Book chapters by Rodolfo Piskorski
published in the book
Tiere Texte Transformationen: Kritische Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studi... more published in the book
Tiere Texte Transformationen: Kritische Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies
edited by
Reingard Spannring; Reinhard Heuberger; Gabriela Kompatscher; Andreas Oberprantacher; Karin Schachinger; Alejandro Boucabeille
Transcript Verlag, 2015, pp. 245-262
Articles by Rodolfo Piskorski
O filme de Darren Aronofsky, A Fonte da Vida (The Fountain, 2006), se oferece a uma leitura produ... more O filme de Darren Aronofsky, A Fonte da Vida (The Fountain, 2006), se oferece a uma leitura produtiva das formas em que discursos de opressão se interseccionam ao serem codificados cinemática e/ou ideologicamente. Este artigo analisa as diferenças de gênero, espécie e raça/etnia no filme e o modo em que são constitutivamente articuladas para possibilitar a "imanência" do Outro em cada um desses discursos, produzindo assim o sujeito "transcendental". Parto de uma compreensão filosófica do papel essencial da diferença de espécie (e do privilégio do status do humano) na constituição interseccional de outros vetores de diferença, como o gênero, o sexo, a raça e a etnia. Articulo, enfim, esse modo amplo de abordagem interseccional com uma discussão da relação com a morte que é supostamente exclusivamente humana e que permite que a humanidade seja construída como oposta à animalidade.
It is well-known by now that Derrida’s book Of Grammatology turned out to bear an ironic title, i... more It is well-known by now that Derrida’s book Of Grammatology turned out to bear an ironic title, insofar as it develops very little what a grammatology could be. Rather than inaugurating the science of this arche-writing, Derrida concludes that such a thing would be impossible, for a variety of reasons. I’m interested, however, in the consequences of arche-writing for both animals and literature. A careful reading of Derrida can demonstrate that he has always been a patient thinker of the status of animality even before his more openly ›animalist‹ late texts. Derrida himself states in his lecture »But as for me, who am I (following)?« that ›the theme of the animality of writing‹ had always been one of his main concerns (cf. Derrida 2008). Therefore, can the animality of writing make possible a Derridean thinking of the animal alongside that of writing? Or, in other words, can his work on arche-writing be read as a thesis of an arche-animality? If writing as a technique of embodiment reverberates with animalised meaning, what would a literary theory look like that focused on the arche-animality that makes possible the bodily signs of texts? A literary theory attentive to the animality of writing could no longer determine that only some texts are zoopoetic – animality would be a condition of textuality. But, on the other hand, a radical thinking of the animality of writing beyond the metaphysics of body and soul threatens to turn signs into mere things, representing nothing. My main argument is that most of what has come to be known as Literary Animal Studies performs in its methods precisely the opposite of what it aims to do with its object. And this enmeshing of method and object is precisely what I argue that an animalistic theory of literature provides. I hope to show that a dismissal of literary form is itself a speciesist procedure. But more than that, and as some sort of proof, I shall argue that we inherit signification itself – that is, the push into ›reality‹ effected by form – from animality, to the extent that to overlook the procedure of signification is to miss what it means to be an animal, either diminishing it to a Thing, or neutralising the very discourse of species that produces the difference between ›the human‹ and ›the animal‹. I start with a review of an array of position papers by literary scholars defining what they see as Literary Animal Studies, highlighting where I believe they fall short and where they point towards an animalistic understanding of signification. Following that, I offer my approach to Literary Animal Studies by grounding it on a theoretical discussion of the interrelatedness of textuality and animality – which results in what I name a zoogrammatology. Beyond that, however, I suggest that zoogrammatology might be in fact impossible, an impossibility that I hope demonstrates how complex the issue of animality can be for literary scholars and philosophers. The productive critical struggle resulting from zoogrammatology is then briefly illustrated with a reading of Ted Hughes’ The Though-Fox which focuses on the graphemic technique employed by the poem to mimic a fox’s footprints, with consequences to the poetic project of representing animality.
This article conceptually explores the theoretical problems regarding poetry in
its relationship ... more This article conceptually explores the theoretical problems regarding poetry in
its relationship to prose, writing, and voice as a way of theorizing wordless vocal
music. Firstly, possible definitions of poetry are discussed, alongside other troublesome
dichotomies (speech/writing, song/speech, human/animal). Wordless
vocal music is put forth as a privileged site for thinking the relationship among
voice, language, music, and the body. The use of wordless singing is analyzed
in two pieces regarding the concepts of voice, language, meanings, and the
body, both based on very different poems: La Mort d’Ophélie, a song for voice
and piano, by Hector Berlioz (1842), and Flos Campi, for solo viola, choir, and
orchestra, by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1925). Finally, some conclusions emerge
regarding the unique standing of wordless singing in connection to the ambiguous
role of the voice in philosophy of language and theory of the poem.
Anuário de Literatura, Jan 1, 2010
Este artigo lê A Tempestade de Shakespeare como peça-chave de uma genealogia e de uma desconstruç... more Este artigo lê A Tempestade de Shakespeare como peça-chave de uma genealogia e de uma desconstrução pós-humanista do humanismo da Alta Idade Moderna (séc. XVI-XVIII) e da dicotomia humano/animal, tanto por estar historicamente situada entre a Renascença e a Modernidade, quanto por dramatizar o próprio processo de produção do humanismo (e do humano em oposição ao animal). Assim, a “peça” ilusionista que Prospero monta na ilha para convencer seus conterrâneos do seu direito legítimo ao trono pode ser vista como a encenação necessária para se produzir o humano de acordo com os novos valores modernos que vêem a arte como ferramenta para o poder e o conhecimento. Também é analisada a importância da inauguração da divisão ontológica humano/animal para a encenação de Prospero, através da qual ele pode ativar a máquina antropológica, como a chama Agamben, e fabricar a civilidade humana moderna.
A literatura se encontra endividada a uma presença animal (definida como o não linguístico por ex... more A literatura se encontra endividada a uma presença animal (definida como o não linguístico por excelência com o qual a linguagem tem que se relacionar) que ela mesma conjura. Lendo o conto “A quinta história”, de Clarice Lispector, este trabalho projeta a importância da animalidade para qualquer processo de significação.
Journal for Critical Animals Studies, 2012
Humanimalia, 2013
Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain presents itself to a productive reading into the ways i... more Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain presents itself to a productive reading into the ways in which intersectioning discourses of oppression are coded into film and operated on as ideologies. In the plot, three male explorers in different time eras penetrate the Other (whether Outer Space, Latin America or the Animal) in order to “save” a woman from death, although the woman in question seems to be in her own quest for transcendence, quite apart from her savior. If although an intersectional approach to oppression looks for the subject positionings which are more vulnerable to multiple forms of injustice, the narrative produced around and by the privileged middle-class white characters in The Fountain serve to expose another fruitful path for Intersectional Theory: an analysis of the ways in which even privileged subject positions are constructed in order to constitute and make possible a wide range of integrated discourses of difference. This article will look on the differences of gender, species, and race/ethnicity in the film, and on how they are constitutively articulated in order to enable the “immanence” of the Other in each of these discourses of oppression in order to produce the “transcendent” Subject. I will set out from an understanding, shared by Deckha and put into pratice by Wolfe, of the essential role of the species difference (and the privilege of the human status) in the intersectional constitution of other vectors of difference, such as gender, sex, race, ethnicity, and ability. I will attempt to articulate this broad form of intersectional approach with a discussion of the supposedly exclusively human relationship with death (as upheld by Hegel and Heidegger, and critiqued by posthumanists such as Derrida and Calarco) which permits the characters in The Fountain to construct humanity as opposed to animality. I will also try to merge Intersectionality with arguments from the Ecofeminist critique, whose proponents, such as Adams, also seem to stress the importance of incorporating species into a discussion of the manifestations of multiple forms of oppression. As long as The Fountain wants to be a narrative concerning differently-gendered stances before death, an intersectional, posthumanist, ecofeminist deconstruction of this film can show how the discourse of gender may function as to deflect attention from (and to produce) other forms of difference.
Papers by Rodolfo Piskorski
Intersectional Theory emerged in the field of Law as an attempt to understand oppression and inju... more Intersectional Theory emerged in the field of Law as an attempt to understand oppression and injustice that did not work according to stable racial and/or gender identities (Grillo 18). Its focus on the intersecting nature of sources of oppression sought to address the problem of policy making, which, by adhering to identity politics, did not reach the individuals who were most in need of assistance — exactly those who were vulnerable to multiple forms of injustice and who did not register in policy makers’ grid of stable identities. If policies directed towards black populations missed the vicissitudes of living as a black woman, women’s politics sometimes overlooked women who also had to live with the marking of race. Despite the radical changes in practical governmental practices requested by Intersectional Theory, it has been embraced and absorbed as a staple tool in critical theory and feminist criticism (Deckha 249)
Institute for Critical Animal Studies, 2012
Lexington Books, Nov 27, 2017
Word and Text - A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 2021
In '"But as for me, who am I (following)?"', the second section of The Animal That Therefore I Am... more In '"But as for me, who am I (following)?"', the second section of The Animal That Therefore I Am, Jacques Derrida contextualises his interest in a certain passage in Plato's Phaedrus as a systematic interest in what he calls 'the animality of writing': What is terrible about writing, Socrates says, is the fact that, like painting (zōgraphia), the things it engenders, although similar to living things, do not respond. No matter what questions one asks them, writings remain silent, keeping a most majestic silence or else always replying in the same terms, which means not replying. 1
Humanimalia, 2013
The narrative produced around and by the characters in Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain ... more The narrative produced around and by the characters in Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film The Fountain serves to expose a fruitful path for Intersectional Theory other than the fight for social justice in public policy: an analysis of the ways in which even privileged subject positions are constructed in order to constitute a wide range of integrated discourses of difference. I set out from an understanding of the essential role of the species difference (and the privilege of the human status) in the intersectional constitution of other vectors of difference, such as gender, sex, race, ethnicity, and ability. I attempt to articulate this broad form of intersectional approach with a discussion of the supposedly exclusively human relationship with death which permits the characters in The Fountain to construct humanity as opposed to animality. As long as The Fountainwants to be a narrative concerning differently-gendered stances before death, an intersectional, posthumanist deconstruction o...
In Of Grammatology, Derrida deconstructs the ideal/material dichotomy—especially in the speech/wr... more In Of Grammatology, Derrida deconstructs the ideal/material dichotomy—especially in the speech/writing distinction—thereby locating a differential source to the distinction itself, which he calls arche-writing. Following his interest in “paleonymy,” the author proposes the paleonym arche-animality to understand animality in texts and the term zoogrammatology for a reading of zoopoetics, further arguing that zoopoetics must be approached with an eye toward paleonymy. Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark tells of the passage from nature to culture. Rather than a stage in such a journey, the animal is revealed as an arche-animal, an articulating supplement preceding and making possible the differentiation between evolutionary stages. Piskorski believes arche-animality is located in the poetics of light and dark prefigured in the title and in the novel’s concern with temporality and mortality.
Derrida and Textual Animality: For a Zoogrammatology of Literature analyses what has come to be k... more Derrida and Textual Animality: For a Zoogrammatology of Literature analyses what has come to be known, in the Humanities, as ‘the question of the animal’, in relation to literary texts. Rodolfo Piskorski intervenes in the current debate regarding the non-human and its representation in literature, resisting popular materialist methodological approaches in the field by revisiting and revitalising the post-structuralist thought of Derrida and the ‘linguistic turn’. The book focuses on Derrida’s early work in order to frame deconstructive approaches to literature as necessary for a theory and practice of literary criticism that addresses the question of the animal, arguing that texts are like animals, and animals are like texts. While Derrida’s late writings have been embraced by animal studies scholars due to its overt focus on animality, ethics, and the non-human, Piskorski demonstrates the additional value of these early Derridean texts for the field of literary animal studies by proposing detailed zoogrammatological readings of texts by Freud, Clarice Lispector, Ted Hughes, and Darren Aronofsky, while in dialogue with thinkers such as Butler, Kristeva, Genette, Deleuze and Guattari, and Attridge
DAPesquisa, 2018
This article conceptually explores the theoretical problems regarding poetry in its relationship ... more This article conceptually explores the theoretical problems regarding poetry in its relationship to prose, writing, and voice as a way of theorizing wordless vocal music. Firstly, possible definitions of poetry are discussed, alongside other troublesome dichotomies (speech/writing, song/speech, human/animal). Wordless vocal music is put forth as a privileged site for thinking the relationship among voice, language, music, and the body. The use of wordless singing is analyzed in two pieces regarding the concepts of voice, language, meanings, and the body, both based on very different poems: La Mort d'Ophélie, a song for voice and piano, by Hector Berlioz (1842), and Flos Campi, for solo viola, choir, and orchestra, by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1925). Finally, some conclusions emerge regarding the unique standing of wordless singing in connection to the ambiguous role of the voice in philosophy of language and theory of the poem.
Kritische Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies
Piskorski situates the common analytical strategy in Literary Animal Studies of foregrounding ani... more Piskorski situates the common analytical strategy in Literary Animal Studies of foregrounding animal embodiment in J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, underscoring such a strategy’s inadvertent admission of the constitutive powers of language in literature’s attempt to grapple with embodiment. Next, he discusses in more detail the co-implicated character of language and materiality and offers a critique of some interventions in Animal Studies and their reliance on a thinking of the body. The discussion then focuses on Derrida by revisiting his early writings on Husserl where he exposes the similarities between language and animality, and concludes by discussing how Derrida’s deconstruction of the linguistic sign and introduction of the trace opens a space for thinking the animal differently.
Journal of Literary Theory, 2015
It is well-known by now that Derrida's book Of Grammatology turned out to bear an ironic title, i... more It is well-known by now that Derrida's book Of Grammatology turned out to bear an ironic title, insofar as it develops very little what a grammatology could be. Rather than inaugurating the science of this arche-writing, Derrida concludes that such a thing would be impossible, for a variety of reasons. I'm interested, however, in the consequences of arche-writing for both animals and literature. A careful reading of Derrida can demonstrate that he has always been a patient thinker of the status of animality even before his more openly ›animalist‹ late texts. Derrida himself states in his lecture »But as for me, who am I (following)?« that ›the theme of the animality of writing‹ had always been one of his main concerns (cf. Derrida 2008). Therefore, can the animality of writing make possible a Derridean thinking of the animal alongside that of writing? Or, in other words, can his work on arche-writing be read as a thesis of an arche-animality? If writing as a technique of embodiment reverberates with animalised meaning, what would a literary theory look like that focused on the arche-animality that makes possible the bodily signs of texts? A literary theory attentive to the animality of writing could no longer determine that only some texts are zoopoeticanimality would be a condition of textuality. But, on the other hand, a radical thinking of the animality of writing beyond the metaphysics of body and soul threatens to turn signs into mere things, representing nothing. My main argument is that most of what has come to be known as Literary Animal Studies performs in its methods precisely the opposite of what it aims to do with its object. And this enmeshing of method and object is precisely what I argue that an animalistic theory of literature provides. I hope to show that a dismissal of literary form is itself a speciesist procedure. But more than that, and as some sort of proof, I shall argue that we inherit signification itselfthat is, the push into ›reality‹ effected by formfrom animality, to the extent that to overlook the procedure of signification is to miss what it means to be an animal, either diminishing it to a Thing, or neutralising the very discourse of species that produces the difference between ›the human‹ and ›the animal‹. I start with a review of an array of position papers by literary scholars defining what they see as Literary Animal Studies, highlighting where I believe they fall short and where they point
Revista Estudos Feministas, 2013
O filme de Darren Aronofsky, A Fonte da Vida (The Fountain, 2006), se oferece a uma leitura produ... more O filme de Darren Aronofsky, A Fonte da Vida (The Fountain, 2006), se oferece a uma leitura produtiva das formas em que discursos de opressão se interseccionam ao serem codificados cinemática e/ou ideologicamente. Este artigo analisa as diferenças de gênero, espécie e raça/etnia no filme e o modo em que são constitutivamente articuladas para possibilitar a "imanência" do Outro em cada um desses discursos, produzindo assim o sujeito "transcendental". Parto de uma compreensão filosófica do papel essencial da diferença de espécie (e do privilégio do status do humano) na constituição interseccional de outros vetores de diferença, como o gênero, o sexo, a raça e a etnia. Articulo, enfim, esse modo amplo de abordagem interseccional com uma discussão da relação com a morte que é supostamente exclusivamente humana e que permite que a humanidade seja construída como oposta à animalidade.
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Book chapters by Rodolfo Piskorski
Tiere Texte Transformationen: Kritische Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies
edited by
Reingard Spannring; Reinhard Heuberger; Gabriela Kompatscher; Andreas Oberprantacher; Karin Schachinger; Alejandro Boucabeille
Transcript Verlag, 2015, pp. 245-262
Articles by Rodolfo Piskorski
its relationship to prose, writing, and voice as a way of theorizing wordless vocal
music. Firstly, possible definitions of poetry are discussed, alongside other troublesome
dichotomies (speech/writing, song/speech, human/animal). Wordless
vocal music is put forth as a privileged site for thinking the relationship among
voice, language, music, and the body. The use of wordless singing is analyzed
in two pieces regarding the concepts of voice, language, meanings, and the
body, both based on very different poems: La Mort d’Ophélie, a song for voice
and piano, by Hector Berlioz (1842), and Flos Campi, for solo viola, choir, and
orchestra, by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1925). Finally, some conclusions emerge
regarding the unique standing of wordless singing in connection to the ambiguous
role of the voice in philosophy of language and theory of the poem.
Papers by Rodolfo Piskorski
Tiere Texte Transformationen: Kritische Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies
edited by
Reingard Spannring; Reinhard Heuberger; Gabriela Kompatscher; Andreas Oberprantacher; Karin Schachinger; Alejandro Boucabeille
Transcript Verlag, 2015, pp. 245-262
its relationship to prose, writing, and voice as a way of theorizing wordless vocal
music. Firstly, possible definitions of poetry are discussed, alongside other troublesome
dichotomies (speech/writing, song/speech, human/animal). Wordless
vocal music is put forth as a privileged site for thinking the relationship among
voice, language, music, and the body. The use of wordless singing is analyzed
in two pieces regarding the concepts of voice, language, meanings, and the
body, both based on very different poems: La Mort d’Ophélie, a song for voice
and piano, by Hector Berlioz (1842), and Flos Campi, for solo viola, choir, and
orchestra, by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1925). Finally, some conclusions emerge
regarding the unique standing of wordless singing in connection to the ambiguous
role of the voice in philosophy of language and theory of the poem.
In Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, a ballerina battles with insanity when caught between two narratives of female transformation – that of a young girl into a swan in the libretto of Tchaikovsky’s ballet and her (forced) psychosexual development from imaginary into symbolic stages in Lacanian psychoanalysis. What interests me in the film, though, is the extent to which both narratives convey fictionality to each other and allow for a queer reading of psychoanalysis. The confusion in Nina’s mind between the fiction of the ballet plot and the supposed realness of sexual development functions to uncover the fictional status of phallic psychic “reality”. While everyone around her speaks of swans only metaphorically and fictionally, her body refuses to believe the “official” version of psychosexual development (and the rules governing literary metaphors) and transforms (literally) in a swan, instead of in a woman. The foregrounding of “real” animality against mere fairytale symbolism also underscores the importance of the transparent belief in the ways meanings are produced, such as in allegorical symbolism. I will argue that the film portrays the possibility of politicizing psychoanalytic gender difference (i.e. of queering it) by means of a radical politicization of reading/writing and the irresolution ingrained in all textuality, especially via her becoming-animal.
It is possible to conceive of the theoretical problem of the animal as what draws the fine line between philosophy and literature, if one foregrounds the crucial role that animality plays in philosophical and literary primal scenes. From the philosophical definition of the human (and of politics) as a relationship to the animal, and moving on to the problematics of the sign which opposes an intelligible element to its sensible expression – as a human soul to an animal body – one constantly revisits animality as a frontier issue which offers the possibility of questioning the fields of philosophy and literature. Not only can one think the distinction between philosophy and literature as a human/animal difference – approaching the possibility of literature’s being an animalized philosophy – but the animal also permits thinking through many issues in contemporary critical theory which bridge the literary and the philosophical, such as biopolitics, the crisis in humanism, sexual difference, the definition of technology, the question of disability, an ethics of vulnerability, and both animal and human rights.