Obiter Dicta

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erick Verran
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
Wallace Stevens ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Brute Force ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry

Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought—gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic—interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran’s approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what’s granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird’s-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.

Waste and Welter: Derrida's Environment

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Sellars
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Wallace Stevens ◽  
The Earth

At first sight, environmental issues do not seem to feature prominently, if at all, in the work of Jacques Derrida. This essay aims to take a closer look, and thereby to issue a challenge to the burgeoning discipline of eco-criticism. Instead of promoting the Beautiful Soul who is equipped to save the planet by virtue of reading poetry, I argue for the ethical primacy of waste and welter (to recycle a phrase from Wallace Stevens). Jonathan Bate's The Song of the Earth, a powerful but pious work of eco-criticism, ends with a test proposed to the reader; I take the test, which entails reading Stevens's late poem ‘The Planet on the Table’, and fail. Bate's invocation of Martin Heidegger is briefly examined, as are traces of Derrida. What remains of Derrida, I propose, is neither method nor concept but rather remainders that trouble the grounding of environment (Umwelt) as such.

scholarly journals O apagamento do nome próprio como traço da escrevivência: Silviano Santiago e as Mil rosas roubadas

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. e51545
Author(s):  
Pedro Henrique Alves de Medeiros ◽  
Edgar Cézar Nolasco
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Silviano Santiago

Este trabalho tem por objetivo propor uma série de reflexões biográfico-metafórico-ficcionais baseadas no apagamento do nome próprio/assinatura do narrador do romance Mil rosas roubadas (2014) do escritor mineiro, crítico literário e ensaísta Silviano Santiago. Esse estudo emerge da compreensão do nome próprio/assinatura enquanto traços, passíveis de serem apagados, de uma escrevivência atravessada por personificações das ausências a partir da morte e do ato de sobreviver (Silviano Santiago) à perda de um amado (Ezequiel Neves). Para isso, nos respaldaremos, essencialmente, na crítica biográfica (Souza, 2002, 2011) (Nolasco, 2010, 2018) e nos pressupostos filosóficos de Jacques Derrida e Geoffrey Bennington como base epistemológica da discussão fundamentada, sobretudo, nos conceitos de nome próprio/assinatura (Bennington, 1996) (Derrida, 1995, 1996, 2009), traço (Amaral, 2000) (Derrida, 2014) e escrevivência (Evaristo, 2017a). Para além dos críticos já mencionados no referencial teórico, também nos valeremos de Roland Barthes e de Martin Heidegger para circunscrever nossas considerações em instâncias e jogos de linguagens próprios à teorização crítico-biográfica que ensejamos nesse artigo. Portanto, no tocante aos resultados esperados, buscaremos explicitar que o traço, contido no nome próprio/assinatura, não pode ser a origem nem o fim, mas, sim, um elemento que desaparece-reaparecendo simultaneamente. Sendo assim, ainda que Silviano apague sua assinatura no corpus literário do romance Mil rosas roubadas, sua escrevivência o transpassa indo além do apagamento e avançando o nome próprio, que, pelo contrário, é impróprio, por excelência.

scholarly journals Semiotics of Roland Barthes in Symbols Systems of Javanese Wedding Ceremony

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. p22
Author(s):  
Mohamad Jazeri ◽  
Susanto Susanto
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Connotative Meaning ◽  
The Third ◽  
Marriage Ceremony ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Wedding Ceremony ◽  
Interactive Models

This study is aimed to explain the interpretation of symbols systems in Javanese wedding ceremony. The symbol patterns can be categorized into leaves symbols, vegetable symbols, flowers symbols, food and drinks symbols, Javanese traditional instrumental music (gending-gending), and thread of marriage processions. The data of this study were collected by in-depth interview techniques, participant observation, and documentation. The data were analyzed with the Miles and Huberman interactive models. Data analysis reveals that substantial meanings of the symbols in Javanese wedding ceremony are of advice, prayers, descriptions, parables, and responsibilities. The first, an advice for a bridge/a bridegroom is to have a well foundation, always to love each other, to become a reassuring spouse, to be considerate and think clearly, to have tender heart, and to respect their parents. The second, prayers are delivered in order that the bride and bridegroom have abundant lawful or halal fortune or wealth, have good offsprings, keep away from life barriers. The third, description means that the bridge looks like a beautiful queen and a bridegroom is associated to a handsome and dashing king. The fourth, a parable of marriage is alike to wade the ocean with big waves and storms. The fifth, a responsibility is due to a husband to make a hay or earn money and a wife to manage it then they work together to obtain the goal of marriage. The connotative meaning is flourished to become a myth that marriage ceremony is equipped with standard of symbols that will build the happy and everlasting marriage.

On hating and despising legal philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Jesse Wall
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Cry For Help ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Legal Theorist

This article is a cry for help. It is a search for some possible view of legal philosophy that does not render it either intrinsically useless or useless in its current form. In this article I focus on two methodological hallmarks of contemporary anglophone legal philosophy. The first is the Archimedean way in which the legal theorist places a critical distance between him- or herself and the subject matter of the philosophical inquiry. The second is the introverted way in which the accuracy of any given legal theory is confined to the theorist’s own puzzles, concerns, controversies, and preoccupations. Whilst I consider those who have turned against these methodological commitments and called for an anti-Archimedean or extroverted approach to legal theory, I explain how those who accept both commitments adopt a very modest view of the helpfulness of legal philosophy. I then consider whether, contrary to the modest view, if we accept both commitments, then whatever is true in legal philosophy will always be trivially true, irrelevant, or inconsequential, for any non-philosophical practice or non-philosophical inquiry about the law. The value of this article, I hope, lies in its refutation.

Ein preußischer Postbeamter oder ein postmoderner Provokateur?

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-210
Author(s):  
Katerina Kroucheva
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Rhetorical Construction ◽  
Specific Tension

Abstract This article concerns itself with Gérard Genette’s reception in Germanophone literary study. Through an analysis of the rhetorical substrate from which Genette’s terminology draws its specific tension, the article determines that Genette is not only an excessive systematist, but also and simultaneously an author who battles received attempts at order and who foregrounds doubts about the idea of order. In this way, he displays a kinship with such theorists as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. The receptions of the rhetorical construction of Genette’s texts and of the particular strategies of structuralism to which that construction refers did not occur synchronously in French, American, Russian, and German literary studies. The article demonstrates that, while German literary theory occasionally discusses Genette’s positioning within the field, there remains a general absence of the recognition that practically all of his books display a definite proximity to deconstruction, and that this proximity plays a central role in Genette’s enire theoretical edifice. This text is, last but not least, a call to read literary-theoretical texts in their aesthetic contexts.

scholarly journals A circularidade da escrita de Lygia Fagundes Telles

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-570
Author(s):  
Carlos Magno Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Lygia Fagundes Telles

Resumo: Este ensaio apresenta uma reflexão filosófica sobre a circularidade da escrita de Lygia Fagundes Telles pela impessoalidade do texto literário pregada pelos pós-estruturalistas Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes e Jacques Derrida. Como modelo, faz-se a análise da metanarratividade no conto “Senhor diretor”, da coletânea Seminário dos ratos (1977). Esse texto expõe o jogo de dissimulação no qual o dito é apagado pelo murmúrio do não dito. Com isso, reconhecem-se os processos ambíguos da escrita, que dissimula referências ao mundo externo, enquanto fala de si.

Nature's Metabolism: On Eating in Derrida, Agamben, and Spinoza

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-217
Author(s):  
Julie Klein
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Transcendental Subjectivity ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Important Resource ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article studies a series of provocative references to Spinoza by Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. For both contemporary philosophers, the context is discussions of eating, a subject matter that turns out to involve such central issues as subjectivity, nature, ethics, and teleology. Each situates Spinoza in a counter-history of philosophy and suggests that Spinoza constitutes an important resource for contemporary reflections. Through an analysis of the three philosophers' texts about eating, nutrition, and being metabolized, I argue that Spinoza's nonteleological, nonhumanistic conception of nature remains a radical possibility, even in the face of contemporary attempts to think outside the canonical discourses of transcendental subjectivity, technological reason, and teleological ethics. Spinoza's position is, in the end, more uncompromising than that of Derrida or Agamben.

Werthers verbriefte Liebe

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-140
Author(s):  
Johannes Ungelenk
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Perfect Match ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe article re-reads Werther’s legendary love with Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. It discovers a constitutive dimension of address and (postal) transfer that not only shapes Werther’s love, but also connects it to the often neglected form of the epistolary novel. Werther’s love is not tragic, and it is not all about Lotte – it is postal. Writing and loving share the constitutive dimension of addressing ‘the other’: distance does not indicate love’s failure; it turns out to be its productive principle. Werther’s love is thus not a ‘warning example,’ not the moral message of a tale – it exhibits and affirms the way modern love works. Anticipating psychoanalytic insight, love does not take place between two specific human beings, but circulates in a complex system of shifting addressees. The readers become involved in this postal system: the epistolary novel also addresses this love to us. Will we really ‘not be able to withhold [our] admiration and love’ as the editor tells us at the very beginning of Werther’s story? However – we seem to be the perfect match – as philo-logists...

Dialogues with the Blind

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Kleege
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Rudyard Kipling ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Paul Auster ◽  
Raymond Carver ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Stock Character

This chapter surveys literary and theoretical representations pairing blindness and visual art. Jacques Derrida observes that when visual artists depict blindness they are in fact making reference to their own artistic process. The chapter examines fiction by Rudyard Kipling, Wilkie Collins, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Hilary Norman, Paul Auster, Tracy Chevalier, and others. While many of these representations follow the contours of the Hypothetical Blind Man, some authors use depictions of blindness to posit the power of language to capture the ephemeral nature of the visual. Authors update the stock character of the blind seer to offer readers a mirror image of themselves.

Teatr ZAR's Journeys of the Spirit

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Shevtsova
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
International Research ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Theatre Arts ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The Subject

Teatr ZAR has been developing its Gospels of Childhood triptych since 2003, when the company was founded after several years of research in Armenia, Iran, and Georgia. It was in Georgia that ZAR learned polyphonic songs from the Svan oral tradition, which it developed in its unique song theatre. In this article Maria Shevtsova maps the first of a series of expeditions, the latter notably including Greece, Corsica, and Sardinia. She describes how the ancient hymns and chants gathered through direct oral transmission (ZAR's choice of material reflects its interest in the songs of early Christianity) provide the subject matter and the spiritual dimension of the group's performance pieces. The idea of the ‘spiritual’ is here distinguished from the strictly religious/denominational as well as the ritualistic or cultic framings of the word. Details from the triptych show how breath, vibration and energy are the forces of ZAR's sonic compositions in which singing, instrumental music, sound making, and movement are vehicles for experience other than immediate material sensation. Reference is made to ZAR's link to the Grotowski legacy in the song theatre of Poland today. Maria Shevtsova, Chair Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, wishes to thank the International Research Centre of the Freie Universität Berlin for hosting her research, of which this article is an integral part.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document