Modifying the Modifier: Body Modification as Social Incarnation

The notion that body modification occurs when one undertakes practices like tattooing, piercing or scarification, engenders discourses in which: (i) body modifiers endorse such practices as self‐constructive, distancing their practitioners from social regulation and a deterministic biology, whereas; (ii) critics condemn their seemingly violent, corporeal interference. However, in suspecting that such analysis should be attentive to the concurrent individual and social co‐constitution of behaviours, a sociological and post‐structural interrogation of this characterization of body modification as a “sovereign, denaturalizing” endeavour is demanded. An engagement with the originary violence of Derridian deconstruction will duly re‐conceive body modification practice as not something which introduces violence to corporeality. Rather, violence will present as a primordial differentiating process which bodies always already condition, and by which they are conditioned/produced/modified. The second issue at stake in this article will thus develop as a contestation to the characterization of “body modification” as an exclusive category of practice. Such practices do not arrive, pre‐existing, but rather manifest as the originary violence/differentiation of bodies‐as‐modifications‐which‐modify. This re‐defines modification from something that agentive subjects introduce to bodies, to something that subjects‐as‐bodies cannot help but be. Consequently, individual agency is not divorced from behaviour, but emerges as a corporeal, social production.     

Medieval propaganda, longue durée and New History: Towards a nonlinear approach to the history of public relations

This article offers a new perspective on the historical approach to public relations by drawing from the work of French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, who was the principal representative of the Nouvelle Histoire (New History) French historiographical movement. Based on the notions of mentality and longue durée, which Le Goff inherited from the Annales movement, we propose that a nonlinear approach to the history of public relations will help to extend its time scale back to the beginnings of civilization. This seeks to overcome the historical boundaries usually established between the prehistory (or proto-history) and the history of public relations as a profession.     

Monstrosities and moral publics

Interdisciplinary scholarship on neoliberal urban governmentality has been attentive to the knowledges and techniques of government currently emerging at the interface of local state politics and invested claims of voluntary private actors such as corporate partners and philanthropic agencies. This article draws attention to the workings of the aesthetic as an epistemological grounding for the rationalization of urban rule. Specifically, I explore a Toronto, Canada-based philanthropic agency’s reliance on a mise-en-scene of urban terror to animate its own self-validated knowledges about targeted inner-suburban subjects and spaces. In their circulation and demand for public address, the agency’s graphic public service announcements, launched in 2007, herald what I argue is a moralized set of knowledges about municipal renewal that has its own normative orientations grounded in a neoliberal political rationality, and tangentially, in racialized security imperatives. I detail various dimensions of the social life of a video associated with this public service campaign targeting ‘youth at risk’, considering the ethical, political and economic valences it was expected to convey; its semiotic exchange with other images and representations of disenfranchised spaces, subjects and communities; and the publics it attempted to interpellate. Importantly, given the agency’s current standing as a prominent player in Canadian urban policy arenas, I pay analytical attention to the visual campaign as a site for the production of knowledges about proper urban citizenship and social governance, and as such, a strategic-orienting device for urban policy interventions and directives.     

德里达:将西方文化的批判性推向巅峰的哲人

尽管德里达推崇中国文化,但是,他的解构主义却与中国文化的述而不作的肯定性与连续性不同,而是将西方文化的否定性、批判性等恶魔精神推向了巅峰。德里达继承了西方哲学的批判传统,尤其是基督教的上帝观念衰落之时尼采和海德格尔的精神遗产,从索绪尔的共时性语言学和结构主义的内部找到了颠覆结构主义乃至整个西方逻各斯中心主义的钥匙。但是,德里达批判和颠覆的支点也难以逃脱西方文化的传统方式,从另一种意义上说,德里达也可以说是西方最后一个形而上学哲学家。     

The politics of the face: the scopic regime and the (un-)masking of the political subject

Face is commonly seen as a feature exclusive to each person. It expresses subject’s feelings, thoughts and in turn represents knowledge that is otherwise deemed personal. However, face is mistakenly seen as pure expression of subject’s thoughts. This article aims to show that face is a product of governing practices of seeing and knowing. It is thus not a unique individual expression, but a mask that the socio-political order attaches to individuals as they are turned into political subjects. The article begins with a discussion of the two governing practices: the seeing (or the spectre of the visible) and the knowing (or the practice of locating faces in the socio-political field) with an aim to unveil the role face plays in the socio-political reality. The first interrogation looks at how face creates a field of recognition and opens a distinct form of political visibility: who, what and how one sees and what remains unseen. Whereas the second interrogation discusses how appearances produce meaning and how knowledge is taken off the face. Finally, the face as a knowledge producer and a mean of subject’s social recognition (identity) is put in the encounter with the idea of the anxious gaze and the work of Marlene Dumas. Instead of recognition, here a subject is met with dissociation and displacement of subject’s socio-political image. The three presented studies paint the politics of the face as an obscene governing strategy caught between endless attempts to create the face as a known, seen and governed space and illusive attempts to grasp the actual meaning of a pre-symbolised face.     

雅克·德里达的马克思主义观及其形成条件

德里达的马克思主义观,是德里达关于马克思主义的基本观点,主要表现在对什么是马克思主义和如何对待马克思主义问题的回答上。德里达的马克思主义观不是凭空出现的,而是有其产生和发展的主客观条件。德里达马克思主义形成的客观条件是:后马克思主义的时代,出现了西方马克思主义思潮;苏联东欧剧变,马克思主义发展遭遇重大挫折;资本主义世界千疮百孔,马克思主义批判武器并不失效。德里达马克思主义观形成的主观条件是:成长环境坎坷,认同马克思主义;研读经典著作,走进马克思主义;师从阿尔都塞,结缘马克思主义。     

危险的增补性--读德里达《马克思的幽灵》

“危险的增补性”意味着词这样的特点 ,即词总是不断地派生于与它临近的词 ,寄生于另一个词。这个特点不仅是对德里达的解构概念的生动描述 ,也是德里达读写方法的奥秘。其“危险”指说话和写作过程中离开了最初的愿望 ,离开了记忆的逻各斯 ,这样的解读超越了哲学的界限 ,倾向于一种哲理化了的文学。     

论德里达对马克思的另一种阅读

在苏东剧变、社会主义遭遇挫折的世纪之交,德里迭出版了<马克思的幽灵>一书,郑重提出要维护"马克思的幽灵",即维护一种马克思主义的批判精神.德里达对马克思文本的重新解读不是要回到传统的马克思,而是要借"马克思的幽灵"来建构一种解构的马克思主义,以在全球化语境中祛除.新国际"话语的"宏伟叙事",呼吁异质性.     

“Horizon”的扩展:西方现象学进展的一种维度

Horizon是现象学运动中的一个重要概念。胡塞尔的Ho-rizon是狭隘的、“平面”的。胡塞尔之后的现象学运动进展的一个维度,就是这种Horizon不断被扩展:伽达默尔将历史的因素补充进去,提出了“视域交融”理论;海德格尔则对Horizon作了一种立体的扩展,Horizon成了人们存在的境域;梅洛·庞蒂在海德格尔存在论的基础上,指出厚度、身体、他者等不可见者都是我们存在的Horizon,丰富了存在的理论;德里达则批判了胡塞尔、海德格尔等人在场的形而上学,将不在场纳入Horizon之中。Horizon的扩展,极大地改变了现象学的特质。     

从列维 - 斯特劳斯的“结构”到德里达的“解构”———读德里达的《人文科学话语中的结构、符号与游戏》

1966年,雅克·德里达在美国发表演讲《人文科学话语中的结构、符号与游戏》,标志着结构主义开始进入了解构的时代.本文通过对德里达这篇文章的解读,梳理德里达与克洛德·列维-斯特劳斯在观点、方法以及目的上的联系和差异,进一步证明德里达的解构主义思想是对列维-斯特劳斯结构主义思想的发展和延伸,并再现了其思想价值.