- Philosophy, Literature, Critical Theory, Political Philosophy, Comparative Literature, Classics, and 24 moreTheology, Political Theology, Gilles Deleuze, Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Mysticism, Kierkegaard, Phenomenology, Comparative Religion, Logic, Bioethics, Continental Philosophy, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aristotle, Rosa Luxemburg, Michel Serres, Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Masochism, Data Mining, and Artificial Intelligenceedit
- vedit
The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in 2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes worn on the surface of the face,... more
The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in
2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes
worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak”
by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads
in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth,
or any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a
mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly
revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language
exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten
(mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of
language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests
ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a
presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the
Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning.
2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes
worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak”
by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads
in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth,
or any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a
mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly
revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language
exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten
(mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of
language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests
ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a
presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the
Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning.
Research Interests: Robotics, Psychoanalysis, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Logic, and 15 moreCyborg Theory, Languages and Linguistics, Cybernetics, Phenomenology, Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Speech Recognition, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Book of Psalms, Orality, Taste, and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations... more
This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion.
Research Interests: Religion, Algorithms, Philosophy Of Religion, Theology, Political Theory, and 15 moreMachine Learning, Human Values, Cybernetics, Political Science, Calvinism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alfred North Whitehead, Giorgio Agamben, Protestantism, Michel Foucault, Charles S. Peirce, Political Theology, Karl Barth, Probability and statistics, and Max Weber
"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay... more
"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection."
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Semiotics, Bioinformatics, Zoology, Entomology, and 180 moreSocial Theory, Psychoanalysis, Biophysics, Comparative Literature, French Literature, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Language, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Biology, Kant, Communication, Perception, Humanities, Animal Science, Languages and Linguistics, Social Networks, Social Sciences, Zooarchaeology, Human-Animal Relations, Literature, Feeding, Animal Behavior, Posthumanism, Sociology of Food and Eating, Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, History and Philosophy of Biology, Cybernetics, "New" senses in art: touch, smell, taste, Deconstruction, History of the Senses, Phenomenology, Myrmecology, Continental Philosophy, Cannibalism, George Orwell, Biology, Literary Theory, Psychology of Unconscious, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Sigmund Freud, Social insects, Giorgio Agamben, Natural History, Insect Physiology, Insect-Plant Interactions, Critical Posthumanism, Modernity, Biophilosophy, Communication Theory, Memory Studies, Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Natural philosophy, Helene Cixous, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Zizek, Animal Ecology, Phenomenology of the body, Animals and Animality, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, Linguistics, Immanuel Kant, Biopolitics, Psychoanalysis And Literature, Philosophy of perception, Derridean Deconstruction, Biodiversity, Heidegger, Biolinguistics, Natural Science, Anthropology of the Senses, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Dung Beetles, Telecommunication, Time Perception, Paul De Man, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Animal Behaviour, Insect Molecular Biology, Anthropology and Psychoanalysis, Husserl, Animals in Culture, Social zooarchaeology, Philosophy of Nature, Phenomenology of Touch, Merleau-Ponty, Orality, Schelling, Insect Ecology, Derrida, Animal communication, Continental Philosophy of Science, Animal Nutrition, Tactile Perception, Jacques Derrida & Deconstruction, Heidegger's later thought, Heidegger and critique of subjectivity, Derrida and Ethics, Descartes, Lepidoptera, Jean Jaques Rousseau, Hélène Cixous, Nature, Humanism, Anti-Humanism, and Post-Humanism, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Psychoanalysis and Politics, Unconscious cognition, Philosophy of Nature and the Environment, Psychoanalytic Theory, Husserlian phenomenology, Agamben, Sensation and Perception, Critical Theory, Deconstruction, Graphic Narrative, Comics, Latin American Literature, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Lewis Carroll, Noam Chomsky, Memory, ethnography, comparative visual media, humanitarianism, human rights, biopolitics, Marxist critique, postcolonial studies, documentary studies, critical theory and cultural studies, posthumanism, animal studies, discourses of the child, Oral History and Memory, Butterflies, Proprioception, Phylogeny, Modern Philosophy, Deconstructionism, Ants, Bees, Vampires in Film and Literature, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Wasps, Touch, Dasein, Cixous, Telepathy, Cultural Trophallaxis, Smell, Phenomenology, Existentialism and Deconstruction, Insects, Post-Humanism, Chomsky, Ecology, Conservation Biology, Zoology, Daseinsanalyse, Anthropology and Sociology of Food, Taste and the Senses, Taste, Animal feeding and nutrition, Freudian Literary Theory, Insect Behaviour, Olfaction and taste, L'Ecriture Feminine, Melittology, Philosophy of the Other, Agamben, Derrida and the ontological question of the Animal., Sample, Bugs, Honey Bees, Entomologia, Unconscious Processes, The Senses, Feeding Biology, Telepathy and Telekinesis, Aesthetics of Taste, Jaques Derrida, Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Lingual Semiotics, Insect Chemical Ecology, Orwell, Feminis-Helene Cixous-The Laugh of the Medusa, Insect, Oral sex tips, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Posthumanism and Transhumanism, Philosophy of Biology and Evolution, Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Feminist Deconstructive Interpretation, Derrida and Husserl, Biochemical Entomology, and Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics
"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources,... more
"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources, rendering explicit what remains implicit and providing a reliable guide to his reading of the many figures he draws from....‘Submerged Dialogues’, focuses on figures who seem to be lurking in the background of Agamben’s arguments even though he mentions them only fleetingly, if at all."
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani
Research Interests: Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Deconstruction, Phenomenology, and 15 moreContinental Philosophy, Stoicism, Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Autoimmunity, Dialectic, Biopolitics, Derridean Deconstruction, Messianism, Carl Schmitt, and Empathy
This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by... more
This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by Jean-Luc Marion. It compares the dynamics of time in the former with the those of wine in the latter. Emphasis is given to lngarden's insinuation of time as fluid, liquid,
or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption of semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time.
or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption of semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time.
Research Interests: Biochemistry, Physiology, Philosophy, Ethics, Water, and 15 moreSystems Thinking, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Edmund Husserl, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Immanuel Kant, Time Perception, Roman Ingarden, Wine Chemistry, Meister Eckhart, Oenology, Permeability, and Taste
This essay experiments with Kant's writings on rational religion distilled through the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as canonical confrontations with primal problems of evil. It suggests boundaries between Stevenson's characters... more
This essay experiments with Kant's writings on rational religion distilled through the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as canonical confrontations with primal problems of evil. It suggests boundaries between Stevenson's characters and their occupations comparable to the those conflicted in the Kantian university, namely, law, medicine, theology, and philosophy (which makes a short anticipatory appearance in his earlier text on rational religion). With various faculties it investigates diffuse comprehensions-respectively , legal crime, biogenetic transmission, and original sin-of key ethical modes: will, inheritance, incorporation, freedom, duty, obligation, love, living, and killing to conclude on the possible logic of evil (or evils of logic) collateral and possibly innate to Kant's comprehension of radical evil.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Religion, Criminal Law, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and 15 moreEthics, English Literature, Philosophy Of Religion, Theology, Literature, Philosophy of Medicine, Hermeneutics, Philosophy Of Law, Literary Theory, Immanuel Kant, Apostle Paul and the Pauline Letters, Moral Philosophy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Freedom, and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
"The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality within philosophical, feminist, and lesbian traditions..." ("Editorial" by Michelle Iwen) Abstract: The 'traditional philosophical... more
"The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality within philosophical, feminist, and lesbian traditions..."
("Editorial" by Michelle Iwen)
Abstract:
The 'traditional philosophical prestige' of seeing and touching, as analyzed by Emmanuel Levinas, comes to dominate the qualities of the other three senses. An investigation of the roles of these prestigious senses, along with the resultant privileged sense-organs of the hand and the eye, within phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and gender- or queer-theory suggests that the part of the prestige of touch will have been related to its function in the phenomenality of feeling. Yet the sense of taste seems to be as applicable, if not more so, to the phenomenal experience of selfhood based on feeling as theorized by Edmund Husserl and Jean-Luc Marion. The tongue, rather than the hand, is reconsidered as a sense-organ of touch in order to salvage the all but lost tang of the tangible. As such, the tongue and taste not only illuminate the shortcomings of binary gender theories based on either inner feeling or outer surface anatomy (or, either interior orifices or exterior appendages), but further discover a remarkable phenomenology of the body to be found in the writings of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig that moves beyond certain masculine tendencies lurking about the hand and observation (as described by Freud and Butler). The phenomenal experience of the other that yields either empathy (for Husserl), love/eros (for Marion), or hearing and heeding 'Thou shall not kill' (for Levinas) has much to learn from the orality of women's writing. The third body, as written by Cixous, can experience the self as selftaste (as considered by Derrida) and experiences the other as the taste of the other. It is, thereby, opened to a love or a justice (or an erotic justice) beyond the proclamation of Levinas that 'ethics is an optics' as well as any ethics as a mere haptics to be found in Husserl or Marion, where feeling seems always determined by the hand.
("Editorial" by Michelle Iwen)
Abstract:
The 'traditional philosophical prestige' of seeing and touching, as analyzed by Emmanuel Levinas, comes to dominate the qualities of the other three senses. An investigation of the roles of these prestigious senses, along with the resultant privileged sense-organs of the hand and the eye, within phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and gender- or queer-theory suggests that the part of the prestige of touch will have been related to its function in the phenomenality of feeling. Yet the sense of taste seems to be as applicable, if not more so, to the phenomenal experience of selfhood based on feeling as theorized by Edmund Husserl and Jean-Luc Marion. The tongue, rather than the hand, is reconsidered as a sense-organ of touch in order to salvage the all but lost tang of the tangible. As such, the tongue and taste not only illuminate the shortcomings of binary gender theories based on either inner feeling or outer surface anatomy (or, either interior orifices or exterior appendages), but further discover a remarkable phenomenology of the body to be found in the writings of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig that moves beyond certain masculine tendencies lurking about the hand and observation (as described by Freud and Butler). The phenomenal experience of the other that yields either empathy (for Husserl), love/eros (for Marion), or hearing and heeding 'Thou shall not kill' (for Levinas) has much to learn from the orality of women's writing. The third body, as written by Cixous, can experience the self as selftaste (as considered by Derrida) and experiences the other as the taste of the other. It is, thereby, opened to a love or a justice (or an erotic justice) beyond the proclamation of Levinas that 'ethics is an optics' as well as any ethics as a mere haptics to be found in Husserl or Marion, where feeling seems always determined by the hand.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cognitive Science, Music, Gender Studies, Philosophy, and 123 moreAesthetics, Ethics, Sex and Gender, Feminist Theory, Animation, Marxism, New Historicism, Genre studies, Literature, Transgender Studies, Narrative, Popular Culture, Queer Theory, Feminist Philosophy, "New" senses in art: touch, smell, taste, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Gay And Lesbian Studies, History of the Senses, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Lacan, Continental Philosophy, Shamanism, Gender, The Body, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Reading, Pedagogy, Postmodernism, Haptics, Cultural Materialism, Honneth, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Intersubjectivity, Helene Cixous, Nietzsche, Media, Wittgenstein, Levinas, Simone de Beauvoir, Phenomenology of the body, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Jean-Luc Marion, Freud and Lacan, Baudrillard, Arts, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Curriculum Development, Body in Performance, Philosophy of Sex, Haptic Perception, Adorno, Social and Political Philosophy, Leibniz (Philosophy), Japanese folklore, Phenomenology of Touch, Solidarity Economy, Orality, Literature and the senses, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Dance, The uncanny, Hélène Cixous, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, John Stuart Mill, Senses, Especially Touch, Husserlian phenomenology, Anxiety, Affect, Emotion and Feeling, Archaeology of the Senses, Bernard of Clairvaux, New Economic Criticism, Experience, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Phenomenology- Mind/Body Problems/ Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Thought/Phenomenology and Embodiment, Rituals, Body and senses, Touch, McLuhan, Anime and Manga Youth Culture, Monique Wittig, Tactility and Touch in Digital Media, Taste, Gestural Interfaces, Kristeva, Feeling, Fenomenología Hermenéutica Lenguaje Levinas Heidegger Husserl, Olfaction and taste, Kissing, Folk, The Senses, Tactility, Theories of Socialism, Letter, Gender Differences in Touching Behaviour, Phenomenology of sexuality, Affect and Emotion, African Popular Culture, Healing Ceremonies, Beliefs & Values, Antiglobalization Social Movements, Installation Art: Immersive, Shamanistic and Ritualistic Modes, Migrant Encounters, Operation of Feeling Involving the Senses, Polish Ritual Traditions, Socio Political Philosophy, Malaysian Magic and Folklore, Jacques Alain Miller, Hand Practice, Latin American feminisms, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources,... more
"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources, rendering explicit what remains implicit and providing a reliable guide to his reading of the many figures he draws from....‘Submerged Dialogues’, focuses on figures who seem to be lurking in the background of Agamben’s arguments even though he mentions them only fleetingly, if at all."
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Political Economy, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 15 morePolitical Theory, Sociology of Crime and Deviance, Hobbes, Political Science, Continental Philosophy, Philosophy Of Law, Sigmund Freud, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Political Theology, Psychoanalysis And Literature, Social and Groups Psychology, Carl Schmitt, The uncanny, and Taboo
Jean-Luc Marion obliquely suggests that we return to religion when we think through and struggle with those topics that philosophy excludes or subjugates. This paper investigates a selection of such subjugated motifs. Marion’s recent... more
Jean-Luc Marion obliquely suggests that we return to religion when we think through and struggle with those topics that philosophy excludes or subjugates. This paper investigates a selection of such subjugated motifs. Marion’s recent claim (perhaps even ‘principle’): “auto-affection alone makes possible hetero-affection,” will be examined through piecemeal influences made upon its development through Marion’s return to religious thinking beyond the delimited jurisdiction of philosophy. Although still proper to the philosophies of Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, Marion finds new insights by tracing their legacy back further to the Christian gospels, Augustine, Aquinas, and, importantly, Nicholas of Cusa. Philosophy, proper, (if there is such a thing) may well adumbrate human understanding of data, phenomena, and possibility by discouraging any further thinking of them in terms of love, givenness, or revelation. It is by preferentially opting for these themes that philosophy excludes or subjugates that makes possible the entanglement of truth with love, suggested by Marion: “truths that one knows only if one loves them first.”
Research Interests: Religion, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Theology, Phenomenology, and 15 moreLiberation Theology, Biblical Studies, Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Philosophy of Love, Giordano Bruno, Descartes, Nicholas of Cusa, Max Weber, Existentialism, Phenomenal Consciousness, and Affectation
"It’s a fascinating essay, one that thoroughly justifies and vouches for spending serious time with great, or nearly great books. It’s actually exciting when he recounts the logical fallacies that are uncovered through reading a Malcolm X... more
"It’s a fascinating essay, one that thoroughly justifies and vouches for spending serious time with great, or nearly great books. It’s actually exciting when he recounts the logical fallacies that are uncovered through reading a Malcolm X speech. The idea of assigning *Gravity’s Rainbow* to illustrate the concepts of analytic philosophy is motivating — but the essay is most exciting when he talks about the way the students respond"
~ vouchedbooks.com (10 May 2012)
https://vouchedbooks.com/2012/05/10/great-books/
~ vouchedbooks.com (10 May 2012)
https://vouchedbooks.com/2012/05/10/great-books/
Research Interests: Business Ethics, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Ethics, and 56 moreTeaching and Learning, Logic, Humanities, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Curriculum Design, Aristotle, Philosophy of Education, Postcolonial Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Learning and Teaching, Curriculum Studies, Reading Habits/Attitudes, Continental Philosophy, Transformation of University Systems, African American Literature, Socratic Method, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Pynchon, Reading, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Intertextuality, Philosophical Logic, Teaching Methodology, Philosophy of Logic, Reading Comprehension, Great Books, African American Studies, Bertrand Russell, Socratic Teaching & Learning, Learning And Teaching In Higher Education, Curriculum Development, Kurt Vonnegut, Black Women's Studies, Black Feminist Theory/Thought, Curriculum and Instruction, Edward Said, Zora Neale Hurston, Teaching, Noam Chomsky, James Baldwin, Fallacies, Orientalism, Cooperative Learning, Laurence Sterne, Richard Wright, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Darwin, Gayatri Spivak, Discussion in classrooms, University, Anti-Intellectualism, Arts and Humanities, Genealogy of Morals, Malcom X, and Audre Lorde
For the month of June, EG has become a print journal.
The 110-page magazine features work from 21 writers, four artists, and no analytic philosophers.
http://www.everyday-genius.com/2012/06/
The 110-page magazine features work from 21 writers, four artists, and no analytic philosophers.
http://www.everyday-genius.com/2012/06/
Research Interests: Creative Writing, Poetry Composition, Critical Theory, Religion, History, and 128 moreCultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Art History, Theology, Art Theory, Political Theory, Literature, Social Philosophy, Philosophical Theology, Leadership, Contemporary Art, Poetry, Politics and Literature, Sovereignty, Literary Criticism, Modern Art, Philosophy of Art, Jurgen Habermas, Political Culture, Identity politics, Political Extremism/Radicalism/Populism, Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy), Aquinas, Poetics, Political communication, Populism, Pauline Literature, Literary Theory, Eschatology and Apocalypticism, Personalization, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Literature and Politics, Émmanuel Lévinas, Slavoj Žižek, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Comparative Linguistics, Eriugena, Rhetorical Criticism, Giorgio Agamben, Translation of Poetry, Karl Rahner, Augustine, Bonaventure, Apocalyptic Eschatology, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Modern Poetry, Charles S. Peirce, Political Theology, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Zizek, World Literature, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Slavoj Zizek, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, George Herbert, Art Criticism, Immanuel Kant, Apostle Paul and the Pauline Letters, Thomas Hardy, Contemporary Poetry, Pseudo-Dionysius, Literature and Philosophy, Rhetorical Theory, Social and Groups Psychology, Maximus the Confessor, Karl Barth, Space and Time (Philosophy), Teleology, Eschatology, Visual Arts, Franz Rosenzweig, Karl Marx, Paul of Tarsus, Charles Bukowski, Media and Politics, Abduction, Philosophy and Religion, Chantal Mouffe, Language Teaching, Poemas, Artes, Músicas, Jesus Parables, Q, Historical Jesus, and Biblical Hermeneutics for Ethico-Political Interpretation of New Testament, The relation between Theology and Ethics in Pauline Letters, History of Communism, Book, Mediatization, Poems, Poem, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Crowd Psychology, Poltical Theory, Ernesto Laclau, Communication and Democracy, Pauline studies, The Real, Samuel Weber, Populismo, Biblical Poetry, Ugaritic Literature, Inter-civilization contact and conflict, Biblical Wisdom literature, Critical Poetics, Thomas Hardy's poetry, Mediaeval Thought, Ratiocination, Inter-faith Contact and Theology, Antipolitics, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Grosseteste, Yannis Stavrakakis, Islam (Philosophy and History, critical issues, renaissance, principles of jurisprudence), Aramaic Proverbs of Ahikar, Biblical Syntax, Rhetorical Features In Talmudic Literature, Adorno/Horkheimer, Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, European political cultures, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, and Modernism and Posmodernism in Post World War Two North America
"Brower offers a deconstructive reading of what it means to taste (the coming of, the justice of) the messiah in Luther and Derrida, among others..." ("Editorial" by Jay Twomey, p. 130) Abstract: This article exploits a core defect in... more
"Brower offers a deconstructive reading of what it means to taste (the coming of, the justice of) the messiah in Luther and Derrida, among others..."
("Editorial" by Jay Twomey, p. 130)
Abstract:
This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipisisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of self-reflexivity that emerges in the sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh
("Editorial" by Jay Twomey, p. 130)
Abstract:
This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipisisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of self-reflexivity that emerges in the sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Discourse Analysis, Religion, Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, and 95 morePsychology, Social Psychology, German Studies, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Aesthetics, Political Philosophy, Translation Studies, Feminist Theory, Art, Theology, Plato, New Testament, Philosophical Theology, Corporate Communication, Queer Theory, Qualitative methodology, Poststructuralism, Religion and Sexuality, Sovereignty, Feminist Philosophy, Jean-Luc Nancy, "New" senses in art: touch, smell, taste, Deconstruction, Luther, Theological Hermeneutics, Jurgen Habermas, Lacan, Continental Philosophy, German Idealism, Securitization, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes, Reading, Consumer Behavior, Intertextuality, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Luc Marion, Freud and Lacan, Biopolitics, Adam Smith, Philosophy of Love, Continental Philosophy and Theology, Messianism, Orality, Schelling, Derrida, Theories of Sovereignty, Empire, The uncanny, Adorno, Benjamin and Bloch, Jacques Derrida & Deconstruction, Hélène Cixous, Martin Luther, Anxiety, Agamben, New Testament Textual Criticism, Gospel of John, Philosophy and Religion, Olfaction, Jacob Boehme, Imperialism, Advertisement, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Philosophy and Religious Studies, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Devil, Kristeva, Samuel Weber, Negri, L'Ecriture Feminine, Kissing, Iterability, Gustation, Letter, Media and Culture, Consumption Culture, Sociology of Journalism, News Analysis, News ethics, Lyconomy, Violent Femmes, Jacques Alain Miller, and Oetinger
Research Interests: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Empiricism, Education, Spirituality, and 15 morePhenomenology, Liberation Theology, Hegel, Émmanuel Lévinas, Pneumatology, Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, Roger Scruton, Martin Luther, Sensation and Perception, Culture Industry, Culinary Arts, Bildung, Taste, Wine Consumption Behaviours, and Consumption Culture
"Brower provides a vivid demonstration of the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition in France and its theories of the incarnate word. Taking off in large part from Derrida's reading of Freud's essay on the mystic writing pad, Brower... more
"Brower provides a vivid demonstration of the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition in France and its theories of the incarnate word. Taking off in large part from Derrida's reading of Freud's essay on the mystic writing pad, Brower asks what do we mean by a slip of the tongue or slip of the pen, and in what way do the images that surround these notions privilege sight over the other senses. The tongue, moreover, is not just an organ of speech. It is also the site of taste. Taste seems immediate; it seems to be removed from the scene of writing, or from the ineradicable difference that Derrida detects in Husserlian phenomenology in *Speech and Phenomenon*. But to the extent that Derrida sees taste and touch as part of the future of psychoanalysis, then these senses too much be mediated, must be inscribed in the logic of the trace and hence subject to interpretation. Taste, and particularly self-taste, is never simply present, but always mediated by the voice of the Other..."
("Introduction" to FLS 38, by Paul Allen Miller, p. xvii)
Abstract:
Following one of Jacques Derrida’s early questions — namely, How is writing involved in speech? — this essay reconsiders the role of the tongue and the sense of taste in the oral phenomena of speaking and saying. The contact the tongue makes with the mouth or teeth is just as much a materialization of language as what is commonly called “writing.” The tongue acts as a pen and the mouth, as a blank page (or palimpsest). Mouthed writing is accompanied by sense experiences. There are various selftastes to the tastes of speaking, the tastes of words, or, even, the tastes of thoughts. Freud’s notes on speaking in one’s sleep, telepathy, the mystic writing-pad, and memory are revisited and sup- plemented with the writings of Hélène Cixous on the taste of words, telephoning, saying-to-oneself, and forgetting. The auto-affection of tasting-oneself-speakwriting is offered as an alternative to the meta- physical presumptions Derrida implicates in Husserl’s understanding of speech based on the auto-affection of hearing-oneself-speak. As such, writing (haunted by the trace of death) and speech (invested with living- presence) is now confronted with the selftastes of speakwriting with one’s stylangue in and on the mouth as the scene of writing (ever accompanied by tastes of life-death).
("Introduction" to FLS 38, by Paul Allen Miller, p. xvii)
Abstract:
Following one of Jacques Derrida’s early questions — namely, How is writing involved in speech? — this essay reconsiders the role of the tongue and the sense of taste in the oral phenomena of speaking and saying. The contact the tongue makes with the mouth or teeth is just as much a materialization of language as what is commonly called “writing.” The tongue acts as a pen and the mouth, as a blank page (or palimpsest). Mouthed writing is accompanied by sense experiences. There are various selftastes to the tastes of speaking, the tastes of words, or, even, the tastes of thoughts. Freud’s notes on speaking in one’s sleep, telepathy, the mystic writing-pad, and memory are revisited and sup- plemented with the writings of Hélène Cixous on the taste of words, telephoning, saying-to-oneself, and forgetting. The auto-affection of tasting-oneself-speakwriting is offered as an alternative to the meta- physical presumptions Derrida implicates in Husserl’s understanding of speech based on the auto-affection of hearing-oneself-speak. As such, writing (haunted by the trace of death) and speech (invested with living- presence) is now confronted with the selftastes of speakwriting with one’s stylangue in and on the mouth as the scene of writing (ever accompanied by tastes of life-death).
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Comparative Literature, French Literature, Aesthetics, and 76 moreEmpiricism, Art, Remote Sensing, Quantum Teleportation, Literature, Literary Criticism, Grammatology, Cultural Theory, "New" senses in art: touch, smell, taste, Jurgen Habermas, Lacan, Speech perception, Continental Philosophy, Trauma Studies, Literary Theory, Hegel, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Michel Serres, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Sigmund Freud, Science Fiction, Performance, Reading, Intertextuality, Memory Studies, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Freud and Lacan, Psychoanalysis And Literature, Affect Theory, Language, Heidegger, Marcel Proust, Contemporary Poetry, Tristan Tzara, Conceptual Art, Dreams, Flesh, Orality, Derrida, Speech Act Theory, The uncanny, Jacques Derrida & Deconstruction, Psychical Research, Hélène Cixous, Anxiety, Sensation and Perception, Paul Celan, Visual Art, Voice, Ants, Radical empiricism, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Sleep and Dreaming, Cixous, Telepathy, Speaking, Creative Practice, Visuality, Proust, Auto-Hetero-Affection, Song of Songs and Cixousian readings, Taste, Kristeva, Olfaction and taste, L'Ecriture Feminine, Francis Ponge, Letter, Modern American Poetry, Jacques Alain Miller, and Technological Futurism
Tolerance of same-sex relations in the earlier Platonic dialogues is called into question in Plato's *Laws.* Jennings offers insightful historical and political motivations as to why this Platonic anomaly may have come about. The... more
Tolerance of same-sex relations in the earlier Platonic dialogues is called into question in Plato's *Laws.* Jennings offers insightful historical and political motivations as to why this Platonic anomaly may have come about. The colloquial image of the gay-friendly Plato is all the more dangerous because it is so tacitly presupposed ~ so uncritically accepted ~ that it seems almost genetically to pass down through the educated classes. To out Plato ~ he who very well may have invented the closet ~ as, himself, a closeted proto-homophobe is utterly scandalous and utterly necessary and...deserves our attention and applause.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Religion, Christianity, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, and 161 moreComparative Law, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Classics, Greek Literature, Latin Literature, Roman History, Hellenistic Literature, Philosophy Of Religion, Sex and Gender, Translation Studies, Theology, Philosophical Anthropology, Sexual Abuse, Hellenistic Philosophy, Plato, History of Religion, Sexual and Reproductive Health, New Testament, Historical Theology, Religious Education, Literature, Systematic Theology, Philosophical Theology, Religion and Politics, Sexual Behaviour, Hellenistic History, Religion and Sexuality, Sexology, Literary Criticism, Hebrew Bible, Evolution of Morality, Psychology of Religion, Sexuality, Sexualities education, Sexual Violence, Deconstruction, Gender and Sexuality, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Translation theory, Hermeneutics, History Of Platonic Tradition, Early Christianity, Theological Hermeneutics, Anthropology and Sexuality, Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy), Heinrich von Kleist, History of Sexuality, Biblical Studies, Bible Translation, Philosophy Of Law, Bible Translations, Religious Conversion, Literary Theory, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Morality (Social Psychology), History Of The Bible/Biblical Canon, Socrates, History of Religions, Biblical Theology, Homosexuality and Literature, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Sociology of Ethics and Morality, Political Theology, Hermeneutics and Narrative, Homophobia, History Of Sexology, Kierkegaard, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Sexual Health, Classical philology, Ancient Philosophy, Derridean Deconstruction, Imperial Rome, New Testament and Christian Origins, Heidegger, Sexual Identity, Ten Commandments, Plato and Platonism, Sexuality And Culture, Xenophon, Christianity and Rome, Literary study of the Bible, Biblical Interpretation, Literary Approaches to Biblical Studies, Biblical Law, Religious History, Bible, Hellenism, Platonism, Gay and Lesbian History, Derrida, Foucault and education, Translation, Foucault (Research Methodology), Emperor Nero, Jacques Derrida & Deconstruction, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Hélène Cixous, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth, Sexual Orientation, Same-sex relationships, Bisexuality, Hellenistic Judaism, Biblical Exegesis, Homosexuality, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Religious Fundamentalism, New Testament Textual Criticism, Religious Studies, Soren Kierkegaard, Literary translation, New Testament Theology, Foucault power/knowledge - discourse, Biblical Greek, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, Church and Homosexuality, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Ancient Rome, Child Sexual Abuse, Philosophy and Religious Studies, New testament exegesis, Sex Education, Morality, The Greek and Latin Classics, Lesbian, Sexual Behavior, Sexual Deviant Behaviour, Incest in myth, Platon, Greco-Roman World, New Testament Studies, Achilles, Incest, Plato's Republic, Taste, New Testament Greek Grammar, The Use of the Old Testament in the New, Biblical Hermeneutics, Bisexual, Platone, Platón, Kissing, Theology and Religious Studies, Attitudes Towards Homosexuality, Gustation, Genealogy of Morals, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Homosexuality, History of Reception of Biblical Texts, Anthropology of Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Ancient Greek Pederasty, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies, Homossexuality and Education, and Foucault
Research Interests: Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Botany, Zoology, and 148 moreEntomology, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Kant, Environmental Philosophy, Art History, Humanities, Environmental Education, Art, Science Communication, Philosophical Anthropology, Zooarchaeology, Human-Animal Relations, Environmental Psychology, Literature, Conservation Biology, Schizophrenia, Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Nonsense, "New" senses in art: touch, smell, taste, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Afghanistan, Politics, Continental Philosophy, German Idealism, Cannibalism, Taxonomy, George Orwell, Antonin Artaud, Victorian Literature, Biology, Malaria, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Sigmund Freud, Social insects, Biosemiotics, Natural History, Insect Physiology, Ecology, Ecological Psychology, René Descartes, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Cultural Entomology, Helene Cixous, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Animals and Animality, Immanuel Kant, Evolutionary neurobiology, Philosophy of perception, Biodiversity, Heidegger, Human-wildlife conflicts, Contemporary Poetry, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Descartes, René, Insect Systematics, Animal Behaviour, Insect Molecular Biology, Medical Entomology, Philosophy of Nature, Merleau-Ponty, Visual Arts, Anthropocentrism, Schelling, Jakob von Uexküll, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Heidegger and Technology, Jean Jaques Rousseau, Hélène Cixous, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Lewis Carroll, Noam Chomsky, Neuroplasticity, Zoontology, ethnography, comparative visual media, humanitarianism, human rights, biopolitics, Marxist critique, postcolonial studies, documentary studies, critical theory and cultural studies, posthumanism, animal studies, discourses of the child, Place, Olfaction, Sartre, Phylogeny, Learning and Memory, Ants, Bees, Existentialism, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Wasps, Madness, Animality and Human Language, Chemoreception, Animality, Alice in Wonderland, Dwelling, Cultural Trophallaxis, Death Drive, Chomsky, Dengue, Technologies, Gustatory Responses in Insects, Cultures, Olfaction and taste, Behavior of Ants, Bugs, Honey Bees, Placelessness, Edward Relph, Environmental Experience, Gustation, Smith, Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, History of Philosophy, Hominización, Fossils in Amber, Logic of sense, Norbert Weiner, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Evolutionary Cultural Archaeology documenting/modeling/simulating the Evolutionary Pasts/futures of Known Systems (Arts, Ideas), Body subject, Selected Groups of Insects (Odonata, Shield Bugs, Carabid Beetles, Ladybirds and Others), Jean Jacques Lecercle, Brain Ageing, Molecular Medicine In Brain Disorders & Telepathy, Environment behavior Research, Body subjecti, Community As Place Making, Vector Biology & Control, and Biochemical Entomology
"Brower talks about his research and shares his experience of being a cTPM fellow in Prague."
Research Interests: Probability Theory, Algorithms, Information Technology, Philosophy, Data Mining, and 15 morePhenomenology, Causation, Social Media, Media Theory, Natural Theology, Political Theology, Bayesian Networks, Blaise Pascal, Probability, Bayesian statistics & modelling, Hacking, Privacy and data protection, Big Data, John Maynard Keynes, and Fake News
Zētēsis, No. 1 has both a booklet (uploaded separately as Vol 1.5) and a volume of writing (this uploaded version here). Please read both together! From the Preface: Preface We Libidinal Economists! Daybreak, Version √2 With... more
Zētēsis, No. 1 has both a booklet (uploaded separately as Vol 1.5) and a volume of writing (this uploaded version here). Please read both together!
From the Preface:
Preface
We Libidinal Economists! Daybreak, Version √2
With this debut volume of Zētēsis, the artists, philosophers, designers, technicians and scientists involved with this project and committed to an ‘old fashioned’ kind of research – that which is generated by a curiosity and deep commitment to know (the whatever) – declare a new Daybreak. It is one that intends to take as a given, complexity and the irrational / imaginary in art and the sciences, physics and metaphysics, culture and its economies, skin and the pleasures of the flesh. It steps to the atonal rhythms of the mimetic patterns of camouflage and the flâneur. It aligns itself with the history of those who were (and remain) willing to ask and act upon this basic question: Supposing it could be otherwise, what would this otherwise look like, become, be, now? We want to say that however it would look, be, become (now), the journey to find out must be fuelled by experiment, rigour, and a willingness to risk.
We owe a strong debt of thanks to our past and present-day interlocutors, from the genealogists, libidinal economists, feminists and queer theory / practitioners to those dancing in, on, and with this new field of ‘wild science’ and its very welcome co-collaborator, the sensual. We also owe a strong debt of thanks to those who were and remain willing to take a (financial) punt on this possibly awkward, possibly bruised, blue-sky thinking endeavour: The Birmingham School of Art in particular and its wider platform, The Birmingham Institute for Art and Design at bCu along with the staff and student artists, designers, philosophers, technicians, web aficionados, research fellows and scientists who gave generously of their time, despite wider pressures cascading onto their already overworked work schedules.
This is not a perfunctory acknowledgment to the School of Art at Margaret Street. For the academic, dare we say, intellectual world – and the universities that nourish its diversity, strident intelligence, playfulness and rigour —seems to have lost its way. This world, our world, challenged as it has been for the last decade or so with profound cuts in the arts & humanities, alongside a gluttonous appetite for all things STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths), and topped with a seemingly wilful misreading of what constitutes experimentation, thinking, practice, indeed research itself, especially when it comes to art, philosophy, social science, culture, needs a bit of TLC (Tender Loving Care).
So the journal and its future offspring, comes with a warning: be prepared to think outside the proverbial box, and to do so, slowly and with care, as if approaching an untamed but curious beast. As an aid memoire, we dedicate this, the first volume, no. 1 to questioning The Cruelty of the Classical Canon. Each intervention / contribution / design decision has been peer-reviewed with members from an internationally and discipline-diverse advisory board. Some of the selected pieces support the classical canon; others reject it outright; still others try to strike a delicate balance between outright rejection and the appeal of its tried and tested repertoire. All have something to do with Nietzsche’s seminal text, Daybreak, Lyotard’s shout (demand), We Libidinal Economists! and the first discovered imaginary number,√2. It is up to you to decide which is which, and why.
Welcome to Zētēsis: a re-search generated by curiosity.
Johnny Golding Editor
From the Preface:
Preface
We Libidinal Economists! Daybreak, Version √2
With this debut volume of Zētēsis, the artists, philosophers, designers, technicians and scientists involved with this project and committed to an ‘old fashioned’ kind of research – that which is generated by a curiosity and deep commitment to know (the whatever) – declare a new Daybreak. It is one that intends to take as a given, complexity and the irrational / imaginary in art and the sciences, physics and metaphysics, culture and its economies, skin and the pleasures of the flesh. It steps to the atonal rhythms of the mimetic patterns of camouflage and the flâneur. It aligns itself with the history of those who were (and remain) willing to ask and act upon this basic question: Supposing it could be otherwise, what would this otherwise look like, become, be, now? We want to say that however it would look, be, become (now), the journey to find out must be fuelled by experiment, rigour, and a willingness to risk.
We owe a strong debt of thanks to our past and present-day interlocutors, from the genealogists, libidinal economists, feminists and queer theory / practitioners to those dancing in, on, and with this new field of ‘wild science’ and its very welcome co-collaborator, the sensual. We also owe a strong debt of thanks to those who were and remain willing to take a (financial) punt on this possibly awkward, possibly bruised, blue-sky thinking endeavour: The Birmingham School of Art in particular and its wider platform, The Birmingham Institute for Art and Design at bCu along with the staff and student artists, designers, philosophers, technicians, web aficionados, research fellows and scientists who gave generously of their time, despite wider pressures cascading onto their already overworked work schedules.
This is not a perfunctory acknowledgment to the School of Art at Margaret Street. For the academic, dare we say, intellectual world – and the universities that nourish its diversity, strident intelligence, playfulness and rigour —seems to have lost its way. This world, our world, challenged as it has been for the last decade or so with profound cuts in the arts & humanities, alongside a gluttonous appetite for all things STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths), and topped with a seemingly wilful misreading of what constitutes experimentation, thinking, practice, indeed research itself, especially when it comes to art, philosophy, social science, culture, needs a bit of TLC (Tender Loving Care).
So the journal and its future offspring, comes with a warning: be prepared to think outside the proverbial box, and to do so, slowly and with care, as if approaching an untamed but curious beast. As an aid memoire, we dedicate this, the first volume, no. 1 to questioning The Cruelty of the Classical Canon. Each intervention / contribution / design decision has been peer-reviewed with members from an internationally and discipline-diverse advisory board. Some of the selected pieces support the classical canon; others reject it outright; still others try to strike a delicate balance between outright rejection and the appeal of its tried and tested repertoire. All have something to do with Nietzsche’s seminal text, Daybreak, Lyotard’s shout (demand), We Libidinal Economists! and the first discovered imaginary number,√2. It is up to you to decide which is which, and why.
Welcome to Zētēsis: a re-search generated by curiosity.
Johnny Golding Editor