J. Hillis Miller
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230334
- eISBN:
- 9780823235216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230334.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This chapter argues that Derrida's Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy is an extremely odd or exceptional work of mourning. It mourns someone who is not yet dead, since Nancy survived ...
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This chapter argues that Derrida's Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy is an extremely odd or exceptional work of mourning. It mourns someone who is not yet dead, since Nancy survived his heart transplant operation to persist in what might be called a posthumous life. Nancy has survived Derrida's death to write more about Derrida. He is having the last word about matters on which they did not quite agree, now that Derrida cannot answer back.Less
This chapter argues that Derrida's Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy is an extremely odd or exceptional work of mourning. It mourns someone who is not yet dead, since Nancy survived his heart transplant operation to persist in what might be called a posthumous life. Nancy has survived Derrida's death to write more about Derrida. He is having the last word about matters on which they did not quite agree, now that Derrida cannot answer back.
Christopher Watkin
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637591
- eISBN:
- 9780748671847
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637591.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
The fifth chapter moves from Ricœur's reflections on spacing in relation to justice to Jean-Luc Nancy's postphenomenological account of spacing in relation to sense. The chapter stages an encounter ...
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The fifth chapter moves from Ricœur's reflections on spacing in relation to justice to Jean-Luc Nancy's postphenomenological account of spacing in relation to sense. The chapter stages an encounter between Derrida and Nancy on the subject of the latter's account of ontology as opening and exposure, presence as passage and contact as interruption. The discussion foregrounds the Nancean motif of the ‘yet without’ and understands Nancy's thought in terms of his reworking and critique of the motif of kosmos. Nancy is positioned as escaping problems of determinate judgment faced by Merleau-Ponty and Ricœur, developing a notion of universality that is ‘to be made’.Less
The fifth chapter moves from Ricœur's reflections on spacing in relation to justice to Jean-Luc Nancy's postphenomenological account of spacing in relation to sense. The chapter stages an encounter between Derrida and Nancy on the subject of the latter's account of ontology as opening and exposure, presence as passage and contact as interruption. The discussion foregrounds the Nancean motif of the ‘yet without’ and understands Nancy's thought in terms of his reworking and critique of the motif of kosmos. Nancy is positioned as escaping problems of determinate judgment faced by Merleau-Ponty and Ricœur, developing a notion of universality that is ‘to be made’.
Irving Goh
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262687
- eISBN:
- 9780823266371
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262687.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book proposes a theory of the reject, a more adequate figure than the subject for thinking friendship, love, community, democracy, the postsecular, and the posthuman. Through close readings of ...
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This book proposes a theory of the reject, a more adequate figure than the subject for thinking friendship, love, community, democracy, the postsecular, and the posthuman. Through close readings of Nancy, Deleuze, Derrida, Cixous, Clément, Bataille, Balibar, Rancière, and Badiou, it shows how the reject has always been nascent in contemporary French thought. The recent turn to animals and bare life, as well as the rise of the Occupy movement, also present a special urgency to think the reject today. Thinking the reject most importantly helps to advance our commitment to affirm others without acculturating their differences, but the reject also offers, finally, a response commensurate with the radical horizon of Nancy’s question of who comes after the subject.Less
This book proposes a theory of the reject, a more adequate figure than the subject for thinking friendship, love, community, democracy, the postsecular, and the posthuman. Through close readings of Nancy, Deleuze, Derrida, Cixous, Clément, Bataille, Balibar, Rancière, and Badiou, it shows how the reject has always been nascent in contemporary French thought. The recent turn to animals and bare life, as well as the rise of the Occupy movement, also present a special urgency to think the reject today. Thinking the reject most importantly helps to advance our commitment to affirm others without acculturating their differences, but the reject also offers, finally, a response commensurate with the radical horizon of Nancy’s question of who comes after the subject.
Johanna Malt (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526125798
- eISBN:
- 9781526141965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125798.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The chapter explores the double quality of the image via the work of the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, notably through his notions of ‘exscription’ and touch. In Nancy’s thought, ...
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The chapter explores the double quality of the image via the work of the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, notably through his notions of ‘exscription’ and touch. In Nancy’s thought, signification and presence, the readable and the visible are articulated in a relation of mutual touching and withdrawal that is lateral, metonymic, and works in both directions. And if this is what W. J. T. Mitchell might term an ambivalent account of ekphrasis, it is not a relation of indifference. Rather, the signifying surface and its non-signifying other are turned towards one another in a non-appropriating embrace. If ekphrasis is a writing out, it is only in so far as all writing exscribes. And if the image is written out in ekphrasis, the image in its turn exscribes something within it – that which is not reducible to signification. Each mode is inaccessible from within the other, but, in Nancy’s thinking of ekphrasis, they press up against each other at the surface where they meet.Less
The chapter explores the double quality of the image via the work of the contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, notably through his notions of ‘exscription’ and touch. In Nancy’s thought, signification and presence, the readable and the visible are articulated in a relation of mutual touching and withdrawal that is lateral, metonymic, and works in both directions. And if this is what W. J. T. Mitchell might term an ambivalent account of ekphrasis, it is not a relation of indifference. Rather, the signifying surface and its non-signifying other are turned towards one another in a non-appropriating embrace. If ekphrasis is a writing out, it is only in so far as all writing exscribes. And if the image is written out in ekphrasis, the image in its turn exscribes something within it – that which is not reducible to signification. Each mode is inaccessible from within the other, but, in Nancy’s thinking of ekphrasis, they press up against each other at the surface where they meet.
Marie-Eve Morin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748683178
- eISBN:
- 9781474408684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748683178.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Jean-Luc Nancy often asserts that his ontology is also an ethos and praxis. I seek to develop this affirmation with a view to understanding the role and place of ‘another politics’ or ‘another of ...
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Jean-Luc Nancy often asserts that his ontology is also an ethos and praxis. I seek to develop this affirmation with a view to understanding the role and place of ‘another politics’ or ‘another of politics’ in Nancy's work. I start by unfolding Nancy's understanding of existence as abandonment, freedom, and decision, and underline the shifts in emphasis in his reappropriation of Heidegger's thought: from ‘es gibt’ to ‘il y a’, from gift to freedom, from guarding and sheltering, to opening and exposing. This is in an effort to show how the decision of existence is entwined with the praxis of inhabiting the world. Such praxis is a struggle for the world as an ungrounded, untotalisable plurality of existences, co-existing and co-appearing to themselves and each other.Less
Jean-Luc Nancy often asserts that his ontology is also an ethos and praxis. I seek to develop this affirmation with a view to understanding the role and place of ‘another politics’ or ‘another of politics’ in Nancy's work. I start by unfolding Nancy's understanding of existence as abandonment, freedom, and decision, and underline the shifts in emphasis in his reappropriation of Heidegger's thought: from ‘es gibt’ to ‘il y a’, from gift to freedom, from guarding and sheltering, to opening and exposing. This is in an effort to show how the decision of existence is entwined with the praxis of inhabiting the world. Such praxis is a struggle for the world as an ungrounded, untotalisable plurality of existences, co-existing and co-appearing to themselves and each other.
John Martis
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823225347
- eISBN:
- 9780823235490
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823225347.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Jean-Luc Nancy's hyperbological argument distinguishes itself from that of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, both by emphasizing the movement that comprises the sublime experience and ...
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Jean-Luc Nancy's hyperbological argument distinguishes itself from that of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, both by emphasizing the movement that comprises the sublime experience and by underlining a further, sensate, dimension of the movement. One might say that where Lacoue-Labarthe allows one to think the subjectal loss that is hyperbology, Nancy encourages one to sense it. He encourages one to feel it, as an experience of that “presence of absence”, as it were, by which a viewed work of art is present only by virtue of having removed itself to a place and a meaning outside the confines of its form. What has been demonstrated here opens up the possibility of a subjectivity constituted in sensed, incessant, hyperbological movement. Such a subjectivity would survive as the “structural” counterpart of the subjectal loss which that movement promotes.Less
Jean-Luc Nancy's hyperbological argument distinguishes itself from that of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, both by emphasizing the movement that comprises the sublime experience and by underlining a further, sensate, dimension of the movement. One might say that where Lacoue-Labarthe allows one to think the subjectal loss that is hyperbology, Nancy encourages one to sense it. He encourages one to feel it, as an experience of that “presence of absence”, as it were, by which a viewed work of art is present only by virtue of having removed itself to a place and a meaning outside the confines of its form. What has been demonstrated here opens up the possibility of a subjectivity constituted in sensed, incessant, hyperbological movement. Such a subjectivity would survive as the “structural” counterpart of the subjectal loss which that movement promotes.
Christopher Watkin
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637591
- eISBN:
- 9780748671847
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637591.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Phenomenology or Deconstruction? challenges traditional understandings of the relationship between two important movements in European thought through new readings of the work of Maurice ...
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Phenomenology or Deconstruction? challenges traditional understandings of the relationship between two important movements in European thought through new readings of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur and Jean-Luc Nancy. A constant dialogue with Jacques Derrida's discussion of phenomenological themes provides the impetus to establishing a new understanding of ‘being’ and ‘presence’ that exposes significant blind spots inherent in traditional readings of both phenomenology and deconstruction, wedded as such readings often are to an ideology of antagonism or succession. In reproducing neither a stock phenomenological reaction to deconstruction nor the routine deconstructive reading of phenomenology, this book provides a fresh assessment of the possibilities for the future of phenomenology, along with a new reading of the deconstructive legacy. It shows how a phenomenological tradition much wider and richer than Husserlian or Heideggerean thought alone can take account of Derrida's critique of ontology and yet still hold a commitment to the ontological. Its new reading of being and presence fundamentally re-draws our understanding of the relation of deconstruction and phenomenology, and provides the first sustained discussion of the possibilities and problems for any future ‘deconstructive phenomenology’.Less
Phenomenology or Deconstruction? challenges traditional understandings of the relationship between two important movements in European thought through new readings of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur and Jean-Luc Nancy. A constant dialogue with Jacques Derrida's discussion of phenomenological themes provides the impetus to establishing a new understanding of ‘being’ and ‘presence’ that exposes significant blind spots inherent in traditional readings of both phenomenology and deconstruction, wedded as such readings often are to an ideology of antagonism or succession. In reproducing neither a stock phenomenological reaction to deconstruction nor the routine deconstructive reading of phenomenology, this book provides a fresh assessment of the possibilities for the future of phenomenology, along with a new reading of the deconstructive legacy. It shows how a phenomenological tradition much wider and richer than Husserlian or Heideggerean thought alone can take account of Derrida's critique of ontology and yet still hold a commitment to the ontological. Its new reading of being and presence fundamentally re-draws our understanding of the relation of deconstruction and phenomenology, and provides the first sustained discussion of the possibilities and problems for any future ‘deconstructive phenomenology’.
Oliver Marchart
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624973
- eISBN:
- 9780748672066
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624973.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This book, a wide-ranging overview of the emergence of post-foundationalism and a survey of the work of its key contemporary exponents, presents the first systematic coverage of the conceptual ...
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This book, a wide-ranging overview of the emergence of post-foundationalism and a survey of the work of its key contemporary exponents, presents the first systematic coverage of the conceptual difference between ‘politics’ (the practice of conventional politics: the political system or political forms of action) and ‘the political’ (a much more radical aspect which cannot be restricted to the realms of institutional politics). It is also an introductory overview of post-foundationalism and the tradition of ‘left Heideggerianism’: the political thought of contemporary theorists who make frequent use of the idea of political difference: Jean-Luc Nancy, Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou and Ernesto Laclau. After an overview of current trends in social post-foundationalism and a genealogical chapter on the historical emergence of the difference between the concepts of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, the work of individual theorists is presented and discussed at length. Individual chapters are presented on the political thought of Jean-Luc Nancy (including Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe), Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, and Ernesto Laclau (including Chantal Mouffe). Overall, the book offers an elaboration of the idea of a post-foundational conception of politics.Less
This book, a wide-ranging overview of the emergence of post-foundationalism and a survey of the work of its key contemporary exponents, presents the first systematic coverage of the conceptual difference between ‘politics’ (the practice of conventional politics: the political system or political forms of action) and ‘the political’ (a much more radical aspect which cannot be restricted to the realms of institutional politics). It is also an introductory overview of post-foundationalism and the tradition of ‘left Heideggerianism’: the political thought of contemporary theorists who make frequent use of the idea of political difference: Jean-Luc Nancy, Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou and Ernesto Laclau. After an overview of current trends in social post-foundationalism and a genealogical chapter on the historical emergence of the difference between the concepts of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, the work of individual theorists is presented and discussed at length. Individual chapters are presented on the political thought of Jean-Luc Nancy (including Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe), Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, and Ernesto Laclau (including Chantal Mouffe). Overall, the book offers an elaboration of the idea of a post-foundational conception of politics.
Christopher Watkin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640577
- eISBN:
- 9780748671793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640577.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter sets forth and critiques Alain Badiou’s account of the death of the God of metaphysics, setting it alongside Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of the metaphysics of the death of God. Whereas, ...
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This chapter sets forth and critiques Alain Badiou’s account of the death of the God of metaphysics, setting it alongside Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of the metaphysics of the death of God. Whereas, for Badiou, we do not have the means to be atheist so long as the theme of finitude governs our thinking, Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity questions Badiou’s recourse to the infinite in his account of the birth of philosophy as what Nancy calls a ‘Christmas projection’. The Badiouian actual infinite and Nancy’s finite thinking present two different ways of seeking to move beyond the poles of imitative and residual atheism. This difference raises the question of the coexistence of plural atheisms.Less
This chapter sets forth and critiques Alain Badiou’s account of the death of the God of metaphysics, setting it alongside Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of the metaphysics of the death of God. Whereas, for Badiou, we do not have the means to be atheist so long as the theme of finitude governs our thinking, Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity questions Badiou’s recourse to the infinite in his account of the birth of philosophy as what Nancy calls a ‘Christmas projection’. The Badiouian actual infinite and Nancy’s finite thinking present two different ways of seeking to move beyond the poles of imitative and residual atheism. This difference raises the question of the coexistence of plural atheisms.
Oliver Marchart
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624973
- eISBN:
- 9780748672066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624973.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Every inquiry into social post-foundationalism and the conceptual difference between politics and the political will have to take into account the work presented and elaborated at the Centre for ...
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Every inquiry into social post-foundationalism and the conceptual difference between politics and the political will have to take into account the work presented and elaborated at the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political between 1980 and 1984. The Centre, founded by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, turned out to be the location for the most intense and influential reelaboration so far of the notion of the political, or of the difference between politics and the political. The way Claude Lefort and Alain Badiou, for instance, frame their own versions of the political difference (oftentimes in contradistinction to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe's version) is certainly influenced by the debates at the Centre. Using a ‘comparative’ approach it will be possible to acquire a broader understanding of the way in which the political difference unfolds within a diverse and yet related set of theoretical approaches from ‘post-structuralism’ or ‘left Heideggerianism’. This chapter explores Nancy's thought of community and the political difference, his notion of event, the danger of philosophism and the necessity of a ‘first philosophy’.Less
Every inquiry into social post-foundationalism and the conceptual difference between politics and the political will have to take into account the work presented and elaborated at the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political between 1980 and 1984. The Centre, founded by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, turned out to be the location for the most intense and influential reelaboration so far of the notion of the political, or of the difference between politics and the political. The way Claude Lefort and Alain Badiou, for instance, frame their own versions of the political difference (oftentimes in contradistinction to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe's version) is certainly influenced by the debates at the Centre. Using a ‘comparative’ approach it will be possible to acquire a broader understanding of the way in which the political difference unfolds within a diverse and yet related set of theoretical approaches from ‘post-structuralism’ or ‘left Heideggerianism’. This chapter explores Nancy's thought of community and the political difference, his notion of event, the danger of philosophism and the necessity of a ‘first philosophy’.
John Paul Ricco
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226717777
- eISBN:
- 9780226113371
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226113371.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In this chapter, the author reads a number of key texts by Jean-Luc Nancy on bodies, nakedness and being-with, in order to elaborate a theory of co-existence in terms of a shared exposure to the ...
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In this chapter, the author reads a number of key texts by Jean-Luc Nancy on bodies, nakedness and being-with, in order to elaborate a theory of co-existence in terms of a shared exposure to the outside, an exterior spacing that is to be understood as lying no place other than right around and just between us. Focusing on Nancy's constant return to a posthumously published note by Freud on psyche, space, extension and non-knowledge, the author develops an argument for naked existence as other than simply a deprivation, negation or stripped down version of life. Drawing and elaborating upon Eve Sedgwick's notion of the peri-performative, the author redefines bodies as staging scenes of exposure to non-knowledge (Georges Bataille) that lies right around (peri) us, and that the author argues is to be understood as much as an ethical as an aesthetic space of co-existence.Less
In this chapter, the author reads a number of key texts by Jean-Luc Nancy on bodies, nakedness and being-with, in order to elaborate a theory of co-existence in terms of a shared exposure to the outside, an exterior spacing that is to be understood as lying no place other than right around and just between us. Focusing on Nancy's constant return to a posthumously published note by Freud on psyche, space, extension and non-knowledge, the author develops an argument for naked existence as other than simply a deprivation, negation or stripped down version of life. Drawing and elaborating upon Eve Sedgwick's notion of the peri-performative, the author redefines bodies as staging scenes of exposure to non-knowledge (Georges Bataille) that lies right around (peri) us, and that the author argues is to be understood as much as an ethical as an aesthetic space of co-existence.
Gerald Moore
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642021
- eISBN:
- 9780748671861
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642021.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Returning to the Heideggerian critique of ‘Anthropology’, Chapter 3 challenges the idea of a philosophical solution that, providing privileged access to a redemptive experience of the event, would ...
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Returning to the Heideggerian critique of ‘Anthropology’, Chapter 3 challenges the idea of a philosophical solution that, providing privileged access to a redemptive experience of the event, would allow us to supersede or sublate the political. Beginning with an account of the Heideggerian polis drawn from his lectures on Hölderlin, his work on technology and the late essay On Time and Being, the chapter explains how Heidegger's fatal relationship with Nazism results from a belief implicit in philosophy since Plato that politics occurs only in the failure or absence of philosophy. This critical argument is made primarily through a discussion of the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, particularly his highly important but misunderstood and underdeveloped concept of ecotechnicity. It is on account of ecotechnity, Nancy argues, that the event of existence should be conceived less in terms of ‘giving’, which implies the possibility of receipt, than in terms of an ‘offering’ whose receipt is impossible, in the sense of being uninstantiable. Against readings that have sought to diminish the importance of Nancy's contribution, particular attention is paid to the possibility of reading Nancy through Deleuze.Less
Returning to the Heideggerian critique of ‘Anthropology’, Chapter 3 challenges the idea of a philosophical solution that, providing privileged access to a redemptive experience of the event, would allow us to supersede or sublate the political. Beginning with an account of the Heideggerian polis drawn from his lectures on Hölderlin, his work on technology and the late essay On Time and Being, the chapter explains how Heidegger's fatal relationship with Nazism results from a belief implicit in philosophy since Plato that politics occurs only in the failure or absence of philosophy. This critical argument is made primarily through a discussion of the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, particularly his highly important but misunderstood and underdeveloped concept of ecotechnicity. It is on account of ecotechnity, Nancy argues, that the event of existence should be conceived less in terms of ‘giving’, which implies the possibility of receipt, than in terms of an ‘offering’ whose receipt is impossible, in the sense of being uninstantiable. Against readings that have sought to diminish the importance of Nancy's contribution, particular attention is paid to the possibility of reading Nancy through Deleuze.
Kas Saghafi
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231621
- eISBN:
- 9780823235094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823231621.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
It would be impossible to deny the increasing importance of Jean-Luc Nancy as an interlocutor for Jacques Derrida. Their incontestable proximity, or affinity, became more ...
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It would be impossible to deny the increasing importance of Jean-Luc Nancy as an interlocutor for Jacques Derrida. Their incontestable proximity, or affinity, became more intense and accelerated after the publication of Derrida's majestic tome on Nancy's work, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, in 2000. Since then, one could trace numerous occasions or places where each winks at the other's work, where their writings have crossed. This crossing of terms or concepts that have passed back and forth between the two thinkers, such as “community”, “fraternity”, and “freedom”, this constant saluting and hailing (saluer) of each other, was also accompanied by the crossing of paths at numerous conferences where they both shared the stage. Not only has a constant salutation been taking place between the two thinkers, but the very term salut, what Derrida has elsewhere called “that strange French word salut”, also became a theme, a part of the textual relation between the two thinkers.Less
It would be impossible to deny the increasing importance of Jean-Luc Nancy as an interlocutor for Jacques Derrida. Their incontestable proximity, or affinity, became more intense and accelerated after the publication of Derrida's majestic tome on Nancy's work, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, in 2000. Since then, one could trace numerous occasions or places where each winks at the other's work, where their writings have crossed. This crossing of terms or concepts that have passed back and forth between the two thinkers, such as “community”, “fraternity”, and “freedom”, this constant saluting and hailing (saluer) of each other, was also accompanied by the crossing of paths at numerous conferences where they both shared the stage. Not only has a constant salutation been taking place between the two thinkers, but the very term salut, what Derrida has elsewhere called “that strange French word salut”, also became a theme, a part of the textual relation between the two thinkers.
Karmen Mackendrick
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823242894
- eISBN:
- 9780823242931
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823242894.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Divine Enticement takes as its central claims that the meanings of theological concepts are not so much propositional—whether those propositions are affirmative or negative—as they are seductive; and ...
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Divine Enticement takes as its central claims that the meanings of theological concepts are not so much propositional—whether those propositions are affirmative or negative—as they are seductive; and that in fact our relation to the divine, the sacred, that which we name by "God" is one of an infinite seduction. The use of language in such conceptualization evokes more than it designates. This is not a flaw nor a result of vagueness or imprecision in theological language, but rather marks the correspondence of such language to its subject, understood here not as a being but as that which, outside of or at the limit of our thought, draws us as an enticement to desire, not least to intellectual desire. Several characteristics of signs, such as their sensory character, their incomplete referentiality, and their power to draw in various ways, are relevant. Thus a number of rather traditional notions in Christian theology are conceived here as enticements, modes of drawing the desires of both body and mind. Central to the text is the strange semiotics of divine naming, naming as a call on that for which there cannot be a referent. Likewise central is the value of the possible, which I argue is essential to enticement as the space in which a seduction may draw us always further. Finally, the entanglement of sign and body, not least in interpretations of the Christian incarnation, both grounds and complicates the theological abstractions.Less
Divine Enticement takes as its central claims that the meanings of theological concepts are not so much propositional—whether those propositions are affirmative or negative—as they are seductive; and that in fact our relation to the divine, the sacred, that which we name by "God" is one of an infinite seduction. The use of language in such conceptualization evokes more than it designates. This is not a flaw nor a result of vagueness or imprecision in theological language, but rather marks the correspondence of such language to its subject, understood here not as a being but as that which, outside of or at the limit of our thought, draws us as an enticement to desire, not least to intellectual desire. Several characteristics of signs, such as their sensory character, their incomplete referentiality, and their power to draw in various ways, are relevant. Thus a number of rather traditional notions in Christian theology are conceived here as enticements, modes of drawing the desires of both body and mind. Central to the text is the strange semiotics of divine naming, naming as a call on that for which there cannot be a referent. Likewise central is the value of the possible, which I argue is essential to enticement as the space in which a seduction may draw us always further. Finally, the entanglement of sign and body, not least in interpretations of the Christian incarnation, both grounds and complicates the theological abstractions.
William Robert
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231652
- eISBN:
- 9780823237203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823231652.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
At the heart of Christianity, in the flesh, stands tragedy. In Jean-Luc Nancy's words, “even in the very heart of Christianity, beginning with Christ's cry of abandonment, one can still find the ...
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At the heart of Christianity, in the flesh, stands tragedy. In Jean-Luc Nancy's words, “even in the very heart of Christianity, beginning with Christ's cry of abandonment, one can still find the trace—never quite effaced—of this pain”, a pain and suffering that “begin with existence and end with it, and this end gives pain and suffering to those who survive”. Here, “those who survive” seems to refer to those who mourn the death of an other: those who survive the death of a loved one, for example, experience the pain and suffering of living on without that loved one. However, in a posthumanous context, “those who survive” can refer to living as itself living on. Divinity's withdrawal is a tragic experience singularly and especially for Jesus, for whom this withdrawal becomes the death of divinity that he experiences—and that he survives.Less
At the heart of Christianity, in the flesh, stands tragedy. In Jean-Luc Nancy's words, “even in the very heart of Christianity, beginning with Christ's cry of abandonment, one can still find the trace—never quite effaced—of this pain”, a pain and suffering that “begin with existence and end with it, and this end gives pain and suffering to those who survive”. Here, “those who survive” seems to refer to those who mourn the death of an other: those who survive the death of a loved one, for example, experience the pain and suffering of living on without that loved one. However, in a posthumanous context, “those who survive” can refer to living as itself living on. Divinity's withdrawal is a tragic experience singularly and especially for Jesus, for whom this withdrawal becomes the death of divinity that he experiences—and that he survives.
Christopher Watkin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640577
- eISBN:
- 9780748671793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640577.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
For Badiou, the god of the poets is the most tenacious of deities. The poetic principle of the enchanted world, this god is neither dead nor alive but rather withdrawn. Badiou identifies the ...
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For Badiou, the god of the poets is the most tenacious of deities. The poetic principle of the enchanted world, this god is neither dead nor alive but rather withdrawn. Badiou identifies the peculiarly Romantic open infinite and the motif of incarnation as the twin characteristics of this god. Nancy, though he shares this characterisation of the god of the poets, addresses them differently. Seeking most keenly to avoid an ascetic atheism, Badiou affirms a conception of poetry in terms of the Idea, whereas Nancy, more wary of the danger of parasitic atheism, rewrites the open and incarnation in terms of singular plural sharing and the double gesture of the deconstruction of Christianity.Less
For Badiou, the god of the poets is the most tenacious of deities. The poetic principle of the enchanted world, this god is neither dead nor alive but rather withdrawn. Badiou identifies the peculiarly Romantic open infinite and the motif of incarnation as the twin characteristics of this god. Nancy, though he shares this characterisation of the god of the poets, addresses them differently. Seeking most keenly to avoid an ascetic atheism, Badiou affirms a conception of poetry in terms of the Idea, whereas Nancy, more wary of the danger of parasitic atheism, rewrites the open and incarnation in terms of singular plural sharing and the double gesture of the deconstruction of Christianity.
Gregg Lambert
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474413909
- eISBN:
- 9781474422352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413909.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This statement takes up Jacques Derrida’s seminal work on the themes of the body and touching in the philosophy of Jean Luc Nancy. It explores the evolution of post-phenomenological and Christian ...
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This statement takes up Jacques Derrida’s seminal work on the themes of the body and touching in the philosophy of Jean Luc Nancy. It explores the evolution of post-phenomenological and Christian themes and Derrida’s commentary.Less
This statement takes up Jacques Derrida’s seminal work on the themes of the body and touching in the philosophy of Jean Luc Nancy. It explores the evolution of post-phenomenological and Christian themes and Derrida’s commentary.
Jan Bryant
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474456944
- eISBN:
- 9781474476867
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474456944.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
An extended essay on Claire Denis’ L’Intrus acts as a companion piece to the chapter on Frances Barrett. Dealing with similar themes of care, hospitality, and feminism, it expands on an aspect that ...
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An extended essay on Claire Denis’ L’Intrus acts as a companion piece to the chapter on Frances Barrett. Dealing with similar themes of care, hospitality, and feminism, it expands on an aspect that sat at the edges of Curator, the questioning of received ontological boundaries or defining categories. Denis covers both formerly and conceptually a taxonomy of borders, which are both physical and psychological. Her source material, Jean Luc Nancy’s essay about his heart transplant, is considered in relation to the way Denis produces a moving image work from a philosophical text, with particular concern for her treatment of narrative to produce bodily sensation. The ‘Other’ or figure of the stranger is pitted against the disintegrating power of patriarchy referenced in Denis’ casting of the actor, Michel Subor, who appears in L’Intrus and Beau Travail (1999) as well as Jean Luc Godard’s Petite Soldat (1955). [145]Less
An extended essay on Claire Denis’ L’Intrus acts as a companion piece to the chapter on Frances Barrett. Dealing with similar themes of care, hospitality, and feminism, it expands on an aspect that sat at the edges of Curator, the questioning of received ontological boundaries or defining categories. Denis covers both formerly and conceptually a taxonomy of borders, which are both physical and psychological. Her source material, Jean Luc Nancy’s essay about his heart transplant, is considered in relation to the way Denis produces a moving image work from a philosophical text, with particular concern for her treatment of narrative to produce bodily sensation. The ‘Other’ or figure of the stranger is pitted against the disintegrating power of patriarchy referenced in Denis’ casting of the actor, Michel Subor, who appears in L’Intrus and Beau Travail (1999) as well as Jean Luc Godard’s Petite Soldat (1955). [145]
Linnell Secomb
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623679
- eISBN:
- 9780748671854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623679.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter returns to Plato and to Emmanuel Levinas reflecting on the love that grounds philosophy as well as ethics and politics. Jacques Derrida's politics recognises ethical and friendship love. ...
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This chapter returns to Plato and to Emmanuel Levinas reflecting on the love that grounds philosophy as well as ethics and politics. Jacques Derrida's politics recognises ethical and friendship love. Jean-Luc Nancy explicitly determines the importance of love in the formation of subjectivity, community and culture. In ‘Shattered Love’, Nancy reflects on philosophy as love of thinking and on the ethics, politics and phenomenology of love. While Derrida follows a path linking friendship to democracy, Nancy examines the possibility of a sociality set by love and expressed through the melee, the turmoil and chaos, of community. Derrida shows the importance of love for his thought and his life most explicitly when he speaks of his friendship for Nancy. In a community of touching, sharing and exposure between each and the other, perhaps there is a contamination so that writers anticipate and pre-empt each other creating a ‘self-touching-you’ through words.Less
This chapter returns to Plato and to Emmanuel Levinas reflecting on the love that grounds philosophy as well as ethics and politics. Jacques Derrida's politics recognises ethical and friendship love. Jean-Luc Nancy explicitly determines the importance of love in the formation of subjectivity, community and culture. In ‘Shattered Love’, Nancy reflects on philosophy as love of thinking and on the ethics, politics and phenomenology of love. While Derrida follows a path linking friendship to democracy, Nancy examines the possibility of a sociality set by love and expressed through the melee, the turmoil and chaos, of community. Derrida shows the importance of love for his thought and his life most explicitly when he speaks of his friendship for Nancy. In a community of touching, sharing and exposure between each and the other, perhaps there is a contamination so that writers anticipate and pre-empt each other creating a ‘self-touching-you’ through words.
J. Hillis Miller
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226527215
- eISBN:
- 9780226527239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226527239.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The meaning of the word “community” has differed and evolved throughout the different philosophical and theoretical works written about it. In modern times, community has undergone great changes—its ...
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The meaning of the word “community” has differed and evolved throughout the different philosophical and theoretical works written about it. In modern times, community has undergone great changes—its dissolution, dislocation, or conflagration. “Dissolution” implies that something once whole was destroyed or disintegrated. “Dislocation” implies that modern communities have been displaced—either set outside or beside themselves. “Conflagration” suggests that the whole community has not only been dissolved but has also been consumed—an allusion intended by Jean-Luc Nancy to the Holocaust. Wallace Stevens “The Auroras of Autumn” is studied and cited by the chapter as a work which occupies an important piece in this study. This chapter aims to build upon the recent theoretical investigations of community to build a collection of tentative hypotheses for studying community’s conflagration in fiction before and after Auschwitz.Less
The meaning of the word “community” has differed and evolved throughout the different philosophical and theoretical works written about it. In modern times, community has undergone great changes—its dissolution, dislocation, or conflagration. “Dissolution” implies that something once whole was destroyed or disintegrated. “Dislocation” implies that modern communities have been displaced—either set outside or beside themselves. “Conflagration” suggests that the whole community has not only been dissolved but has also been consumed—an allusion intended by Jean-Luc Nancy to the Holocaust. Wallace Stevens “The Auroras of Autumn” is studied and cited by the chapter as a work which occupies an important piece in this study. This chapter aims to build upon the recent theoretical investigations of community to build a collection of tentative hypotheses for studying community’s conflagration in fiction before and after Auschwitz.
