In a 1987 interview, José Saramago eloquently expressed what could be considered his political-philosophical manifesto: “Human beings should not content themselves with the role of mere observers. ...They bear a responsibility to the world; they must actively engage and intervene.” In 1998 the celebrated writer was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature. So Saramago did not only as a human being and a citizen, but also as an artist refuse to be a passive observer. Despite his profound and always critical pessimism, he tirelessly propelled both his public and artistic persona toward impactful actions and interventions, showcasing an unwavering dedication to reshaping the world. This volume seeks to delve into this facet of his legacy, exploring it from diverse political and philosophical perspectives.
The article presents and is an introduction to a theory of the voice, as it is put forth by Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, and in the discourse of psychoanalysis.It is developed as a reading of the ...‘incident in London’, where Žižek wanted to engage the audience of an academic conference in a performance of The Internationale. The article is thus also about a possible connection of singing and politics.
In this text I outline the basics of what I perceive to be a fruitful, modern class theory. The article is written as a supplement to the ongoing efforts of revitalizing the concept of communism, ...made by philosophers such as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. By taking a clear Žižekian standpoint in the text, I focus on the fundamental split of society – the trauma caused by capitalist ideology – and investigate its outcome: the onto-political positions, that follow both the structure of Greimas’ semiotic square (as described vaguely by Žižek), and the lines of Lacanian psychological profiles.
En este texto se discute el problema de los efectos de la fundamentación racional del pensamiento sobre la identidad y la cultura, así como la lucha por la hegemonía que se deriva de las condiciones ...que la razón impone, con el fin de cuestionar los límites entre pensamiento, cultura y razón. Para ello, se analiza el caso particular del viaje que Antonin Artaud realizó en 1936 a México, a la luz de la discusión teórica desarrollada por Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida y Slavoj Zizek acerca de las relaciones entre pensamiento y locura.
Resumen: El propósito del texto es explorar la lucha política de las multitudes y su posible representación, respecto a las cuestiones de la subjetivación, su organización, su relación con la ...autoridad y sus pretensiones de transformación del orden imperante; todo en función de sus acontecimientos y los tipos de violencia a los que están expuestos. Para ello, se confrontan las perspectivas de Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, Hannah Arendt y Alain Badiou, en una discusión donde se especula lo siguiente: la naturaleza de la lucha como expresión de multiplicidad pura; la necesidad de que la multiplicidad sea vinculada en la unidad transcendental de una representación; que la representación no termine por reducir el carácter múltiple del colectivo; y, finalmente, que la existencia y presentación de la multiplicidad requiere como condición la unidad de un orden de representación, aun si no puede ser consistente.
Rad donosi pregled kritičkih pristupa u suvremenoj francuskoj filozofiji s fokusom na geofilozofiju u utjecajnoj studiji Što je filozofija? Gillesa Deleuzea i Félixa Guattarija kao mogućem novom ...izvoru za kritiku i angažiranu filozofiju. Počinje dobro poznatom idejom o tri velika momenta u povijesti filozofije, antičkoj grčkoj filozofiji, njemačkom idealizmu i, napokon, ‘avanturi francuske filozofije’, koji kod Badioua figuriraju kao hegelijansko ‘konkretno univerzalno’. Potom se oni povezuju s konkretnijim, u okruženju utemeljenim i društveno konstruiranim ‘geofilozofskim’ istraživanjem, kakvo se moglo prvi puta pojaviti u grčkom polisu i njegovom usidrenju u materijalnoj proizvodnji toga vremena. Cilj je rasprave proširiti prevladavajuća ‘grčko-njemačko-francuska’ objašnjenja – i isključivanja – geofilozofije, na ono što sam Badiou naziva ‘francusko-slovenskim momentom’ u suvremenoj filozofiji, te pokazati u novom svjetlu razvoj Marxove filozofija u bivšoj Jugoslaviji u njezinu odnosu s političkom situacijom prije i poslije pada Berlinskog zida. Deleuzeovo i Guattarijevo materijalističko propitivanje o tome ‘Zašto filozofija u antičkoj Grčkoj u tom trenutku?’, također vezano uz pitanje ‘Zašto kapitalizam u Engleskoj, a ne u Kini’, itd. ponovno se aktualizira stavljanjem u kontekst onoga što bi se moglo nazvati ‘jugoslavenskom geofilozofijom’ s istaknutom ulogom Slavoja Žižeka i njegovim filozofskim psihoanalitičkim obratom, zajedno s ‘otkrićem’ spolne razlike i njezine mogućnosti da dosegne onkraj ‘arogancije’ etablirane filozofije kao i navodno ‘angažirane’ feminističke filozofske kritike.
The paper presents an overview of critical approaches in contemporary French philosophy, focusing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s geophilosophy (What is Geophilosophy?) in the influential study on What is Philosophy?, as a possible new source for criticism and engaged philosophy. It starts with Alain Badiou’s well-known presentation of the three significant moments in philosophy’s history of philosophy, Ancient Greek philosophy, German idealism, and finally, the “Adventure of French philosophy”, presented in Badiou as Hegelian philosophical ‘concrete universals’. The paper then relates them to more concrete, environmentally based, and socially constructed ‘geophilosophical’ questioning, as it could first appear in the Greek polis and its embeddedness in the material production of the time. The paper aims to proceed from the prevailing ‘Greek-German-French’ explanations – and exclusions – of geophilosophy to what Badiou himself called ‘the French-Slovene moment’ in contemporary philosophy and to shed new light on the development of Marxist philosophy in ex-Yugoslavia in its relation to the political situation before and after the fall of the Berlin wall. Deleuze’s and Guattari’s materialist questioning about ‘Why philosophy in Ancient Greece at that moment?’, also related to the question of ‘Why capitalism in England and not in China?’, etc., have been re-actualized by putting it in the context of what might be called ‘Yugoslav geophilosophy’ with the prominent role of Slavoj Žižek and his philosophical, psychoanalytic turn, along with its ‘discovery’ of sexual difference and its possibility to reach beyond the ‘arrogance’ of the established philosophy, as well as the presumably ‘engaged’ feminist philosophical critique.
The purpose of this paper is to tentatively explore the plausibility of the application of aspects of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory (and practice) to the purposes of Leftist political discourse. We ...live in an era when the forces of conservative political reaction are increasingly coming to the fore across Western democracies. In many Western states the reactionary right is in the ascendency: while the Left seems largely mired in political disarray and introspective impotence. Might the theories and insights of Jacques Lacan offer the Left some hope of a revivified intellectual and ideological cogency? This paper will attempt to draw together themes and ideas arising from recent scholarship within the field of Lacanian studies so as to explore ways in which the psychoanalytic theory and practice of Lacan might be utilised in the service of contemporary Leftist politics. In particular recent Lacanian scholarship has suggested that the provocative and fertile work of the scholar Slavoj Žižek might provide the foundation for just such a Lacanian Leftist renaissance. Contrary to this, this paper suggests that psychoanalysis itself should perhaps be regarded as a fundamentally tragic mode of thought – which might thus be intrinsically unsuited to the emancipatory purposes of the Left. Instead the paper will suggest that Lacanian theory might best serve the Left on a tactical level: as a radical interpretative technique whereby the texts and discourses of bourgeois cultural hegemony may be subjected to revivified critical scrutiny.
Svarbiausias straipsnio tikslas – įvertinti galimybes, kiek Jacqueso Lakano psichoanalitinė teorija gali būti pravarti kairiųjų politinio diskurso tikslams. Gyvename laikais, kai Vakarų demokratijose politiškai stiprėja reakcingos konservatizmo jėgos. Vakarų valstybėse telkiantis reakcingiems dešiniesiems, kairieji yra įklimpę politiniame sąmyšyje ir apimti introspektyvaus bejėgiškumo. Ar tokioje situacijoje Lakano teorijos ir įžvalgos gali suteikti kairiajai minčiai vilties ir padėti atgauti intelektualią bei ideologinę stiprybę? Straipsnyje glaustai apibendrinsime Lakano tyrinėtojų analizuojamas temas ir idėjas, kurios siekia pritaikyti šio mąstytojo psichoanalizę ir praktiką šiuolaikinėje kairiųjų politikoje. Daugelis tyrinėtojų mano, kad pagrindą lakaniškam kairiosios minties atgimimui galima rasti provokuojančiuose ir stimuliuojančiuose Slavojaus Žižeko darbuose. Tačiau šiame straipsnyje plėtojama visai kitokia idėja: pati psichoanalizė turėtų būti traktuojama kaip tragiško mąstymo modusas, iš esmės nederantis su kairiųjų puoselėjamais išsilaisvinimo siekiais. Lakano teorija kairiesiems galėtų būti naudinga tik taktiniu lygmeniu – kaip interpretacijos metodas, pagyvinantis kritišką buržuazinės kultūros hegemonijos diskursų ir tekstų analizę.
Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroy’s assertion that the everyday ...banality of living with difference is now an ordinary part of British life, this article considers how Olusoga’s historicization of the Black British experience reflects a convivial rendering of UK multiculture. In particular, when used alongside Žižek’s notion of parallax, it is argued that understandings of convivial culture can be supported by a historical importance that deliberately ‘shocks’, and subsequently dislodges, popular interpretations of the UK’s ‘white past’. Notably, it is parallax which puts antagonism, strangeness and ambivalence at the heart of contemporary depictions of convivial Britain, with the UK’s cultural differences located in the ‘gaps’ and tensions which characterize both its past and present. These differences should not be feared but, as a characteristic part of our convivial culture, should be supplemented with historical analyses that highlight but, also, undermine, the significance of cultural differences in the present. Consequently, it is suggested that if the spontaneity of conviviality is to encourage openness, then understandings of multiculturalism need to go beyond reification in order to challenge our understandings of the past. Here, examples of ‘alterity’ are neither ‘new’ nor ‘contemporary’, but instead, constitute a fundamental part of the nation’s history: of the ‘gap’ made visible in transiting past and present.
This article presents conceptual bridges that exist between the philosophy of G.W.F Hegel and a feminist ethics of care. To do so, it engages with Slavoj Žižek’s contemporary reading of Hegel in ...concert with existing feminist interpretations of Hegel’s thought. The goal of doing so is to demonstrate how both Žižek and a selection of critical feminist thinkers interpret Hegel’s perspective on the nature of subjectivity, intersubjective relations and the relationship between the subject and the world it inhabits, in a way that can further our thinking on the feminist ethics of care as a relational and contextualist ethics that foregrounds vulnerability as a condition of existence. These readings of Hegel highlight the radical contingency of human subjectivity, as well as the relationship between human subjectivity and the external world, in a way that is compatible with the feminist ethics of care’s emphasis on the particularity, fluidity, and interdependency of human relationships. I argue that this confrontation between care ethics and mainstream philosophy is valuable because it offers mutual contributions to both care ethics as a moral and political theory and the philosophy of Hegel and Žižek.
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