Mark R. Wynn
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199560387
- eISBN:
- 9780191721175
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560387.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter reviews some of the recent literature in philosophy of place. Drawing on authors such as Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu, and David Seamon, the chapter deepens the ...
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This chapter reviews some of the recent literature in philosophy of place. Drawing on authors such as Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu, and David Seamon, the chapter deepens the earlier discussion of the nature of knowledge of place, by considering further the affect-infused character of knowledge of place and its connection to salient perception of a material context, and by examining the rootedness of knowledge of place in habitual bodily responses.Less
This chapter reviews some of the recent literature in philosophy of place. Drawing on authors such as Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu, and David Seamon, the chapter deepens the earlier discussion of the nature of knowledge of place, by considering further the affect-infused character of knowledge of place and its connection to salient perception of a material context, and by examining the rootedness of knowledge of place in habitual bodily responses.
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
The book proposes that Foucault's archaeology is a direct response to the predicament for thought in modernity that he described in the closing chapters of The Order of Things, and that science and ...
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The book proposes that Foucault's archaeology is a direct response to the predicament for thought in modernity that he described in the closing chapters of The Order of Things, and that science and mathematics are fundamental to the possibility of this response. Centered around the figure of man, Foucault described thinking in modernity as split between empirical and transcendental forms of enquiry, neither of which is able to secure a foundation. To understand how Foucault responds to this situation, the book sets out a series of key ideas in the work of Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès, and Michel Serres that pave the way for Foucault's account of the historical character of the formal conditions of knowledge. In this way, Foucault's conception of discourse, and above all of the historical a priori, can be understood against the background of what he calls the mathematical a priori. The book also provides an analysis of what Foucault calls ‘temporal dispersion’, tracing this idea back to his critique of Kant. Employing these ideas, the book goes on to provide a detailed commentary on Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge.Less
The book proposes that Foucault's archaeology is a direct response to the predicament for thought in modernity that he described in the closing chapters of The Order of Things, and that science and mathematics are fundamental to the possibility of this response. Centered around the figure of man, Foucault described thinking in modernity as split between empirical and transcendental forms of enquiry, neither of which is able to secure a foundation. To understand how Foucault responds to this situation, the book sets out a series of key ideas in the work of Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès, and Michel Serres that pave the way for Foucault's account of the historical character of the formal conditions of knowledge. In this way, Foucault's conception of discourse, and above all of the historical a priori, can be understood against the background of what he calls the mathematical a priori. The book also provides an analysis of what Foucault calls ‘temporal dispersion’, tracing this idea back to his critique of Kant. Employing these ideas, the book goes on to provide a detailed commentary on Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge.
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
In The Order of Things, Foucault writes that the interest in formal languages opens up ‘the possibility, and the task, of applying a second critique of pure reason on the basis of new forms of the ...
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In The Order of Things, Foucault writes that the interest in formal languages opens up ‘the possibility, and the task, of applying a second critique of pure reason on the basis of new forms of the mathematical a priori’. My book argues that The Archaeology of Knowledge is intended to begin the work of such a critique, albeit one that is revealed as radically historical. This chapter traces the idea of a mathematical a priori back to Bachelard (who uses the expression) and Cavaillès.Less
In The Order of Things, Foucault writes that the interest in formal languages opens up ‘the possibility, and the task, of applying a second critique of pure reason on the basis of new forms of the mathematical a priori’. My book argues that The Archaeology of Knowledge is intended to begin the work of such a critique, albeit one that is revealed as radically historical. This chapter traces the idea of a mathematical a priori back to Bachelard (who uses the expression) and Cavaillès.
Hoshang Merchant
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199465965
- eISBN:
- 9780199086962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199465965.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The poem is from Shahid Ali’s last book Rooms Are Never Finished (2002). It compares Ali’s family troubles to the troubles of Karbala. Ali’s mother is compared to Hussein’s sister Zainab. Ali himself ...
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The poem is from Shahid Ali’s last book Rooms Are Never Finished (2002). It compares Ali’s family troubles to the troubles of Karbala. Ali’s mother is compared to Hussein’s sister Zainab. Ali himself is, of course, the martyr Hussein on losing his mother. Both mother and son died of brain tumour. The imagery of God here is that of a thief, that is, child Krishna as butter thief. There is the imagery of darkness and light, for example, the last dying light of the ICU machine. Also, lights at Delhi airport when the body of Ali’s mother body is brought from Amherst. Gaston Bachelard’s trope of mother as motherland and foreign country as mistress is used. Father recites Hafiz on Love.Less
The poem is from Shahid Ali’s last book Rooms Are Never Finished (2002). It compares Ali’s family troubles to the troubles of Karbala. Ali’s mother is compared to Hussein’s sister Zainab. Ali himself is, of course, the martyr Hussein on losing his mother. Both mother and son died of brain tumour. The imagery of God here is that of a thief, that is, child Krishna as butter thief. There is the imagery of darkness and light, for example, the last dying light of the ICU machine. Also, lights at Delhi airport when the body of Ali’s mother body is brought from Amherst. Gaston Bachelard’s trope of mother as motherland and foreign country as mistress is used. Father recites Hafiz on Love.
Michael Gallope
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226483559
- eISBN:
- 9780226483726
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226483726.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music
Chapter 4 focuses on the writings of Deleuze and Guattari. These thinkers show themselves to be as Bergsonian as Jankélévitch in conceiving of music as containing an intimate link with the flow of ...
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Chapter 4 focuses on the writings of Deleuze and Guattari. These thinkers show themselves to be as Bergsonian as Jankélévitch in conceiving of music as containing an intimate link with the flow of lived time. But they develop this idea in a new direction by proposing that music is not simply an inconsistent flux but, rather, is in line with Bachelard’s critique of Bergsonism, a punctuated flow that is coextensive with the cosmic powers of social and creaturely life. Moreover, due to their contention that “being is univocal” and that an artwork is a “sensation in itself,” they contend that music is part of the same pluralized substance as language. Crucially, they nod to the ineffable in practical terms when they state that it is “hard to say” what music does in relationship to language. But on a philosophical level, their ontological joining of music and language in something of a Mobius strip represents a remarkable shift that sets Bloch, Adorno, and Jankélévitch powerfully into relief. For Deleuze and Guattari, there is no mysterious depth or “unrepresentable” aspect to music’s sensuous power by comparison with language; music is merely a sonic extension of a cosmic rhythm of lived forces.Less
Chapter 4 focuses on the writings of Deleuze and Guattari. These thinkers show themselves to be as Bergsonian as Jankélévitch in conceiving of music as containing an intimate link with the flow of lived time. But they develop this idea in a new direction by proposing that music is not simply an inconsistent flux but, rather, is in line with Bachelard’s critique of Bergsonism, a punctuated flow that is coextensive with the cosmic powers of social and creaturely life. Moreover, due to their contention that “being is univocal” and that an artwork is a “sensation in itself,” they contend that music is part of the same pluralized substance as language. Crucially, they nod to the ineffable in practical terms when they state that it is “hard to say” what music does in relationship to language. But on a philosophical level, their ontological joining of music and language in something of a Mobius strip represents a remarkable shift that sets Bloch, Adorno, and Jankélévitch powerfully into relief. For Deleuze and Guattari, there is no mysterious depth or “unrepresentable” aspect to music’s sensuous power by comparison with language; music is merely a sonic extension of a cosmic rhythm of lived forces.
Susan Fraiman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231166348
- eISBN:
- 9780231543750
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166348.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Defines and illustrates the concept of “shelter writing”: a mode of slow, step-by-step description, cherishing the actions of homemaking in the aftermath of domestic dislocation. Offers the ...
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Defines and illustrates the concept of “shelter writing”: a mode of slow, step-by-step description, cherishing the actions of homemaking in the aftermath of domestic dislocation. Offers the paradigmatic example of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), focuses on Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993), and closes by touching on the reality TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Establishes the logic of hyper-investment in homemaking as compensation for domestic deprivation or difficulty. Calls on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space for his notion of the “felicitous house,” while also placing more emphasis than Bachelard on the reality of domestic labor.Less
Defines and illustrates the concept of “shelter writing”: a mode of slow, step-by-step description, cherishing the actions of homemaking in the aftermath of domestic dislocation. Offers the paradigmatic example of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), focuses on Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993), and closes by touching on the reality TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Establishes the logic of hyper-investment in homemaking as compensation for domestic deprivation or difficulty. Calls on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space for his notion of the “felicitous house,” while also placing more emphasis than Bachelard on the reality of domestic labor.
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
For Bachelard, science is not the direct formalisation of experience, but the modification of the conditions of existing experience. The laws that give form even to phenomena as they present ...
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For Bachelard, science is not the direct formalisation of experience, but the modification of the conditions of existing experience. The laws that give form even to phenomena as they present themselves at a given moment (so leaving aside future innovations in science) are therefore not to be drawn from empirical experience. Instead, one has to look for rational laws found at the level of what Bachelard calls a ‘noumenology’. significantly, he calls these laws the ‘mathematical a priori’, a phrase that Foucault will later use towards the end of The Order of Things in recommending a new critical philosophy. What Bachelard took from mathematical science and passed on to others, including Foucault, is that what for Kant were transcendental conditions for the possibility of experience, and for the forms of judgement appropriate to it, have been removed from consciousness and laid out in the practice of mathematics. The chapter then outlines Bachelard's conception of temporal discontinuity (a form of temporal atomism modified by what he called the arithmetisation of time), which will also be important for understanding the sense of temporal dispersion Foucault deploys in The Archaeology of Knowledge.Less
For Bachelard, science is not the direct formalisation of experience, but the modification of the conditions of existing experience. The laws that give form even to phenomena as they present themselves at a given moment (so leaving aside future innovations in science) are therefore not to be drawn from empirical experience. Instead, one has to look for rational laws found at the level of what Bachelard calls a ‘noumenology’. significantly, he calls these laws the ‘mathematical a priori’, a phrase that Foucault will later use towards the end of The Order of Things in recommending a new critical philosophy. What Bachelard took from mathematical science and passed on to others, including Foucault, is that what for Kant were transcendental conditions for the possibility of experience, and for the forms of judgement appropriate to it, have been removed from consciousness and laid out in the practice of mathematics. The chapter then outlines Bachelard's conception of temporal discontinuity (a form of temporal atomism modified by what he called the arithmetisation of time), which will also be important for understanding the sense of temporal dispersion Foucault deploys in The Archaeology of Knowledge.
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
A commentary on the Introduction to Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge.
A commentary on the Introduction to Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge.
Martin Shuster
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226503813
- eISBN:
- 9780226504001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226504001.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
The introduction to New Television situates television shows from Twin Peaks onwards amidst other aesthetic developments, both with the medium of television and beyond. It pushes back against almost ...
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The introduction to New Television situates television shows from Twin Peaks onwards amidst other aesthetic developments, both with the medium of television and beyond. It pushes back against almost all of the dominant ways in which these shows have been understood (which often makes the shows subservient to some other quality, say, “cinema” or “complexity”) and tries to understand them on their own terms. To do this, it places analysis or criticism of them into traditions of ordinary language philosophy, where the focus is on understanding one’s experience (traditions exemplified here above all by Stanley Cavell). The introduction presents an understanding of the genre of ‘new television’ as a genre that explores the novelty of human life, especially as it emerges from and serves as a commentary on a world that is presented as otherwise devoid of any normative authority. The introduction concludes with a phenomenological consideration of the significance of a genre bound up with the television medium, that is with something that is fundamentally made to be screened in the home.Less
The introduction to New Television situates television shows from Twin Peaks onwards amidst other aesthetic developments, both with the medium of television and beyond. It pushes back against almost all of the dominant ways in which these shows have been understood (which often makes the shows subservient to some other quality, say, “cinema” or “complexity”) and tries to understand them on their own terms. To do this, it places analysis or criticism of them into traditions of ordinary language philosophy, where the focus is on understanding one’s experience (traditions exemplified here above all by Stanley Cavell). The introduction presents an understanding of the genre of ‘new television’ as a genre that explores the novelty of human life, especially as it emerges from and serves as a commentary on a world that is presented as otherwise devoid of any normative authority. The introduction concludes with a phenomenological consideration of the significance of a genre bound up with the television medium, that is with something that is fundamentally made to be screened in the home.
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
A commentary on Part II of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. This includes the following chapters: 1. The Unities of Discourse 2. Discursive Formations 3. The Formation of Objects 4. The ...
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A commentary on Part II of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. This includes the following chapters: 1. The Unities of Discourse 2. Discursive Formations 3. The Formation of Objects 4. The Formation of Enunciative Modalities 5. The Formation of Concepts 6. The Formation of Strategies 7. Remarks and ConsequencesLess
A commentary on Part II of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. This includes the following chapters: 1. The Unities of Discourse 2. Discursive Formations 3. The Formation of Objects 4. The Formation of Enunciative Modalities 5. The Formation of Concepts 6. The Formation of Strategies 7. Remarks and Consequences
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
A commentary on Part III of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. This includes the following chapters: 1. Defining the Statement 2. The Enunciative Function 3. The Description of Statements 4. ...
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A commentary on Part III of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. This includes the following chapters: 1. Defining the Statement 2. The Enunciative Function 3. The Description of Statements 4. Rarity, Exteriority, Accumulation 5. The Historical A Priori and the ArchiveLess
A commentary on Part III of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge. This includes the following chapters: 1. Defining the Statement 2. The Enunciative Function 3. The Description of Statements 4. Rarity, Exteriority, Accumulation 5. The Historical A Priori and the Archive
David Webb
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748624218
- eISBN:
- 9780748684472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624218.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
A commentary on Part V of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge, which is the Conclusion to his book.
A commentary on Part V of Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge, which is the Conclusion to his book.
Bradley D. Ryner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748684656
- eISBN:
- 9780748697113
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748684656.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This concluding chapter asks what the ‘mercantile dramaturgy’ outlined in the book can tell us about the performativity of economic discourse itself, about the degree to which economic models ...
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This concluding chapter asks what the ‘mercantile dramaturgy’ outlined in the book can tell us about the performativity of economic discourse itself, about the degree to which economic models actively shape the world they represent. For a twenty-first-century audience or readership, mercantile dramaturgy can be most beneficial in pointing towards a performative understanding of the reciprocal creation of ‘economics’ and ‘the economy’. The chapter argues that the mercantile dramaturgy of Thomas Heywood's If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part II and Philip Massinger's The Picture returns an awareness of mediation to the idealised models of mercantile treatises. Both plays engage with the problems of knowing about and intervening in events that occur at great distances via ‘the factor’, who serves as a figure of mediating agency, whose work is effaced when mercantile treatises promise an unmediated view of economic systems. These plays present economic models as the products of work which are themselves able to perform work. They show us not only that, in the phrase of Gaston Bachelard popularised by Bruno Latour, les faits sont faits (facts are manufactured), but also that facts are factors -- mediators that exert their own agency.Less
This concluding chapter asks what the ‘mercantile dramaturgy’ outlined in the book can tell us about the performativity of economic discourse itself, about the degree to which economic models actively shape the world they represent. For a twenty-first-century audience or readership, mercantile dramaturgy can be most beneficial in pointing towards a performative understanding of the reciprocal creation of ‘economics’ and ‘the economy’. The chapter argues that the mercantile dramaturgy of Thomas Heywood's If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part II and Philip Massinger's The Picture returns an awareness of mediation to the idealised models of mercantile treatises. Both plays engage with the problems of knowing about and intervening in events that occur at great distances via ‘the factor’, who serves as a figure of mediating agency, whose work is effaced when mercantile treatises promise an unmediated view of economic systems. These plays present economic models as the products of work which are themselves able to perform work. They show us not only that, in the phrase of Gaston Bachelard popularised by Bruno Latour, les faits sont faits (facts are manufactured), but also that facts are factors -- mediators that exert their own agency.
Adrian Switzer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823265299
- eISBN:
- 9780823266685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265299.003.0015
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter addresses the problem of violence in Supermax prisons from a dual phenomenological and aesthetic perspective. A review of the sociological evidence on the relationship between ...
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This chapter addresses the problem of violence in Supermax prisons from a dual phenomenological and aesthetic perspective. A review of the sociological evidence on the relationship between maximum-security prisons and violence reveals several inconsistencies: a facility originally designed and built in the name of reducing prison violence instead has been a site of persistent and increased violence. Prompted by the incongruities in the empirical evidence on Supermax violence and by the sense that those incongruities stem from the assumption that prison violence is a matter of prisoner violence, the chapter approaches the problem from a transcendental phenomenological perspective. By working through Husserl's remarks on space and spatiality, and by appealing to Bachelard's Poetics of Space, it argues that there is a basic “mode” to space-in-itself, namely, a hostility that constitutes from a nonsubjective perspective the inhospitability of the bare spaces of the Supermax prison. The chapter concludes with an aesthetic supplement that shows the “hostility” of bare space in a way that a theoretical phenomenology, even at its best, can merely state.Less
This chapter addresses the problem of violence in Supermax prisons from a dual phenomenological and aesthetic perspective. A review of the sociological evidence on the relationship between maximum-security prisons and violence reveals several inconsistencies: a facility originally designed and built in the name of reducing prison violence instead has been a site of persistent and increased violence. Prompted by the incongruities in the empirical evidence on Supermax violence and by the sense that those incongruities stem from the assumption that prison violence is a matter of prisoner violence, the chapter approaches the problem from a transcendental phenomenological perspective. By working through Husserl's remarks on space and spatiality, and by appealing to Bachelard's Poetics of Space, it argues that there is a basic “mode” to space-in-itself, namely, a hostility that constitutes from a nonsubjective perspective the inhospitability of the bare spaces of the Supermax prison. The chapter concludes with an aesthetic supplement that shows the “hostility” of bare space in a way that a theoretical phenomenology, even at its best, can merely state.
Kyoo Lee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823244843
- eISBN:
- 9780823250738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823244843.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
Following the narrative order and drive of the First Meditation, this stage of reading pushes that “touch of madness” further, and frame the “threefold” dream of Descartes, the progenitor of ...
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Following the narrative order and drive of the First Meditation, this stage of reading pushes that “touch of madness” further, and frame the “threefold” dream of Descartes, the progenitor of philosophical modernity of the West in terms of “a touch of imagination”: Private, Theoretical and Theological. The task here is to articulate the autobiographical, narratological and surreal liminality between waking time and dreaming time as a twofold matrix of modernity; the analysis explores the material affectivity of Cartesian dream in terms of the Bachelardian thinking “matter” that dreams. Two points of contention are to be established, in view of the material performativity of Cartesian dream-reflection. First, the famous dream “argument” can be and is to be read as not simply as the illustrated defence of the epistemological zero-point but a poetics of risks; such an experience, along with the subsequent account, is integral to Descartes's philosophical project as a whole. Second, so is, by extension, the tactile metaphor of the Cartesian imagination and “hand-holding” guide to truth.Less
Following the narrative order and drive of the First Meditation, this stage of reading pushes that “touch of madness” further, and frame the “threefold” dream of Descartes, the progenitor of philosophical modernity of the West in terms of “a touch of imagination”: Private, Theoretical and Theological. The task here is to articulate the autobiographical, narratological and surreal liminality between waking time and dreaming time as a twofold matrix of modernity; the analysis explores the material affectivity of Cartesian dream in terms of the Bachelardian thinking “matter” that dreams. Two points of contention are to be established, in view of the material performativity of Cartesian dream-reflection. First, the famous dream “argument” can be and is to be read as not simply as the illustrated defence of the epistemological zero-point but a poetics of risks; such an experience, along with the subsequent account, is integral to Descartes's philosophical project as a whole. Second, so is, by extension, the tactile metaphor of the Cartesian imagination and “hand-holding” guide to truth.
Kyoo Lee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823244843
- eISBN:
- 9780823250738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823244843.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
Focusing on Descartes’ strategy of fusing logical reasoning and figural thinking, this last chapter phenomenologizes the evil genius “argument” narratively. We see how and why the issue of the ...
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Focusing on Descartes’ strategy of fusing logical reasoning and figural thinking, this last chapter phenomenologizes the evil genius “argument” narratively. We see how and why the issue of the topographical virtuality of the Cartesian thinker, along with the persistent, referential ambiguity and circularity of “God,” becomes mutually pressing, remaining unresolved in the moral teleology of Cartesian “faith.” The Cartesian narrator’s “zero-point” is then self-cornering or “cornered” (Bachelard). By implication, Cartesian reflection is forced to become inventive, insofar as it seeks to point beyond that which is ultimately thinkable. The new order of alterity re-established by this ambiguated time—time pushed to the edge of, and outside, time that instantly falls/fold back into the heart of time—becomes devoid of any content, without “inventory” (Bruns). Such is how the Cartesian mind’s representational capacity becomes a purely positional fiction. Given that the Cartesian Good is God and vice versa by (co)extension, the reciprocity of which is conceptual rather than referential, the allegorical fate of Cartesian self-reflection rests on the ambiguous non-linearity or complexity—chaotic condition (Nancy), extractive resistance (Badiou) and responsorial position (Levinas)—of the reflective subject; almost eternalized therein would be the dramatic tension itself, which remains nameless or overnamed.Less
Focusing on Descartes’ strategy of fusing logical reasoning and figural thinking, this last chapter phenomenologizes the evil genius “argument” narratively. We see how and why the issue of the topographical virtuality of the Cartesian thinker, along with the persistent, referential ambiguity and circularity of “God,” becomes mutually pressing, remaining unresolved in the moral teleology of Cartesian “faith.” The Cartesian narrator’s “zero-point” is then self-cornering or “cornered” (Bachelard). By implication, Cartesian reflection is forced to become inventive, insofar as it seeks to point beyond that which is ultimately thinkable. The new order of alterity re-established by this ambiguated time—time pushed to the edge of, and outside, time that instantly falls/fold back into the heart of time—becomes devoid of any content, without “inventory” (Bruns). Such is how the Cartesian mind’s representational capacity becomes a purely positional fiction. Given that the Cartesian Good is God and vice versa by (co)extension, the reciprocity of which is conceptual rather than referential, the allegorical fate of Cartesian self-reflection rests on the ambiguous non-linearity or complexity—chaotic condition (Nancy), extractive resistance (Badiou) and responsorial position (Levinas)—of the reflective subject; almost eternalized therein would be the dramatic tension itself, which remains nameless or overnamed.
Christy Wampole
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226317656
- eISBN:
- 9780226317793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226317793.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter outlines the ways in which the root has been imagined as an archetypal image. In Hans Blumenberg’s terms, the root metaphor is an absolute metaphor, given that he uses it in his very ...
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This chapter outlines the ways in which the root has been imagined as an archetypal image. In Hans Blumenberg’s terms, the root metaphor is an absolute metaphor, given that he uses it in his very definition of metaphorology. The root works as a kind of super metaphor in that it subsumes the most compelling aspects of the three other primary metaphors for origin: the foundation, the source, and the seed. Jung and Bachelard have shown that the root is a powerful figure for home, the past, death, memory, and the mother. More importantly, this chapter shows that it is a figure for the subconscious itself. The search for origins implied in root-seeking often projects a logic of filiation onto non-biological phenomena, which leads to many false applications and excessive generalizations in the realm of politics.Less
This chapter outlines the ways in which the root has been imagined as an archetypal image. In Hans Blumenberg’s terms, the root metaphor is an absolute metaphor, given that he uses it in his very definition of metaphorology. The root works as a kind of super metaphor in that it subsumes the most compelling aspects of the three other primary metaphors for origin: the foundation, the source, and the seed. Jung and Bachelard have shown that the root is a powerful figure for home, the past, death, memory, and the mother. More importantly, this chapter shows that it is a figure for the subconscious itself. The search for origins implied in root-seeking often projects a logic of filiation onto non-biological phenomena, which leads to many false applications and excessive generalizations in the realm of politics.
Lynne Pearce
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748690848
- eISBN:
- 9781474426817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690848.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores the heightened states of consciousness associated with driving. Following an introductory subsection which addresses the way in which driving has long been seen to promote ...
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This chapter explores the heightened states of consciousness associated with driving. Following an introductory subsection which addresses the way in which driving has long been seen to promote daydreaming with reference to the work of recent automotive psychologists, the discussion draws upon the work of philosophers Ernst Bloch and Gaston Bachelard (both of whom have written on daydreaming and reverie) in order to map out ‘six types of automotive reverie’: euphoria, anxiety, enlightenment, delusion, utopia and death-drive. These different expressions of automotive reverie – some positive and cognitively enlightening, others destructive and linked to madness – are then explored with reference to wide range of literary texts from across the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the way in which literary texts from the early twentieth century exploited the association between speed and insanity as a literary device – often as a means of passing negative comment on modernity – as well as the recognised spiritual and transcendent potential of the driving-event in texts from the 1910s to the 1990s.Less
This chapter explores the heightened states of consciousness associated with driving. Following an introductory subsection which addresses the way in which driving has long been seen to promote daydreaming with reference to the work of recent automotive psychologists, the discussion draws upon the work of philosophers Ernst Bloch and Gaston Bachelard (both of whom have written on daydreaming and reverie) in order to map out ‘six types of automotive reverie’: euphoria, anxiety, enlightenment, delusion, utopia and death-drive. These different expressions of automotive reverie – some positive and cognitively enlightening, others destructive and linked to madness – are then explored with reference to wide range of literary texts from across the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the way in which literary texts from the early twentieth century exploited the association between speed and insanity as a literary device – often as a means of passing negative comment on modernity – as well as the recognised spiritual and transcendent potential of the driving-event in texts from the 1910s to the 1990s.
Michael Jackson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275249
- eISBN:
- 9780520954823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275249.003.0020
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
What phenomenology asks of us is that we cultivate, as best we can, a disinterested attitude toward the world, such that it may be seen from a standpoint other than our own, and thereby continually ...
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What phenomenology asks of us is that we cultivate, as best we can, a disinterested attitude toward the world, such that it may be seen from a standpoint other than our own, and thereby continually seen anew.Writing creates connections, not knowledge.Less
What phenomenology asks of us is that we cultivate, as best we can, a disinterested attitude toward the world, such that it may be seen from a standpoint other than our own, and thereby continually seen anew.Writing creates connections, not knowledge.
Edward S. Casey
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780520276031
- eISBN:
- 9780520954564
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520276031.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter sketches some of the most promising and evocative contemporary engagements with place. Not claiming to be exhaustive of the whole picture in the present, these vignettes are meant to ...
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This chapter sketches some of the most promising and evocative contemporary engagements with place. Not claiming to be exhaustive of the whole picture in the present, these vignettes are meant to serve as signposts for further exploration. But they do single out ways in which to revalorize place in our own lives, to give point to place. The figures to be treated in brief successive sections of the chapter are Bachelard, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Irigaray.Less
This chapter sketches some of the most promising and evocative contemporary engagements with place. Not claiming to be exhaustive of the whole picture in the present, these vignettes are meant to serve as signposts for further exploration. But they do single out ways in which to revalorize place in our own lives, to give point to place. The figures to be treated in brief successive sections of the chapter are Bachelard, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Irigaray.
