At the Limits of Presentation : Coming-into-Presence and its Aesthetic Relevance in Jean-Luc Nancy's Philosophy

This study investigates the significance of art in Jean-Luc Nancy s philosophy. I argue that the notion of art contributes to some of Nancy s central ontological ideas. Therefore, I consider art s importance in its own right whether art does have ontological significance, and if so, how one should describe this with respect to the theme of presentation. According to my central argument, with his thinking on art Nancy attempts to give one viewpoint to what is called the metaphysics of presence and to its deconstruction. On which grounds, as I propose, may one say that art is not reducible to philosophy? The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part, Presentation as a Philosophical Theme, is a historical genesis of the central concepts associated with the birth of presentation in Nancy s philosophy. I examine this from the viewpoint of the differentiation between the ontological notions of presentation and representation by concentrating on the influence of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, as well as of Hegel and Kant. I give an overview of the way in which being or sense for Nancy is to be described as a coming-into-presence or presentation . Therefore, being takes place in its singular plurality. I argue that Nancy redevelops Heidegger s account of being in two principal ways: first, in rethinking the ontico-ontological difference, and secondly, by striving to radicalize the Heideggerian concept of Mitsein, being-with . I equally wish to show the importance of Derrida s notion of différance and its inherence in Nancy s questioning of being that rests on the unfoundedness of existence. The second part, From Ontology to Art, draws on the importance of art and the aesthetic. If, in Nancy, the question of art touches upon its own limit as the limit of nothingness, how is art able to open its own strangeness and our exposure to this strangeness? My aim is to investigate how Nancy s thinking on art finds its place within the conceptual realm of its inherent difference and interval. My central concern is the thought of originary ungroundedness and the plurality of art and of the arts. As for the question of the difference between art and philosophy, I wish to show that what differentiates art from thought is the fact that art exposes what is obvious but not apparent, if apparent is understood in the sense of givenness. As for art s ability to deconstruct Nancy s ontological notions, I suggest that in question in art is its original heterogeneity and diversity. Art is a matter of differing art occurs singularly, as a local difference. With this in mind, I point out that in reflecting on art in terms of spacing and interval, as a thinker of difference Nancy comes closer to Derrida and his idea of différance than to the structure of Heidegger s ontological difference.

The Fraternity of Metaphors: Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme

Since the 'completion' of Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998), Jean-Luc Godard's work has become increasingly mosaic-like in its forms and configurations, and markedly elegiac in its ruminations on history, cinema, art, and thought. While his associative aesthetic and citational method –including his choice of ‘actors’, and the fragmentariness of his ‘soundtracks’ – can combine to create a distinctive cinematic event, the films themselves refuse to cohere around a unifying concern, or yield to a thematic schema. Not surprisingly, Film Socialisme does not offer us the illusion of narrative or structural integrity anymore than it contributes to the quotidian rhetoric of political and moral argument. It is, however, a political film in the sense that it alters something more fundamental than opinions and points of view. It transforms a way of seeing and understanding reality and history, fiction and documentary, images, and images of images. If anything, it belongs to that dissident or ‘dissensual’ category of artwork capable of ‘emancipating the spectator’ by disturbing what Jacques Rancière terms ‘the distribution of the sensible’ in that it generates gaps, openings, and spaces, poses questions, invites associations without positing a fixed position, imposing an interpretation, or allowing itself to invest in the illusion of expressive objectivity and the stability of meaning. The myriad citations and fragments that comprise the film are never intended to culminate into anything cohesive, never mind conclusive. In one sense, they have no source and no context beyond their moment in the film itself, and what we make of that moment. This article studies the degree to which Godard allows these images and sounds to combine and collide, associate and dissolve in this film, arguing that Film Socialisme is both an important intervention in the history of contemporary cinema, and necessary point of reference in any serious discussion of the relations between that cinema and political reality.

Voyage(s) to Sarajevo: Jean-Luc Godard and the Image of War

This essay discusses Jean-Luc Godard’s artistic response to the Bosnian War (1992-95), and its representations in the Western mass media. For Godard, the reluctance of Europe’s advanced liberal democracies to intervene meaningfully in Bosnia – their insistence that 'humanitarianism' rather than protective intervention was the order of the day – was tantamount to supporting Serbian fascism, and – a fortiori – regressing to a policy of appeasement reminiscent of the days of the Munich Agreement. Although Godard's stance set him against some of his former compatriots on the left, speculating on his ideological motivations is beside the point. Rather, it is is in his filmmaking, in his vision of cinema, and how it relates to other histories of the image, that Godard’s sensibility can be most keenly felt and understood. As the essay points out, even his recent contribution to Jean-Michel Frodon's compilation film, Bridges of Sarajevo/Les ponts de Sarajevo (2014, 114 mn.), persists in posing questions about how the past continues to shape the present, and how Sarajevo and its contemporary history still delineates the identity of Europe. 

Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de feu Chrétien-Guillaume Lamoignon-Malesherbes, disposé par Jean-Luc Nyon...

[Vente (Livres). 1797-05-01. Paris]

Temporalité et différance dans la phénoménologie de la donation de Jean-Luc Marion

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Making political films politically?:the film-making practice of Jean-Luc Godard

This thesis attempts to re-examine the work of Jean-Luc Godard and in particular the claims which have been made for it as the starting-point for a revolutionary cinema.This re-examination involves, firstly, a critical summary of the development of Structuralist thinking, from its origins in linguistics, with Saussure, through to its influence on Marxism, with Althusser. It is this `Structural Marxism' which prepared the ground for a view of Godard as a revolutionary film-maker so its influences on film theory in the decade after 1968 is traced in journals such as Cahiers du Cinéma and Screen and in the work of their editors and contributors. Godard's relationship with such theories was a complex one and some of the cross-breeding is revealed in a brief account of his own ideas about his film-making. More important, however is his practice as a committed `political' film-maker between 1968 and 1972 which is analysed in terms of the responses it makes to the cultural opportunities offered in the period after the revolutionary situation of May 1968. The severe problems revealed by that analysis may be partially resolved in Godard's greatest `political' achievement Tout va bien, but a comparative analysis proves that in earlier `a-political' films such as Vivre sa vie, he was creating more meaningful and perhaps even more revolutionary art, whose formal experimentation is more organically linked to its subject and whose ability to communicate ideas far oustrips the later work. In conclusion some indications are suggested of a more fruitful basis for Marxist theories of art than Structural variants, seeking a non-formalist approach in the work of Marx, of Trotsky, of Brecht and Lukacs.

The gift of the ungiven: Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of giveness facing Levinas’ “there is”

Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of giveness constitutes one of the most outstanding attempts to set up a universal theory of the phenomenologically given as a whole within the framework of contemporary philosophical thought. The aim of the present study is to apply the main categories of this phenomenological theory concerning gift to the singular type of phenomenon represented by the pure indeterminate and anonymous being to which Emmanuel Levinas refers by the name of il y a (“there is”) in his early writings (and also subsequently). Therefore, this concerns examining the multiple specific modes of giveness proper to the impersonal “there is” and also its paradoxical relationship both with the donor and with the receiver of such gift in order to show the possibility of a “third way” of phenomenological investigation. This is a way equally distant from the western traditional concept of Being as “stable presence” and from Levinas’ proposal geared to substitute ontology for ethics as “first philosophy”.

Karl-Heinz Arnold / Tina Hascher / Rudolf Messner / Alois Niggli / Jean-Luc Patry / Sibylle Rahm: Empowerment durch Schulpraktika. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2011 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Karl-Heinz Arnold / Tina Hascher / Rudolf Messner / Alois Niggli / Jean-Luc Patry / Sibylle Rahm: Empowerment durch Schulpraktika, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2011 (279 S.; ISBN 978-3-7815-1780-6)

A nervura luminosa do instante: o instante como performance literária na obra de João Gilberto Noll

A partir da leitura do livro Mínimos, Múltiplos e Comuns de João Gilberto Noll, este trabalho busca empreender um estudo sobre as relações entre a escrita do artista e tempo na figura dos instantes ficcionais, observando a questão do microrrelato e da exigência fragmentária (cf.P. Lacoue-Labarthe e Jean-Luc Nancy), na perspectiva do inacabado/unidade, o que projeta uma hipótese de conjunto constelar para a escrita de João Gilberto Noll. Inicialmente realiza-se uma reflexão de alguns temas importantes na fortuna crítica sobre o escritor, com a intenção de saber como estes reverberam na sua escrita para, em seguida, tratar do fragmento e suas perspectivas estéticas de inacabamento e de totalidade, com relação ao tempo e como dessas questões surge a metáfora crítica do instante ficcional. As leituras críticas usadas como operadores nortearam-se a partir das noções de fragmento (romântico), e de Acontecimento, relacionadas ao par conceitual Cronos/Aiôn deleuziano

Para além da Tragédia do Comum. Conflito e produção de subjetividade no capitalismo contemporâneo

A presente tese investiga as dimensões históricas, filosóficas e políticas do conceito de comum, a partir de uma problematização influenciada pelos estudos marxistas heterodoxos e pelo pensamento de Michel Foucault. O percurso teórico inicia com a análise da hipótese da tragédia do comum, veiculado por Garret Hardin em um famoso artigo na Revista Science, em 1968. O desenvolvimento posterior busca compreender tal formulação a partir das análises foucaultianas sobre a arte de governar liberal e ngeoliberal, com ênfase nos conceitos de biopolítica e produção de subjetividade. Esse campo de análise é preenchido por estudos da corrente denominada bioeconomia, que busca entrelaçar a biopolítica com a compreensão das atuais formas de crise e acumulação capitalistas. A partir de uma pesquisa que se direciona para o campo definido como marxismo heterodoxo, busca-se estudar a relação entre o comum e os novos modos de acumulação primitiva, percebendo como o primeiro conceito passa a ocupar progressivamente essa corrente de estudos críticos. Nesse domínio, enfatiza-se a concepção de acumulação primitiva social e de subjetividade, com base em estudos de Karl Marx (Grundrisse), Antonio Negri e Jason Read. O último capítulo é dedicado ao conceito de produção do comum, tendo como ponto de partida o trabalho de Jean-Luc-Nancy e, principalmente, as investigações de Antonio Negri e Michael Hardt. O comum aparece como conceito central para a compreensão da produção biopolítica da riqueza social no capitalismo contemporâneo, e também sua expropriação por novos modos de acumulação. Por outro lado, o comum também emerge como antagonismo ao capital e à dicotomia público-privado, apontando para novas formas de compreender o comunismo.

Cartografias de uma experiência comunitária

Esta tese relata o meu encontro com um grupo de idosos em um projeto denominado Conversas & Memórias, e a experiência comunitária ali produzida. O objetivo central foi analisar de que forma os dispositivos utilizados na intervenção ajudaram na construção dessa experiência. Partindo de um campo de problematização que coloca em questão as possibilidades de vivermos juntos, busquei responder às seguintes perguntas: de que forma a vida coletiva nos contagia e nos constitui? que apostas podemos arriscar que nos permitam afirmar a possibilidade de construirmos experiências comunitárias no mundo de hoje? quais práticas de cuidado de si e de cuidado do outro podemos encontrar (ou inventar) em nossa cultura? como essas práticas podem produzir, como efeito, experiências de vida comunitária? como podemos viver juntos? Foi em torno dessas questões que desenvolvi o trabalho em dois campos distintos, visando à construção, por um lado, de um solo teórico-conceitual, e, por outro, de um plano prático-experimental. Na primeira parte desta tese, apresento os conceitos e intercessores que fundamentam as ideias aqui defendidas. Começo discutindo o processo de subjetivação, em um diálogo com o pensamento de Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon e Baruch Espinosa, e termino apresentando as apostas de Gilles Deleuze e Felix Guattari, Antonio Negri e Michael Hardt, Maurice Blanchot, Giorgio Agamben e Jean-Luc Nancy em uma comunidade por vir. Em seguida, apresento minhas próprias apostas, fundamentadas no diálogo de Michel Foucault com a filosofia antiga sobre as práticas de si e a construção de um novo ethos, desenhado por uma estética da existência. Descrevo, em outro capítulo, o método da pesquisa, partindo de uma discussão sobre a cartografia e as possibilidades que ela ofereceu para que eu pudesse acompanhar processos e habitar o território da pesquisa; discuto, ainda, o conceito de dispositivo e os efeitos que são produzidos ao desembaraçarem-se suas linhas; por fim, descrevo o material que utilizei nas análises da experiência do projeto. Na segunda parte da tese, arrisco-me em um campo prático-experimental, dando movimento aos conceitos discutidos anteriormente e incorporando-os à discussão dos quatro dispositivos que examino aqui. No primeiro, a Roda de Conversação e os efeitos, como o exercício ético e político, que essa prática anuncia. No segundo dispositivo, os Agenciamentos, apresento as poesias, músicas, crônicas, passeios que foram utilizados como disparadores das conversas, analisando os diálogos e as virtualidades produzidos por eles. No dispositivo três, a Experiência Narrativa, descrevo o processo de publicação de um livro com as histórias de alguns participantes do projeto. No quarto dispositivo, a Imagem Revelada, descrevo os efeitos provocados pelas imagens publicadas em um livro de fotografias. O último capítulo retoma a pergunta inicial - como viver junto? -, e oferece algumas pistas sobre as possibilidades de construirmos uma outra forma de sociabilidade nos dias de hoje.

Inside the tent: Community and government in refugee camps

Refugee camps are increasingly managed through a liberal rationality of government similar to that of many industrialized societies, with security mechanisms being used to optimize the life of particular refugee populations. This governmentality has encompassed programmes introduced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to build and empower communities through the spatial technology of the camp. The present article argues that such attempts to ‘govern through community’ have been too easily dismissed or ignored. It therefore examines how such programmes work to produce, manage and conduct refugees through the use of a highly instrumentalized understanding of community in the spatial and statistical management of displaced people in camps. However, community is always both more and less than what is claimed of it, and therefore undermines attempts to use it as a governing tactic. By shifting to a more ontological understanding of community as unavoidable coexistence, inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy, we can see how the scripting of and government through community in camps is continually exceeded, redirected and resisted. Ethnographies of specific camps in Africa and the Middle East enable us both to see how the necessary sociality of being resists its own instrumentalization and to view the camp as a spatial security technology. Such resistance does not necessarily lead to greater security, but it redirects our attention to how community is used to conduct the behaviour of refugees, while also producing counter-conducts that offer greater agency, meaning and mobility to those displaced in camps.