The Production of Hrönir: Albanian Socialist Realism and After

Discussion of the work of Albanian artist Armando Lulaj in relation to the heritage of Albanian socialist realist art

The Etymology of the Toponym “Pourgoundi” (Notes on Medieval Nubian Toponymy 5)

The toponym ⲡⲟⲩⲣⲅⲟⲩⲛⲇⲓ was first recorded in a Greek–Old Nubian graffito on a wall of the Church of the Archangel Raphael in Tamit,

The Disturbing Object of Philology

This essay investigates a certain disturbance that appears at the moment that philosophy is confronted with philological practices, as foreshadowed in Paul de Man’s seminal work on the ‘return to philology.’ This disturbance appears vividly in Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics with the sudden appearance of the ‘nonsense word’ kzomil. Heidegger’s invented word suggests that philology is not immune to its own unsettling techniques, as is also evident in Gerald M. Browne’s study of the Old Nubian language. Ironically, we can characterize the object of philology more precisely by turning away from ancient texts and toward Nathaniel Mellors’s absurdist television series Ourhouse

By Any Language Necessary: Quentin Meillassoux and the Question Concerning Signification in Philosophy

Formulating a theory of signification doesn’t seem to be one of philosophy’s current preoccupations. Whether suffering from a malaise after the so-called linguistic turn, or placing its hopes on the algorithms of the future to figure out language’s “emergent properties,” the thinking of the sign seems to have lost most of its vigor. Nevertheless, a theory of signification remains indispensable for contemporary efforts that depend on a certain proof of a philosophical absolute, the great outdoors of speculation. One could say that a consistent theory of signification is the sine qua non for any access to such an absolute, simply because it would always already be at the same time an absolute limit to language. We may refer to such a theory as a speculative theory of signification,1 whose core, I would argue, would consist in a clear distinction between the mathematical and the non-mathematical (philosophical, linguistic, poetic) sign

A Passion for Yes: Coming Out and Affirmation

I would like to o er you today the beginnings of a meditation on the word yes, on the gesture of affirmation. We should take great care not to con ate affirmation and saying yes – saying it once, twice, or many times over – and in which language? – all too easily. As I will try to elucidate, there is an abyss between saying yes and affirming that is not easily crossed, let alone bridged. […

Subtitling Communism: Beneath Anri Sala’s Intervista

Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei investigates the politics of Anri Sala’s work and its relation to the legacies of communism

Language Contact and Translation Practices in Medieval Nubia

This paper sketches out several characteristics of Old Nubian translation of Greek biblical texts, and the specific grammatical manipulations necessary to arrive at a "faithful" translation

Remarks toward a Revised Grammar of Old Nubian

A series of brief proposals relating to possible future avenues for Old Nubian studies

"I Am Like the Unicorn": Desiring Language

There is a question of philology. “Where are you going to?” Socrates asks his lover Phaedrus. “I am going for a walk outside the walls”, he answers. While walking, Phaedrus tells Socrates, a “philological man”, about the conversation about love, the logos erotikos, a language of love and love for language that he had with Lysias. “Plato’s ‘philologist’ is a friend and lover of language as that which is the language of love and self-loving language. [...] Language loves. Whoever loves it like the philologist, loves the love in it”, Werner Hamacher suggests in a reading of the scene. is philological text attempts to trace the reins set on this love throughout a certain fragment of philosophy, to tease out the gay science (or as Nietzsche also puts it, “queer reason”) that allows it to proceed. […

Return to Reading

Based on an allegorical interpretation of Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning," this article argues for "reading" as what Foucault referred to as a possible "socialist governmentality.