022 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e220628

Haptic Reductions: A Sceptic’s Guide for Responding to the Touch of Crisis

This chapter identifies two contrasting methodological reductions utilized in philosophical scepticism: withdrawal/doubt [R–]; immersion/attention [R+]. Moving toward a feminist ethics grounded in phenomenological scepticism, Aumiller explores how reduction relates to experiences of personal and global uncertainty such as a pandemic. Reduction involves our entire embodied being, challenging how we are fundamentally in touch with the world. How we respond to being disrupted makes all the difference