The underridization of Nancy: tracing the transformations in Nancy’s idea of community

My aim in this paper is to expose a misrepresentation of Jean-Luc Nancy’s ideas on community in the secondary literature. I argue that discussions of Nancy’s work have failed to recognize a transformation that has occurred in his later thought, which distances him from Jacques Derrida. I propose that Nancy’s later work points the way beyond the “persistence of unhappy consciousness” in deconstruction through allowing for the possibility of the creation of a world alternative to globalization. Recognition of this transformation is suggestive for how Nancy’s theoretical framework might be employed in analyses of recent resistance movements.     

Disability and social justice

This article explores the significance of disability for social justice, using Nancy Fraser’s theory of justice as a guideline. The article argues that the disability perspective is essential for understanding and promoting social justice, although it is often disregarded by critical thinkers and social activists. The article looks at three prominent strategies for achieving social justice under conditions of capitalism: economically, by decommodifying labour; culturally, by deconstructing self-sufficiency; and politically, by transnationalising democracy. The disability perspective reveals that decommodification of labour requires enhancement of disability support, deconstruction of self-sufficiency requires valorisation of disability-illuminated interdependence, and transnationalisation of democracy requires scrutiny of the transnational production of impairments. The article discusses each of these strategies in theoretical and practical terms by drawing on disability studies and Fraser’s analyses.     

REPLY

In the reply to his critics and interlocutors, Laclau clarifies his position regarding a series of concepts such as representation, fraternity (or democratic solidarity), identification, signification, affect, extimacy, spectacle and social sedimentation as they arise in or pertain to his theory of ‘populism and populist reason’. In the process of those clarifications, Laclau also explains how his views differ from other relevant thinkers such as Hannah Pitkin (on ‘representation’), Jurgen Habermas (on ‘new social movements’), Guy Debord (on ‘spectacle’) and Jacques Lacan (on ‘extimacy’).     

Exegetical Explorations: Parsons’ Theoretical Faith and Hope in Structural Functional Analysis

This article discusses Talcott Parsons scientific world-view and how his theory gave expression to his more-than-merely theoretical reliance upon insights he gleaned from Whitehead and Weber. He developed “social systems theory” not only with a structural-functional and evolutionary understanding of social action but also saw science, in these terms as well. The article seeks to trace his theory’s reliance upon the system concept which gave his work a persistent focus throughout his scholarly career.     

Exegetical explorations: Parsons’ problematic aim

The aim of this article is to encourage ongoing and close exegetical study of sociology’s theoretical texts. Attention is drawn to two instances where Talcott Parsons’ theory project seems to be at odds with itself. Both are related to his “first major synthesis” The Structure of Social Action (1937). The first concerns Parsons’ opening discussion of Crane Brinton’s question “Who now reads Spencer?” Parsons’ discussion of Spencer is examined and then compared and contrasted with what he later wrote in the “Introduction” to the 1961 reprint of Spencer’s The Study of Sociology. The second concerns Parsons’ problematic view of his contribution to social theory’s “secondary literature” and how this relates to his claims about “convergence.” The article notes that Parsons was trying to identify what he believed to be a new norm for social theory. Sociological theory, he believed, would from henceforth have to be formulated in terms of this newly emerging normative frame of reference.     

A trembling voice in the desert: Jean‐Luc Nancy's rethinking of the space of the political

Abstract

This essay explores Jean‐Luc Nancy's rethinking of political space in terms of an ontological ‘being‐with’. It elucidates how Nancy's thinking of community emerges out of the French philosopher's reworking of Heidegger's crucial notion of Mitsein. For Nancy, although Heidegger argues that Dasein is always already also Mitsein, Mitsein is nonetheless also occluded by the priority accorded to Dasein. The consequences for the way in which community or the space of the political is configured are profound since traditional conceptions of the subject of community thus remain unreconstructed. Nancy however does reconstruct community by emphasising that the primal ontological conditions of community are not conceived as the One, the Other or the We, but as the ‘with’, ‘relationality’, and the ‘between’. The question of being (Seinsfrage) thereby becomes the question of being‐with (Mitseinsfrage).     

Exposed Singularity

In his photographs of children in displaced persons’ camps, Salgado takes each subject seriously. His images dis‐place us through their dignity and presence. We are no longer spectators but engaged: each gaze demands a response and produces the self as exposed. Pictures of prisoners from Tuol Sleng in Cambodia take the same form: a single figure facing the camera. Here, however, we are caught in an additional and irresolvable aporia: we are faced with thousands to whom we cannot adequately respond. As Derrida argues, responsibility is only possible by sacrificing ethics: we can respond to one only by sacrificing whatever obliges us to respond to others. In the final set of images considered here, Daravuth’s positing of the indistinguishability of victim and perpetrator disturbs any easy response once more. A reading of Nancy alongside and against Derrida points to significant differences in emphasis between the two, and throws further light on the aporia of responsibility. The essay concludes that Nancy’s being singular plural is productive in emphasizing the need, politically, to focus not on how we might establish a bond between us, but rather on how it is that we seem separate at all. The photographs expose us to our inevitable engagement or being‐with.     

Introduction to critical perspectives and emerging models of inter-American studies

Abstract

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) has been the subject of much critical attention, but the original story upon which it was based and its author, Cornell Woolrich, less so. This article examines ‘Rear Window’ (1942) in the context of Woolrich’s writing and his life more broadly, in order to reveal the privileged role of fenestral imagery in his work. Through a process which starts with surveillance through glass, and a creative interpretation of ‘real’ events consumed in terms strikingly similar to mass media entertainments, Woolrich’s marginalized protagonist assumes the role of the detective and, in doing so, his identity is enhanced. The Woolrichian window reifies abstract social boundaries. It serves, simultaneously, as a symbol of urban alienation and a fantasy of social integration. It also becomes a trope of consumption and popular culture. Hitchcock’s film has sometimes been praised for the self-conscious way in which it aligns the image of the window with the cinema screen in order to implicate viewers in the protagonist’s voyeuristic practice. This article extends such an analysis to Woolrich’s story, but also takes it a step further, to reveal the ways in which reading similarly might be regarded as a voyeuristic form of cultural consumption.     

Ruin Value

In this article I consider Albert Speer’s theory of ruin value through a discussion of the work of two Weimar theorists of ruination, Ernst Jünger and Walter Benjamin. The first section of the article relates Speer’s original theory of ruins to Nazi ideology. After this consideration of the Nazi obsession with ruination, the second division of the article explores the work of Jünger in terms of his problematic relation to National Socialism. Beyond this investigation of Jünger’s work the final section of the article argues against what I call the Weimar right’s version of ruin value through an elaboration of Walter Benjamin’s catastrophic utopianism. In this section of the article my argument is that it is possible to save the concept of ruin value for the cause of human emancipation through the construction of a critical theory that seeks to oppose the politics of memory to the ideological necrophilia of the Weimar right and National Socialism.     

Locating an American romanticism: Emerson,Cavell, 'Experience'

Abstract

This article reads Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1844 essay 'Experience' as a work of mourning that gives rise to critical reaction in the romantic tradition to specific philosophical ideas New England had imported from Europe early in the 19th century. The author reads this transatlantic interaction in the wider context of journal entries, arguing that the death of Emerson's son is a test to Emerson's philosophy and his literary form, indeed, the highest challenge, against which the claims of philosophy and literature could only fail. Moreover, it is the failure of his philosophy to contain his son's death, to express it, that makes Emerson's essay romantic. Defining romanticism as incompletion: the impossibility of a total system which would include, for example, the death of the other (Cavell, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, Blanchot). This, the author argues, proposes a 'location' for American romanticism that constitutes an adequate response to Critchley's contention, in his reading of Cavell, that Emerson is not, in fact, romantic.     

From Maidens to Mugs: The Motif of the Mirror in the Works of Nikolai Gogol'

From Plato’s times to our contemporary age, theorists have spoken of art as being a mirror of life and sometimes argued against the notion. In his nonfiction essays on art and literature, Gogol' was also fond of the metaphor. Due to the frequency with which mirrors appear in his work, Gogol'’s oeuvre offers a unique opportunity for study of how the idiom of art-as-mirror transforms in the move from theoretical reflections to his fictional stories. Appealing to Meyer Abrams’s claim that the mirror has become a “constitutive” metaphor, this article assumes that: a) the potential problems the metaphor introduces are fair game in general theorizing, and b) the questions introduced into the texts by Gogol'’s fictional mirrors may also point toward problematic issues in his thought on art and development as an artist. The article surveys Gogol'’s use of mirrors in his fiction and relates them to their theoretical counterparts. Clear patterns emerge that parallel the geographical and meta-literary subject matter of his work. Ultimately, the article reveals how Gogol'’s evolving treatment of the mirror metaphor may offer insight into the sources of the author’s “creative decline.”     

A.I. Solzhenitsyn Selected Bibliography December 1962 - October 1970

Critics have noted similarities between Nikolai Gogol'’s three early horror stories (Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala [St. John’s Eve], Strashnaia mest' [A Terrible Vengeance] Vii) and the works of his famous German predecessor Ludwig Tieck. There also exists some speculation concerning the relationship between his Ukrainian tales and the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann. However, a detailed comparison between the two authors focused only on Gogol'’s “St. Petersburg” stories. His early tales have been ignored because they were presumed to depend mostly on folklore. This article argues that there are intertextual connections between Gogol'’s St. John’s Eve and A Terrible Vengeance, and Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann [The Sandman] and Ignaz Denner. The paper contends that Gogol' was recapitulating, consciously or unconsciously, Hoffmann’s oeuvre in his works both in terms of plot detail and on a deeper psychological level.     

At the frontier of imperial history: revisiting Edward Gait’s A History of Assam

Edward Gait’s A History of Assam was first published in 1906, later revised in 1926. The book has remained one of the most popular ‘textbooks’ in Assam, especially as the first modern historiography on the subject. This article looks at two broad issues in this regard. First, it looks at the contradictions that Gait was faced with in terms of his imperial ideology and interpreting the historical sources of an imperial frontier. Second, it tries to situate the relevance of the above point vis-à-vis some of the contemporary attempts at re-framing the region as an international borderland. In conclusion, the article looks at the reception of Gait and his appropriation into different discourses within Assam. A point explored is whether despite its contradictions, was Gait’s A History of Assam part of a wider, dynamic context of early twentieth century Assam, which made the book an important academic and political intervention of its times.     

Emigration State: Race,Citizenship and Settler Imperialism in Modern British History,c. 1850–1972

What role did migration play in the making of modern Britain? We now have a good sense of how ethnicity, class, religion and gender structured immigrants' experience and what impact they had on Britain's culture, society and economy. But as Nancy Green pointed out almost two decades ago, scholars of migration must focus on exit as well as entry. Such a call to study ‘the politics of exit’ is especially apposite in the case of the UK. For in every decade between 1850 and 1980 (with the exception of the 1930s), the UK experienced net emigration year on year. This article analyses this outflow of migrants to reveal a new vision of the UK as an ‘emigration state’. The article employs this concept to make a new argument about the formation of migration policy in the UK and offers a revised account of the geographical boundaries of the modern British state.     

Mutual agreement,subliminal persuasion,and the possibility of pluralism

This article concludes the correspondence between Michael Warren Tumolo and myself about the roles of philosophy and rhetoric in each other’s business. It builds upon his original article “A Sublimed Experience of the Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic,” my response to this, and then his response “On Critical Faith and Metacritical Agnosticism: Nietzsche, Socrates, and the Searches for Knowledge.” Tumolo begins with a discussion of Plato’s method in his Republic and his use of deceitful rhetoric in the Metals Myth at the same time as he is devaluing rhetoricians for being deceitful. My response concerns his selective and literal versus my holistic and contextual readings of Plato and the complexities of reading a dramatic dialogue. His response illuminated the orientation for his method in the antiepistemologist stance he shares with several colleagues and the metacritical or pluralist stance he claims to share with Nietzsche. My conclusion examines the difficulties of maintaining a pluralist position when certain of one’s argument. Tumolo’s antiepistemological and pro-rhetoric polemic belies his advocacy of pluralism. I find Nietzsche to be compatible with a dramatic and dialogical Plato and suggest that Tumolo’s method would be stronger if inspired by this Plato rather than fighting against him.     

‘Falling through the cracks’: recognising sitting disabilities

This article attempts to ‘give voice’ to those with sitting disabilities, in order to raise awareness and enable constructive dialogue amongst stakeholders. These voices were collected through interviews and conversational email correspondence, with participants recruited via support websites and hailing from across Europe, Australia and North America. Numerous themes emerged in our participants’ accounts and were largely framed around an inability to fit the deeply-rooted prevailing norms of a sitting society. Necessary shifts in relationships, an inability to travel, difficulties with retaining employment and feelings of distrust and inauthenticity in relation to official knowledges all emerged as a result of this. After an account of the participants’ stories, we offer a preliminary analysis via Nancy Fraser’s understanding of social justice, where these experiences can be understood through the categories of recognition and distribution. In doing so, we develop some recommendations for change.     

Edmund Burke on slavery and the slave trade

This article reconstructs Edmund Burke’s thoughts on slavery from his Account of the European Settlements in America to his parliamentary speeches in the late 1700s. It seeks to demonstrate that Burke’s program for slave reform, Sketch of a Negro Code, was one of the earliest plans for gradual abolition and gradual manumission formulated in eighteenth-century England and, quite possibly, the first ever in modern British history whose scheme was detailed and comprehensive. This article further explains how the plan reflected both Burke’s antipathy to slavery and his unusually wide comprehension of the many obstacles to abolition. It concludes by stressing Burke’s belief that Africans were not condemned to servitude by their background.     

The Bin Laden Tapes

Since the September 11th attacks a series of videos have been broadcast across the globe that feature Osama Bin Laden. These video appearances have confirmed Bin Laden’s continued wellbeing and ability to function as the head of Al Qaeda, in the midst of massive hunt to capture and destroy him. Lacan’s conception of the Imaginary and his commentary on the gaze serve to illuminate the terms in which Bin Laden has used his visual presence in these videos to intimidate his opponents and to continue to participate in the War on Terror. In addition, these video appearances present a gesture of defiance in the face of the strategies of surveillance deployed to achieve a sighting of Bin Laden. The Bush administration’s portrayal of Bin Laden as a figure of profound evil has been fundamental to the Manichean terms in which the administration has sought to configure the War on Terror. Bin Laden’s video appearances have been integral to presenting Bin Laden as such a figure to Western audiences. For these audiences Bin Laden can be said to have come to resemble a type of demon, both in regard to him constituting a figure of supreme evil but also in terms of his ontological status and capacity to appear and disappear seemingly at will. Even if Bin Laden was to be captured or killed, his status amongst his followers as a spiritual figure, and his presence in these videos, mean he possesses the capacity to continue to feature as an influential figure in the War on Terror.