Thesis Outline by Anna Cornelia Ploug
PhD thesis, 2024
Contemporary theory yearns for concreteness. Across the board of the theoretical humanities, we f... more Contemporary theory yearns for concreteness. Across the board of the theoretical humanities, we find methodological aspirations marked by a strong commitment to concretising theoretical concepts and evading the abstract realm of detached and universal thought. However, current attempts at reaching the concrete by means of privileging singularity and immediacy or by reference to concrete objects often end up prey to abstract thought themselves. Taking seriously the desire for concreteness, this thesis intervenes in the metaphilosophical discussion of theory development by advancing a methodological examination of concrete concepts drawing on Hegel’s account of concreteness as a mode of thinking rather than a quality pertaining to external things. The thesis argues that because concrete thinking is at its core a question of logical form, concept formation in the critical humanities should be approached through a dialectical method of problem articulation.
On the level of intellectual history, this line of reasoning is accomplished by identifying a particularly fruitful philosophical moment of post-Hegelian French thought centred around four texts by Jean Hyppolite, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Martin and Gaston Bachelard. The juxtaposition of these texts, that are all written in the five-year span 1947-1952, indicates a dimension of the “turn to the concrete” of French 20th century philosophy that cannot be reduced to phenomenological and existential concerns, but is notable for its methodological attention to the constitution of transdisciplinary concepts. On a systematic level, the thesis examines the potential of this intersection between the speculative ideal of logical concreteness and the materialist philosophy of science of problem articulation as an alternative to pure philosophical questioning, thus countering the usual opposition of dialectics and the French epistemologist trajectory of the problematic.
The first part situates the thesis in the present theoretical landscape and launches its strategy of reconstructing a methodological account of concrete thinking through triangulating the categories of problem, exemplarity and mediation. Against this backdrop, the second part explores the role of abstraction and conceptual concretisation in Hegel’s dialectical-speculative logic together with his account of the history of philosophy as the temporal counterpart of logic. It defines the concrete concept as characterised by expressing a conflict of determination effectively structuring a systematic whole and determining itself through its exemplary relations to a retroactively constituted philosophical past.
Reinserting Beauvoir anew in the French Hegel renaissance, the third part takes her analysis of “woman” as a paradigmatic case of concrete concept formation. It brings forth an otherwise neglected method of concretisation at work in her determination of femininity, whose conflictual mediation through experiential examples appropriates but also moves beyond Hegel’s philosophy. Arguing that this determination culminates in the contradiction of sex as expressed in the figure of The Little Mermaid, this problem interpretation sheds light on a profoundly critical legacy of feminist theory presenting a counterpoint to affirmative politics of equality.
In order to propose this constructive yet negation-driven articulation of problems as a compelling “methodological translation” of the philosophical notion of concrete conceptuality, the fourth part expounds on the practical operativity of problems. First in Martin’s historically informed philosophical sense of problem posing as a retroactive reading strategy enabling new intellectual objects to appear, and second in Bachelard’s “applied rationalism” according to which scientific concepts are temporarily, technically and socially mediated. Then, following from Hyppolite’s non-anthropological reading of Hegel’s “philosophy of mediation”, the thesis finally construes a dialectical-speculative form of problem articulation, which is productive despite its critical gesture precisely insofar as it sets up a collective scientific project to be subjected to. Decentring creative knowledge production as the goal of concrete theory development in favour of a critical reorganisation of actually existing categories, this reconstruction of the logic of problems contributes to making more effective theoretical interventions in our time.
Papers by Anna Cornelia Ploug
MPhilStud Dissertation, 2018 –
The first part re-evaluates Hegel’s engagement with Spinoza: cont... more MPhilStud Dissertation, 2018 –
The first part re-evaluates Hegel’s engagement with Spinoza: contrary to the stark contra-positioning of the two not uncommon in contemporary thought I argue that dialectical logic is best understood against the backdrop of Hegel’s encounter with Spinoza, which reveals a fundamental commonality between them. Having assessed Hegel’s confrontational reading, including its occupation with the formula 'determinatio est negatio', I call attention to two significant elements embraced by both authors, viz. a beginning devoid of grounding first principles and a ‘paradigm of completion’, suggesting that Hegel builds on and radicalises Spinoza’s objective of thorough epistemological-ontological immanence (...)
Res Cogitans, 2017
The philosophical system of L'être et l'événement is launched with the explicit denial of ‘The On... more The philosophical system of L'être et l'événement is launched with the explicit denial of ‘The One’ as grounding principle, because any philosophy that begins by positing an original unity (whether a unique, absolute being or an atom) will, according to Alain Badiou, inevitably turn out to be nothing but disguised theology. This denial, captured in the formula ”l'un, en effet, n'est pas" (Badiou 1988, 47), constitutes the precursory decision taken by Badiou in order to develop an ontological architecture, which permits pure multiplicity as its base.
Who would be a more obvious counterpart for this announcement than Plotinus, the ultimate thinker of The One? While Badiou is not concerned specifically with reading or criticising neither Plotinus nor Neoplatonism as such, all the necessary aspects that he seeks to escape are present in the latter: The One of the Enneads is a transcendent unity, inaccessible to thought and beyond being. Badiou, on his part, insists that since The One is not, what originally is rather amounts to ‘inconsistent’ multiplicity, the pur multiple. Furthermore, he points to the process of ‘structuring situations’, i.e. arranging utter differentiation into consistent wholes, as the only place for unity: unity is nothing more than the operation of unifying, the compte-pour-un. However, I will argue that our understanding can benefit from subjecting certain schemes in the two authors to reconciliation instead of merely accepting the seeming antagonism. More specifically, I will show that there can be found a decisive resemblance in their perspectives on what comes first.
Book Reviews by Anna Cornelia Ploug
Dagbladet Information, 2020
I en bombastisk afslutning på sin ’Homo sacer’-serie lader den italienske filosof Giorgio Agamben... more I en bombastisk afslutning på sin ’Homo sacer’-serie lader den italienske filosof Giorgio Agamben en frihedshungrende undergrundsontologi bryde frem. Ikke for at tage magten fra de mægtige, men for at afskaffe magten som sådan
Eftertryk Magasin, 2023
REDAKTØREN ANBEFALER: Hvor går man hen, når “feminist” er blevet noget, man skriver på en t-shirt... more REDAKTØREN ANBEFALER: Hvor går man hen, når “feminist” er blevet noget, man skriver på en t-shirt og sætter til salg i et butiksvindue? Og hvor skal man starte, når mængden af reproduktivt arbejde gør én udmattet bare ved tanken om tung teori? Her får du en guide til smutveje ind i tre af de mest eksplosive hovedværker i nyere feministisk tænkning, der tilmed nu kan læses på dansk
Kvinder, Køn og Forskning, 2021
Om at læse Det andet køn på dansk. Anmeldelse af den nye danske oversættelse (Gyldendal 2019).
De to filosoffer, Silas L. Marker og Vincent F. Hendricks, vil kvalificere de ofte ekstremt polar... more De to filosoffer, Silas L. Marker og Vincent F. Hendricks, vil kvalificere de ofte ekstremt polariserede identitetspolitiske diskussioner. Men spørgsmålet er, om ordentlighed og akkuratesse nu også er svaret på politisk konflikt. Anmeldelse af 'Os og dem' (2019)
Den radikale venstrefløj piner livet ud af enhver revolutionaer kraft med sin evindelige identite... more Den radikale venstrefløj piner livet ud af enhver revolutionaer kraft med sin evindelige identitetspolitiske 'forskelsnarcissisme'. Det mener en fransk anarkist, der nok kunne taenke sig, at kampscenen var lidt mere som i gamle dage. Anmeldelse af Renaud Garcia:
Le désert de la critique – Déconstruction et politique, L'Echappé, 2015)
Essays and articles by Anna Cornelia Ploug
Dagbladet Information, 2017
Filosoffen Rebecca Tuvel har i en artikel argumenteret for, at vi bør acceptere, at folk ’skifter... more Filosoffen Rebecca Tuvel har i en artikel argumenteret for, at vi bør acceptere, at folk ’skifter race’, ligesom vi accepterer, at folk selv bestemmer deres kønsidentitet. Kritikere kalder det en hån mod både transpersoner og racegjorte og kræver artiklen fjernet
Dagbladet Information, 2020
De lykkelige tider er historiebøgernes blanke sider, sagde Hegel. For historien er i modsætning t... more De lykkelige tider er historiebøgernes blanke sider, sagde Hegel. For historien er i modsætning til naturen ikke en cyklisk gentagelse af sig selv, men en tumultarisk stræben efter menneskenes fælles frihed gennem hasarderede og uforudsigelige forandringsprocesser
Encyclopedia of concise concepts by women philosophers, 2022
Entry in Encyclopedia of concise concepts by women philosophers
Slagmark, 2021
While it is well-known that the intense albeit short-lived Hegel renaissance of 1930's and 1940's... more While it is well-known that the intense albeit short-lived Hegel renaissance of 1930's and 1940's France had a huge influence on later intellectual currents of the 20 th century, its importance to Simone de Beauvoir is often left unnoticed or reduced to her appropriation of the master/slave dialectic. This paper argues that Beauvoir-who came to know Hegel through the work of Alexandre Kojève as well as her own studies during the war-in fact makes recourse to Hegelian dialectics in her conceptual composition of the 'woman problem' in The Second Sex. The paper identifies four figures of femininity, from the abstract mystique of the 'Sphinx' to the internal conflict of 'The Little Mermaid', and shows how the negative determinations culminate in a figure of contradiction, which implies that we may interpret The Second Sex as a work of critical thought. This means, that the Hegelian legacy of feminist critique has as its objective an emancipatory project rather than equality.
Res Cogitans, 2020
Oversigt over hvad der findes af Hegel-tekster i dansk oversættelse
Eftertryk Magasin, 2018
INTERVIEW. Der er stor aktivitet på den radikale venstrefløj i Danmark. Workshops, folkekøkkener ... more INTERVIEW. Der er stor aktivitet på den radikale venstrefløj i Danmark. Workshops, folkekøkkener og koncerter i normkritiske sociale rum; teoretisk og erfaringsbaseret vidensproduktion; asylaktivisme, anti-gentrificering, fristeder, retshjaelp, feministisk selvforsvar, international solidaritet, dekolonisering og kapitalismekritik. Den nye medieplatform konfront.dk vil nu samle det hele for at gøre det lettere for folk på venstrefløjen at følge med i, hvad der sker, engagere sig i nye aktiviteter og samtidig opmuntre de mange organiserede grupper til at skabe nye samarbejder på tvaers af vante skillelinjer. Forberedelserne har vaeret i gang et par år, og Konfront er nu klar til at blive søsat d. 17. november 2018. Eftertryk har mødt to af medieaktivisterne fra Konfront til en snak om tankerne bag projektet. Aktivisterne er anonymiseret.
Friktion, 2018
Essay om det feminine i filosofien
Translations by Anna Cornelia Ploug
Res Cogitans, 2020
Translation German-Danish of §§79-84 with Zusätze from Hegel's Encyclopaedia Logic
BOGUDDRAG: »Den som ved, hvordan man får et system til at fungere, ved også, hvordan man sabotere... more BOGUDDRAG: »Den som ved, hvordan man får et system til at fungere, ved også, hvordan man saboterer det på en effektiv måde.« Sådan skriver det franske forfatterkollektiv kendt under navnet Den usynlige komité i deres anden bog fra 2014, der baerer titlen À nos amis, eller 'Til vores venner'. Oversættelse af kapitel 3 (Forlaget Antipyrine efteråret 2019).
1. At magten nu befinder sig i infrastrukturen. 2. Om forskellen mellem at organisere og at organisere sig. 3. Om blokade. 4. Om undersøgelse.
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Thesis Outline by Anna Cornelia Ploug
On the level of intellectual history, this line of reasoning is accomplished by identifying a particularly fruitful philosophical moment of post-Hegelian French thought centred around four texts by Jean Hyppolite, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Martin and Gaston Bachelard. The juxtaposition of these texts, that are all written in the five-year span 1947-1952, indicates a dimension of the “turn to the concrete” of French 20th century philosophy that cannot be reduced to phenomenological and existential concerns, but is notable for its methodological attention to the constitution of transdisciplinary concepts. On a systematic level, the thesis examines the potential of this intersection between the speculative ideal of logical concreteness and the materialist philosophy of science of problem articulation as an alternative to pure philosophical questioning, thus countering the usual opposition of dialectics and the French epistemologist trajectory of the problematic.
The first part situates the thesis in the present theoretical landscape and launches its strategy of reconstructing a methodological account of concrete thinking through triangulating the categories of problem, exemplarity and mediation. Against this backdrop, the second part explores the role of abstraction and conceptual concretisation in Hegel’s dialectical-speculative logic together with his account of the history of philosophy as the temporal counterpart of logic. It defines the concrete concept as characterised by expressing a conflict of determination effectively structuring a systematic whole and determining itself through its exemplary relations to a retroactively constituted philosophical past.
Reinserting Beauvoir anew in the French Hegel renaissance, the third part takes her analysis of “woman” as a paradigmatic case of concrete concept formation. It brings forth an otherwise neglected method of concretisation at work in her determination of femininity, whose conflictual mediation through experiential examples appropriates but also moves beyond Hegel’s philosophy. Arguing that this determination culminates in the contradiction of sex as expressed in the figure of The Little Mermaid, this problem interpretation sheds light on a profoundly critical legacy of feminist theory presenting a counterpoint to affirmative politics of equality.
In order to propose this constructive yet negation-driven articulation of problems as a compelling “methodological translation” of the philosophical notion of concrete conceptuality, the fourth part expounds on the practical operativity of problems. First in Martin’s historically informed philosophical sense of problem posing as a retroactive reading strategy enabling new intellectual objects to appear, and second in Bachelard’s “applied rationalism” according to which scientific concepts are temporarily, technically and socially mediated. Then, following from Hyppolite’s non-anthropological reading of Hegel’s “philosophy of mediation”, the thesis finally construes a dialectical-speculative form of problem articulation, which is productive despite its critical gesture precisely insofar as it sets up a collective scientific project to be subjected to. Decentring creative knowledge production as the goal of concrete theory development in favour of a critical reorganisation of actually existing categories, this reconstruction of the logic of problems contributes to making more effective theoretical interventions in our time.
Papers by Anna Cornelia Ploug
The first part re-evaluates Hegel’s engagement with Spinoza: contrary to the stark contra-positioning of the two not uncommon in contemporary thought I argue that dialectical logic is best understood against the backdrop of Hegel’s encounter with Spinoza, which reveals a fundamental commonality between them. Having assessed Hegel’s confrontational reading, including its occupation with the formula 'determinatio est negatio', I call attention to two significant elements embraced by both authors, viz. a beginning devoid of grounding first principles and a ‘paradigm of completion’, suggesting that Hegel builds on and radicalises Spinoza’s objective of thorough epistemological-ontological immanence (...)
Who would be a more obvious counterpart for this announcement than Plotinus, the ultimate thinker of The One? While Badiou is not concerned specifically with reading or criticising neither Plotinus nor Neoplatonism as such, all the necessary aspects that he seeks to escape are present in the latter: The One of the Enneads is a transcendent unity, inaccessible to thought and beyond being. Badiou, on his part, insists that since The One is not, what originally is rather amounts to ‘inconsistent’ multiplicity, the pur multiple. Furthermore, he points to the process of ‘structuring situations’, i.e. arranging utter differentiation into consistent wholes, as the only place for unity: unity is nothing more than the operation of unifying, the compte-pour-un. However, I will argue that our understanding can benefit from subjecting certain schemes in the two authors to reconciliation instead of merely accepting the seeming antagonism. More specifically, I will show that there can be found a decisive resemblance in their perspectives on what comes first.
Book Reviews by Anna Cornelia Ploug
Le désert de la critique – Déconstruction et politique, L'Echappé, 2015)
Essays and articles by Anna Cornelia Ploug
Translations by Anna Cornelia Ploug
1. At magten nu befinder sig i infrastrukturen. 2. Om forskellen mellem at organisere og at organisere sig. 3. Om blokade. 4. Om undersøgelse.
On the level of intellectual history, this line of reasoning is accomplished by identifying a particularly fruitful philosophical moment of post-Hegelian French thought centred around four texts by Jean Hyppolite, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Martin and Gaston Bachelard. The juxtaposition of these texts, that are all written in the five-year span 1947-1952, indicates a dimension of the “turn to the concrete” of French 20th century philosophy that cannot be reduced to phenomenological and existential concerns, but is notable for its methodological attention to the constitution of transdisciplinary concepts. On a systematic level, the thesis examines the potential of this intersection between the speculative ideal of logical concreteness and the materialist philosophy of science of problem articulation as an alternative to pure philosophical questioning, thus countering the usual opposition of dialectics and the French epistemologist trajectory of the problematic.
The first part situates the thesis in the present theoretical landscape and launches its strategy of reconstructing a methodological account of concrete thinking through triangulating the categories of problem, exemplarity and mediation. Against this backdrop, the second part explores the role of abstraction and conceptual concretisation in Hegel’s dialectical-speculative logic together with his account of the history of philosophy as the temporal counterpart of logic. It defines the concrete concept as characterised by expressing a conflict of determination effectively structuring a systematic whole and determining itself through its exemplary relations to a retroactively constituted philosophical past.
Reinserting Beauvoir anew in the French Hegel renaissance, the third part takes her analysis of “woman” as a paradigmatic case of concrete concept formation. It brings forth an otherwise neglected method of concretisation at work in her determination of femininity, whose conflictual mediation through experiential examples appropriates but also moves beyond Hegel’s philosophy. Arguing that this determination culminates in the contradiction of sex as expressed in the figure of The Little Mermaid, this problem interpretation sheds light on a profoundly critical legacy of feminist theory presenting a counterpoint to affirmative politics of equality.
In order to propose this constructive yet negation-driven articulation of problems as a compelling “methodological translation” of the philosophical notion of concrete conceptuality, the fourth part expounds on the practical operativity of problems. First in Martin’s historically informed philosophical sense of problem posing as a retroactive reading strategy enabling new intellectual objects to appear, and second in Bachelard’s “applied rationalism” according to which scientific concepts are temporarily, technically and socially mediated. Then, following from Hyppolite’s non-anthropological reading of Hegel’s “philosophy of mediation”, the thesis finally construes a dialectical-speculative form of problem articulation, which is productive despite its critical gesture precisely insofar as it sets up a collective scientific project to be subjected to. Decentring creative knowledge production as the goal of concrete theory development in favour of a critical reorganisation of actually existing categories, this reconstruction of the logic of problems contributes to making more effective theoretical interventions in our time.
The first part re-evaluates Hegel’s engagement with Spinoza: contrary to the stark contra-positioning of the two not uncommon in contemporary thought I argue that dialectical logic is best understood against the backdrop of Hegel’s encounter with Spinoza, which reveals a fundamental commonality between them. Having assessed Hegel’s confrontational reading, including its occupation with the formula 'determinatio est negatio', I call attention to two significant elements embraced by both authors, viz. a beginning devoid of grounding first principles and a ‘paradigm of completion’, suggesting that Hegel builds on and radicalises Spinoza’s objective of thorough epistemological-ontological immanence (...)
Who would be a more obvious counterpart for this announcement than Plotinus, the ultimate thinker of The One? While Badiou is not concerned specifically with reading or criticising neither Plotinus nor Neoplatonism as such, all the necessary aspects that he seeks to escape are present in the latter: The One of the Enneads is a transcendent unity, inaccessible to thought and beyond being. Badiou, on his part, insists that since The One is not, what originally is rather amounts to ‘inconsistent’ multiplicity, the pur multiple. Furthermore, he points to the process of ‘structuring situations’, i.e. arranging utter differentiation into consistent wholes, as the only place for unity: unity is nothing more than the operation of unifying, the compte-pour-un. However, I will argue that our understanding can benefit from subjecting certain schemes in the two authors to reconciliation instead of merely accepting the seeming antagonism. More specifically, I will show that there can be found a decisive resemblance in their perspectives on what comes first.
Le désert de la critique – Déconstruction et politique, L'Echappé, 2015)
1. At magten nu befinder sig i infrastrukturen. 2. Om forskellen mellem at organisere og at organisere sig. 3. Om blokade. 4. Om undersøgelse.
Paper til konferencen ’Kvinder i spil’, Københavns universitet 24.-25. februar 2017, arrangeret af Netværk for Kvinder i Filosofi.