Negativity

De entre todas las imágenes gestadas por la serialidad contemporánea, las del final de la tercera temporada de Twin Peaks (ABC: 1990-91; Showtime Networks: 1990-2017) constituyen un punto límite, un espacio de interrogación sobre las formas narrativas seriales construido sobre una estética negativa o apofática, de acuerdo con el término teológico que designa la vía mística negativa de aproximación a lo divino –del griego ἀποφάναι que significa “decir no”, “negar”–. En muchos sentidos, Lynch establece un pacto con el espectador que no se apoya en la premisa de un guión cerrado ni sobre el uso de los recursos del drama isabelino y la narrativa artúrica tan presentes en la ficción televisiva contemporánea, sino sobre una fórmula hasta ahora inédita en la serialidad: la concepción de cada episodio como una visita al estudio, al taller del artista. El trabajo sobre motivos recurrentes concibe las secuencias como lienzos, ensayos o coreografías que suscitan una sensación similar a la que producen otras formas estéticas recientes fundadas sobre las ideas de gesto y huella, indagación y montaje de tiempos alternos, quebrados. El propósito de este capítulo, contenido en el libro La estética televisiva en las series contemporáneas (Ed. Miguel Ángel Huerta y Pedro Sangro) es acercarse tanto a la vía negativa, apofática, que guía a Lynch como a una comprensión más amplia de las formas de la negatividad que la serialidad televisiva contemporánea reclama en relación con la representación del hogar y la comunidad: la cólera, el horror y el círculo serial del mal, desde una metodología comparada, fundamentanda en la iconología de Aby Warburg y basada sobre todo en el concepto de negatividad en la filosofía y la teología. A través de series tan diversas como The Leftovers (HBO: 2014-2017), True Detective (HBO: 2014-), Fringe (Fox: 2008-2013), Breaking Bad (AMC: 2008-2013), Mad Men (AMC: 2007-2015), Penny Dreadful (Showtime: 2014-2016), P’tit Quinquin (Arte: 2014) o Westworkd (HBO: 2016–) se realiza un recorrido a través de los fundamentos de la negatividad en la estética de la ficción serial contemporánea.

This paper aims to characterize the process of remembering particular experiences of harm produced in the context of past historical events. Starting from the observation of the impossibility of a conclusive memory such as the one that would be promoted by factual discourses such as history or law, we consider the possibility of a negative memory that could elaborate such experiences imaginatively. To this end, the perspective developed by Walter Benjamin in “On the Concept of History” is assumed. After proposing fiction as the most appropriate discourse for negative memory, the concept of history in The Aesthetics of Resistance by Peter Weiss and Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald is interpreted.

Research on the truth effect has demonstrated that statements are rated as more credible when they are repeatedly presented. However, current research indicates that there are limits to the truth effect and that too many repetitions can decrease message credibility. This study investigates whether message negativity contributes to this boomerang effect and whether the interaction of credibility and negativity influences political attitudes. These assumptions were tested in an online experiment in which the frequency of exposure to political campaign posters and message negativity were manipulated. The results show that negativity on political campaign posters functions as a crucial moderator, especially in combination with high-frequency exposure. Repeatedly presented negative posters resulted in a more negative attitude toward the presented political issue, which was mediated by a decrease in credibility judgments.

Das Romanfragment 'Die Lehrlinge zu Sais' von Novalis stellt ein romantisches Übungskonzept vor, das seine erzieherischen Mittel nicht wie der klassische Bildungsroman um ein einzelnes Bildungssubjekt ansiedelt, das sich innerhalb eines linearen Narrativs sukzessiv (weiter-)bildet. Vielmehr gilt es, eine Bildunsglehre performativ in Szene zu setzen, die jenseits von Herrschaftslogiken die Übung nicht als eine Kontrollform, sondern als Möglichkeitsbedingung eines Kontrollverlustes entwickelt, der das freiheitliche Ich in einen spielerischen Umgang mit sich selbst setzt. Dieser im Romanfragment verhandelte Modus der Selbstdifferenz wird dabei zugleich auf eine Leserebene gehoben, wo schließlich die poetisch organisierte Kontingenz zur Vervielfachung und Intensivierung von Lektüremöglichkeiten führt.

This article examines contemporary Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's video work on death since 1997. Investigating Araya's willed, long-term artistic history of intimacy and exchange with the dead, the article focuses not on the artwork's relation to mourning but rather on how the artist sketches out a feminist anatomy of desire in an idiom of negativity. In close connection, it examines the artist's explicit pedagogic intent to initiate public discussions on femininity and sexuality in Thailand. In her video performances, the artist reads passages from Thai classical literature or from her own erotic writing and sings to, converses with, and dresses corpses in a morgue. While these works situate longing and sexuality in a highly abstracted and dehistoricized domain, the article argues that Araya's video installations nevertheless proffer critiques of women's current erotic possibilities and that they may further be read to defamiliarize popular conventions of depicting female death as well as Buddhist forms of engaging with the dead in Thailand.

A partir de mi experiencia en la clínica psicoanalítica y en la danza-improvisación, revisito y amplifico la tesis doctoral y algunos ensayos anteriores. Persigo una filosofía de lo carnal apuntada por Maine de Biran a través de la teoría del trauma delineada por Sigmund Freud y de la hermenéutica nacionalsocialista de Martin Heidegger para rescatar la intuición mística del cuerpo disuelto en la práctica artística de la performance.

A la performance académica -y traumática- del debate Searle-Derrida, paradigma de deshonestidad intelectual y crisis de la universidad, contrapongo los estudios de Jerzy Grotowski, el Kundance de Dominik Borucki y el método Gaga de Ohad Naharin como prácticas de disolución del cuerpo social que nos acercan a la realidad del cuerpo continuo.

La hipótesis de trabajo consiste en que solo superficialmente somos cuerpos contiguos, por lo que no solo no existe "individuo" sino que también "la sociedad" carece de existencia. Así, por ejemplo, el género no es siquiera una construcción social porque lo social es efecto de la misma psicosis que separó el habla de la emoción primordial.

Experiencias terminales del lenguaje sugieren que el espejismo de la identidad se pierde al aparecernos el cuerpo continuo; y que esto no sea repetible pero sí testimoniable significa un cambio de paradigma científico donde el presente inefable es el único posible verdadero.

Namera mi je da u sklopu „iznenađujuće“ aktuelnosti u poslednje dve decenije Hegelove političke filozofije podvrgnem analizi status međunarodnih odnosa („spoljašnjeg prava države“) u Hegelovoj Filozofiji prava. Smatram da nam
„negostoljubivo mesto“ tog odseka unutar njegovog filozofskog sistema može osvetliti, ne samo Hegelovo shvatanje fenomena političkog, nego i konstantnost rascepa/ razlike između globalnog polja političkog događaja kao empirijski konstitutivnog i njegovog „univerzalnog“ prevladavanja. Sfera političkog će se na taj način pojaviti za savremeno filozofsko mišljenje kao suštinski određena jednim „ostatkom negativnosti“, a odnos između filozofije i države plodno otvoriti za neko buduće razmatranje.

Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language offers a challenge to theories of the subject in psychoanalysis, linguistic theory, and in philosophy. Central to that challenge is Kristeva’s conception of negativity. In this article, I trace the devel- opment of the concept of negativity in Revolution in Poetic Language from its root in Hegel, to rejection, which Kristeva develops out of Freud. Both are crucial to the development of the material dialectic between the semiotic and the symbolic that makes up Kristeva’s subject-in-process/on trial. I argue that a clearer understanding of Kristeva’s conception of negativity helps us to better appreciate the force of Kristeva’s challenge, both philosophically and politically. Finally I argue that Kristevan negativity also helps us to clarify the relation between the delimited space of politics and its conditions, laying the groundwork for constitutive exclusion as political critique and opening a space for the possibility of political re-constitutions.

This essay thinks through the centrality of the concept of "the World" to theorizations of affect and the presumed correlation between feeling and world—that is, the notion that affective experience is necessarily generative of world(s)—that operates as an uninterrogated maxim in both contemporary and classical theories of affect. Focusing on the figure and question of the World and its grammars of relation(ality) and becoming, this essay considers the implications of an insistence on worlding in the context of anti-Blackness. It argues that the sustenance of the very concept of theWorld necessitates a foreclosure of Black affect's destructive drive. Black affect is therefore an impossibility within theWorld, as that unbearable negativity which drives us toward its necessary destruction. In light of this, the essay argues further that the tendency toward an uncritical embrace of affect as a mode of world-forming within strains of Black critical theory—represented by turns to "the otherwise"—performs a sublimation of Black affect's radical negativity, as encapsulated in the desire for the End of the World.

RESUMO
Este trabalho observa as restrições de um pensamento crítico que, ao acentuar a materialidade do real como seu objeto de estudo, especialmente o espaço, não contemplou a crítica necessária a uma sociedade determinada por abstrações, de modo que a análise física da realidade moderna prevaleceu sobre os critérios sociais. Abdicar da contradição entre abstrato e concreto como fundamento da crítica positivou a mesma limitando o seu potencial dialético e, no entanto, negativo. Buscou-se, assim, argumentar sobre a necessidade de se pensar o espaço como abstração.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Modernização. Tempo-espaço. Abstrato-concreto. Geografia. Negatividade.
NEGATIVITY AND THE CRITIC TO THE CRITICAL CRITIC ABOUT SPACE TIME AND MODERNISATION
ABSTRACT
This article analyses the restrictions of a critical thinking that do not encompassed the necessary critic to a society determined by abstractions. Chiefly when the space composes the materiality as justification of a scientific object. This included the physical analyses of modern reality rather then the social criteria. The renouncement of the contradiction between abstract and concrete as fundament of the critic became it positive, restricting its dialectical and negative potential, so. In this article, was intended to assert about the necessity to think the space as an abstraction.
KEY WORDS: Modernisation. Time-space. Abstract-concrete. Geography. Negativity.

ÍNDICE
INTRODUCCIÓN 3
CAPITULO 1. TEORÍA TRADICIONAL VS. TEORÍA CRÍTICA 14
EL INSTITUTO 14
EL PROYECTO DEL INSTITUTO 16
TEORÍA TRADICIONAL (LA POSITIVIDAD DE LA TEORÍA) 17
EL CARTESIANISMO Y SU INFLUENCIA EN LA TEORÍA TRADICIONAL 18
LA SUPUESTA OBJETIVIDAD Y LA DIVISIÓN DEL TRABAJO 20
RELACIÓN CIENTÍFICO – SOCIEDAD 23
LA INTERDEPENDENCIA DEL CONOCIMIENTO TEÓRICO 26
LA DEPENDENCIA SOCIAL DEL INVESTIGADOR 27
HORKHEIMER Y EL PROYECTO DE LA TEORÍA CRÍTICA 29
LA CRÍTICA MÁS ALLÁ DE LAS CONCEPCIONES KANTIANAS (CRÍTICA NO COMO CONDICIÓN DE POSIBILIDAD DEL CONOCIMIENTO). 30
CON MARX, PERO MÁS ALLÁ DE LOS MARXISTAS. 32
LA ACTITUD CRÍTICA 36
LA TEORÍA CRÍTICA, EL TIEMPO Y LA LIBERTAD 39
CAPITULO 2. DIALÉCTICA Y NEGATIVIDAD COMO PROGRAMA FILOSÓFICO DE LA TEORÍA CRÍTICA 40
LA DIALÉCTICA HEGELIANA. APROPIACIÓN CRÍTICA COMO MÉTODO PARA SUPERAR LA CONCEPCIÓN TRADICIONAL 40
PEQUEÑA HISTORIA DEL ACERCAMIENTO A HEGEL 40
LA DIALÉCTICA COMO MÉTODO CRÍTICO 44
LA DIALÉCTICA COMO ELEMENTO CRÍTICO EN MARCUSE 49
DIALÉCTICA NEGATIVA 54
CAPITULO 3 CRÍTICA DE LA CRÍTICA CRÍTICA 63
APUNTES PARA LA CRÍTICA DE LA TEORÍA CRÍTICA 64
LA CRÍTICA, LA METACRÍTICA Y LA CRÍTICA DE LA METACRÍTICA 65
NECESIDAD DE DELIMITAR EL PROCESO REFLEXIVO DE LA CRÍTICA 72
LA TEMPORALIDAD EN LA CRÍTICA 74
EL TIEMPO AHORA (JETZEIT) COMO NECESIDAD PARA LA PRAXIS DE LA TEORÍA CRÍTICA 78
CRÍTICA DIVINA VS. CRÍTICA MÍTICA 88
ALGUNAS CONCLUSIONES 105
BIBLIOGRAFÍA 115

How does Spinoza’s passing statement in a letter that “determination is negation” become central to Hegel’s Spinoza interpretation? The background is a tradition that negotiates Spinoza’s Jewishness by means of another epistolary statement: that “nothing comes from nothing.” More made this Kabbalah’s first principle, while Bayle associated it with Spinoza and the Orient. Wachter and Basnage then interpreted Spinoza as philosophical Kabbalah’s main exponent. Jacobi construed the principle as a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, identifying Spinozistic rationalism with philosophical Kabbalah. The consequence was a negative view of determinacy and, indeed, nihilism. Hegel drew on this tradition but argued that Spinoza’s Jewishness consisted in a static nihilism lacking the dialectical self-negating found only in Trinitarian thinkers such as Boehme and himself. Yet, in an irony typical of German idealist discussions of Judaism, self-negating negativity is central to the Lurianic Kabbalah discussed in the tradition on which Hegel draws

Disputes between those holding differing political views are ubiquitous and deep-seated, and they often follow common, recognizable lines. The supporters of tradition and stability, sometimes referred to as conservatives, do battle with the supporters of innovation and reform, sometimes referred to as liberals. Understanding the correlates of those distinct political orientations is probably a prerequisite for managing political disputes, which are a source of social conflict that can lead to frustration and even bloodshed. A rapidly growing body of empirical evidence documents a multitude of ways in which liberals and conservatives differ from each other in purviews of life with little direct connection to politics, from tastes in art to desire for closure and from disgust sensitivity to the tendency to pursue new information, but the central theme of the differences is a matter of debate. In this article, we argue that one organizing element of the many differences between liberals and conservatives is the nature of their physiological and psychological responses to features of the environment that are negative. Compared with liberals, conservatives tend to register greater physiological responses to such stimuli and also to devote more psychological resources to them. Operating from this point of departure, we suggest approaches for refining understanding of the broad relationship between political views and response to the negative. We conclude with a discussion of normative implications, stressing that identifying differences across ideological groups is not tantamount to declaring one ideology superior to another.

Through an original and extraordinarily fruitful reading of the Hegelian conception of negativity, Catherine Malabou developed the concept of plasticity which she keeps working on as one of her cardinal concepts even to this day. Engaging in the problematic of unity in Hegel, the paper takes on the task of trying to answer the question whether plasticity is one or are there several plasticities. The author argues that one must be careful not to reduce the inherent multiple of plasticity to a single plasticity which becomes plasticity par excellence: the plasticity of plastic explosion, of an abrupt and absolute break, to be distinguished from a creative or productive plasticity of habit. Malabou claimed that Hegel was – contrary to what Deleuze read in him – a philosopher of conceptual multitude as a  multitude which cannot be reduced to only one image, the image of unity. If this is true, then the concept of plasticity itself with which she grasped the essence of Hegel’s dialectics, should  be understood at least as a “unity in conflict”, if not as an inorganic, inhomogeneous, composed unity – and perhaps even as a unity of the pack.

From the back cover:

"‘Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time' represents an advanced, sophisticated, extremely well informed and challenging contribution to the rapidly growing area of film-philosophy scholarship. It will become an important moment in (re)establishing the philosophical significance of cinema (and film studies’ efforts in addressing this) well before the current trend in Anglo-American Philosophy’s 'discovering' of film emerged. . . . Ford draws on a wide range of research across film, modernist cultural and aesthetic theory and continental philosophical terrains. The work engages both with more recent film-philosophy scholarship and the disciplinary resources of film studies work on the movements and individual filmmakers in question. A successful and important contribution to scholarship on these films, their historical and aesthetic significance and their capacity to 'do' philosophy."
— Patrick Crogan, University of the West of England, UK

"Often, work in this area is far too devoted to a particular theoretical corpus and tends to lose originality; alternatively it falls into being a merely impressionistic mention of philosophy to make otherwise unremarkable claims. Hamish Ford’s book is remarkable for its engagement with the deepest problems of modernist aesthetics and the presentation of time. He works closely with cinema, philosophy and criticism while always maintaining his own argumentative position."
— Claire Colebrook, Penn State University, USA
                                                     
"Hamish Ford’s energetic and erudite work is both theoretically and historically engaged and highly accessible to a broad readership. He is ideally positioned to contribute significantly to the discussion of post-war European cinema through this important book."
— Adrian Danks, RMIT University, Australia, co-editor of Senses of Cinema

'Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time' is a unique study of four feature films chosen as emblematic works of 1960s modernist cinema. 'Persona' (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) and 'Two or Three Things I Know About Her' (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) are explored through the theme of negativity, while 'L’eclisse' (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) and 'Last Year in Marienbad' (Alain Resnais, 1961) are examined for their violent rendering of time. The book argues that these films exemplify film modernism at its peak of philosophical interest, substance and significance. Its focused analysis of four emblematic works selectively draws on the work of German philosopher and aesthetic theorist Theodor Adorno, in particular his account of negativity, and French poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s analysis of temporality in post-war cinema, amongst other theoretical and critical sources. Grounding this study is a close consideration of the critical and aesthetically remarkable gaze these particular films cast upon their immediate social real and modernities as presented on screen. But rather than a strictly historical analysis, the book suggests that such complex and profoundly ambivalent renderings of the modern world have much to say to us today via what amounts to a genuinely challenging return in digital form, the films' remarkable aesthetic surfaces and layers looking even more properly science fiction-like than ever. 'Post-War Modernist Cinema and Philosophy: Confronting Negativity and Time' will appeal both to an academic audience, from upper-level undergraduate through to career researcher level, and a wider readership attracted by the book’s extensive analysis and appreciation of films that have countless and increasing admirers the world over."

Published review: Michael Godard, Senses of Cinema, July 2016, Issue 79, online: http://sensesofcinema.com/2016/book-reviews/post-war-modernist-cinema-and-philosophy/

This paper aims to elaborate on some of the possible connections between Hegel and Lacan. Subjectivity, negativity and desire will be the guiding notions of this endeavor, as they are fundamentally intertwined in both thinkers. A comparative analysis of their respective articulations will enrich our understanding thereof, while warding off misunderstandings of their respective positions.
The paper will start with an interpretation of the mirror stage, the master-slave dialectic and the distinctiveness of human desire, which will prepare the subsequent Lacanian reading of three basic Hegelian concepts: determinate negation, mediation and experience. Here the main point of reference will be Slavoj Žižek’s defence of “Hegel’s madness” against Robert Brandom’s “renormalizing” interpretation. The paper ends with an outline of what Hegel could mean by “grasping substance equally as subject”.

F*ck May 68, Fight Now: Exploring the Uses of the Radical Past from 1968 to Today

Session 1: History is a Weapon

June 8, 2018

Department of History, University of Liverpool

https://archive.discoversociety.org/2018/09/04/circumnavigating-the-past-foreclosing-the-future-commemoration-of-the-radical-past-in-the-amnesiac-present/

Por medio de un contraste con el pensamiento heideggeriano, el estudio desarrolla la concepción gadameriana de la alteridad, el lugar que ocupa este tema en la propuesta hermenéutica de Verdad y Método y la reformulación que ello supone de la manera como Heidegger concibe la aperturidad de la existencia humana y el acontecimiento mismo del ser. El trabajo inicia planteando la crítica de Gadamer al reconocimiento ontológico del otro por parte de Heidegger; muestra enseguida la oposición que se presenta entre el “ser-para-la-muerte” y el “ser-para-la-historia”, la relevancia que tiene en Gadamer la vida práctica y la idea de diálogo como modelo de la comprensión. Se concluye mostrando la oposición que se da entre ambos autores en la manera de considerar el modo de ser del lenguaje y el acontecimiento del ser que en éste tiene lugar.

In permanent contrast with Heidegger’s thought, this study develops Gadamer’s conception of otherness, its place in the hermeneutic project of Truth and Method and the reformulation that all this entails of human existence disclosedness and the event of being itself. Work starts raising Gadamer’s critique to the ontological [42] recognition of the others by Heidegger; it shows then the opposition between the “being-towards-death” and “being-for-history”, and the relevance of practical life and the idea of dialogue as a model of understanding in Gadamer’s philosophy. It concludes by showing the opposition between both authors regarding language’s essence and the event of being that takes place on it.

This brief paper responds to Gregor Moder's recent book Hegel and Spinoza. I argue that Moder's insightful work suggests a peaceful image of the contemporary theoretical field by arguing for a common negativity at work. In contrast, I suggest the pertinence of my previous diagnosis that contemporary theory is dominated by affirmationism.

The Persistence of the Negative offers an original and compelling critique of contemporary Continental theory through a rehabilitation of the negative. Against the usual image of rival thinkers and schools, Benjamin Noys identifies and attacks a shared consensus on the primacy of affirmation and the expelling of the negative that runs through the leading figures of contemporary theory: Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou.

While positioning the emergence of affirmative theory as a political response to the corrosive effects of contemporary capitalism, Noys argues that, all too often, affirmation is left re-affirming the conditions of the present rather than providing the means to disrupt and resist them.

Refusing to endorse an anti-theory position that would read theory as the symptom of political defeat, The Persistence of the Negative traverses these leading thinkers in a series of lucid readings to reveal the disavowed effects of negativity operating within their work.

Overturning the limits of recent debates on the politics of theory, The Persistence of the Negative vigorously defends the return of theory to its political calling.

Статья посвящена проблеме негативности в искусстве
символизма, который я понимаю здесь как протомодернизм.
Негативность связывает содержательную мрачность
модернистского произведения и катастрофы, происходящие
на уровне его формы. В этом смысле есть разница между
шоковой эстетикой массовой культуры, абстракцией
авангарда и идеологической фигуративной конструкцией
негативности, которую дает символистское произведение.
Статья предлагает своеобразную апологию символизма,
прежде всего в пластических искусствах, и демонстрирует его
непрекращающееся влияние

The entire history of the theories of literary translation reveals that its main concepts and even many aspects of its practice are often at once determined and undermined by a fundamental negativity, be it its deficit of legitimacy and relevance, its impossibility or its multiple problems and deficiencies. What are the motivations of such critiques, self-indictments and other complaints? And what about the sins, errors, omissions, excesses, all that is left behind or on the roadside, condemned, forgotten or rejected in the translation processes carried out not only by professional translators, but also by any reader in quest of meaning? What does it all become at the end of the day? How is it recycled, or not? Could it not be added value? The traces of the repressed that tries to return? These are the questions studied here after a summary description of three visions of literary translation at large: the hermeneutic notion, translating as transport and a dialogic-conversational notion, one that is likely to represent and explain reading processes and manners of producing meaning and emotions that are of interest to the comparatist scholar.