Philosophy

This paper focuses on Gadamer's concept of understanding. In Wahrheit und Methode(1960), he defines understanding as a "fusion of horizons". This is a key concept, which clearly demarcates his philosophical position against other positions, including the older hermeneutic tradition from Schleiermacher to Dilthey on one hand and against reductive scientism on the other. In the first and the second part, the paper seeks to analyze in detail the concept of understanding in Wahrheit und Methode. The main argument of this paper, however, is that there occurs a discrete change in Gadamer's conceptualization of understanding after the publication of Wahrheit und Methode. This change occurs specifically in response to Celan's poetry in the book Wer bin Ich und Wer bist Du?(1973/1986). This is the main topic in the third section of this paper, which builds on the previous analysis of understanding in Wahrheit und Methode in order to analyze Gadamer's later revision. The revised notion of understanding, this paper suggests, marks a shift from a conjunctive to a disjunctive form of understanding.

This paper presents a close reading of the poem “Blume,” which emphasizes the intertextual relations between the final and the preliminary drafts. More specifically, the paper proposes to read the textual history of the poem as a singular expression of a past that remains active in the present. The poem, while remaining mindful of the past and its impact on the present, is ultimately about releasing potentialities that remain and will continue to remain yet-to-be-realized. The poem, on this view, is not an autonomous aesthetic totality, but a singular expression of inconclusive textuality.

Abstract: This paper argues that Deleuze is best understood as a highly unorthodox member of the hermeneutic tradition. Here, I understand the term hermeneutics in a broad sense, which includes the mainstream tradition of hermeneutics as well as the more radical branch of hermeneutics described by Ricoeur as a school of “suspicion.” More specifically, in this paper I seek to outline how Deleuze, on one hand, is influenced by Heidegger’s analysis of existential temporality in Sein und Zeit (1927), and, on the other hand, how he differs from Heidegger’s analysis of temporality. The outcome is Deleuze’s unique “hermeneutics of becoming.”

Keywords: Deleuze, Heidegger, Hermeneutics, Temporality, Becoming

This paper argues that the hermeneutic circle implies at least four modalities, four modes of prefiguration, which concern the specific content and direction of the preunderstanding involved in our acts of interpretation. These modes of prefiguration cannot simply be reduced to metaphysical assumptions, but imply explicit or implicit assumptions concerning the creative artist, the formal object, the historical context, or the intertextual relations of the work. In an extended discussion of Matisse’s “The Joy of Life,” the paper seeks to demonstrate what these four modalities of the hermeneutic circle imply for our interpretive practice.

This paper proposes to analyze Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza. More than anything, it is defined by a simple, yet powerful gesture: What happens if we – situated in the present – read Spinoza after Nietzsche? Or, how can we interpret Spinoza’s philosophy without the absolute substance? The resulting interpretation emphasizes two dimensions: first, an ontological or speculative theory of multiplicity, which emphasizes the multiplicity of attributes over and against the substance; and, second, an ethical or practical theory of encounter, affect, and self-cultivation, which emphasizes transformation of oneself through various practices of the self. Undoubtedly, both the ontological and the practical theories have played important roles in Deleuze’s subsequent thinking. More importantly, however, Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza is a paradigmatic instance of a new “creative” form of interpretation. It seeks neither to “restore” a deep layer of meaning in the text, nor to “demystify” the systemic distortions of the text. Instead, it seeks to displace in a creative manner the central problem or the central axis of interpretation. This is an important feature of what we might call the “Hermeneutics of Becoming.”

This paper proposes a retro-modernist interpretation of Pollock’s painting “Number 5” (1948). The paper rejects the view that abstraction forms a simple dichotomy with figurative representation; instead, abstraction is seen as an inherently ambiguous quality, inviting contradictory interpretations that form an antinomy of abstraction. Here, the paper employs the notion “antinomy” in a sense loosely based on Kant’s theory of transcendental illusions in the Critique of Pure Reason. The antinomy concerns sensibility. The thesis maintains that the canvas presents raw sensory intuitions without or prior to their discursive mediation in terms of concepts, principles, or categories. The painting, on this view, explores the forms of sensibility, in particular the non-representational significance of undetermined flat surfaces. The anti-thesis states that raw sensuous intuitions are always already prefigured by multiple layers of effective history. Accordingly, the painting signifies through its implicit dialogue with the inherited tradition. This antinomy of abstraction cannot be resolved or integrated into a higher synthesis; yet, it provides a hermeneutic grid for a retro-modernist interpretation of Pollock’s “Number 5.”

This paper reconstructs the major argument of Discipline and Punish, emphasizing the notion of disciplinary power as a production of subjectivity. It reconstructs some of the richness and detail of Foucault’s study of the history of the prison. This reconstruction forms the backdrop to a discussion of Steven Lukes’ critique of Foucault’s notion of power. Although the paper is generally sympathetic towards some of Lukes’ points of critique, Foucault’s conceptualization of disciplinary power and its formative impact on subjectivity remains vitally important for contemporary aesthetics. The Foucauldian notion of power as subjectivation raises the questions of resistance, autonomy, and effective self-cultivation.

This paper presents a reading of Chang-rae Lee's novel A Gesture Life, which emphasizes transnational adoption from Korea as a displaced continuation of the comfort women issue. In the novel, the unreliable narrator Hata’s unresolved relation to Kkutaeh, a Korean comfort woman, is displaced and repeated in his unresolved relation to his adopted daughter Sunny. The paper suggests that we understand the relation between Kkutaeh and Sunny in terms of Žižek’s notion of ideology. The adopted daughter (Sunny), in this perspective, is a sublime object of ideology that conceals the traumatic kernel of the symbolic order (Kkutaeh). Through an interpretation of the novel A Gesture Life, the paper seeks to draw attention to some of the specific ideological structures surrounding and informing transnational adoption from Korea.

This paper argues that postmodernism is not the end of something, as many theorists would have it, a cultural formation that follows something called modernism; rather, postmodernism is the early articulation of a new era of contested modernity. The paper seeks to advance this argument by analyzing the intertextual relation between Edward Hopper's "The Nighthawks" (1942) and Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982). Furthermore, this intertextual relationship is reflected epistemologically in a discussion of Lukacs's notion of realism and Ricoeur's notion of utopia. The era of multiple or contested modernity is a consequence of the rapid economic modernization of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and other countries in the region. It signals a new era, in which being advanced or modern is not the monopoly of the West. The paper outlines a three-level model of cultural analysis, where an economic development (contested modernity) is reflected in epistemology (realism and utopia), which informs the cultural domain (postmodern culture). The relationships between the three levels are fluid, dynamic, and multidirectional.

This paper analyzes the exchange between Ricoeur and Derrida concerning metaphor. I argue that the exchange is not a "missed encounter," as Pirovolakis has suggested, but exemplifies a hermeneutic situation in which theoretical divergence is supplemented by a practical convergence. Rather than a mere exegesis of the exchange between Ricoeur and Derrida, I emphasize the practical implications for the interpretation of poetic metaphors. To be more specific, I emphasize the case of Celan's poem "Blume" and the semantic density of the central metaphor. Although Ricoeur and Derrida diverge in strictly theoretical terms, their theoretical positions-when translated into practical terms-establish different but convergent paradigms for the interpretation of poetic metaphors.