This article stages a confrontation between Jacques Rancière's political philosophy and the figur... more This article stages a confrontation between Jacques Rancière's political philosophy and the figure of the queer, particularly as reconfigured recently by Lee Edelman with his Lacan-inspired notion of the 'sinthomosexual'. Starting by investigating the currency of Rancièrian terms such as the demos, equality, and subjectivation for an articulation of queer politics, the article moves on to argue that Edelman's notion of the queer as a figure constitutively outside politics may be located both outside what Rancière calls 'the police,' and also outside what he calls 'politics' altogether, thus highlighting an optimistic (Rancière) and a pessimistic (Edelman) conception of the queer political subject. The article then considers the fundamental difference between Rancière's and Edelman's conceptual worlds, locating it in the psychoanalytic configuration of the queer subject, before arguing for the necessary though impossible choice queer theory is faced with when considering these two seemingly opposed viewpoints. In his introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet Michael Warner asked: 'what do queers want?' The answer was 'not just sex' (Warner, 1993: vii). Ever since then, if not before, queer theory has sought to branch out from the narrowing confines of sexuality studies and identity politics to embrace the big bad world of minoritarian solidarities, interdisciplinarity, and collective struggles, all of which should also by rights be seen as the fruitful continuation of a much longer tradition of queer activism and politics. It is with this expansive, inclusive thrust that queer theorists have now been called upon, if only by the editors of this volume, to meet the political thought of Jacques Rancière, whose radical articulation of politics, equality, subjectivation, and emancipation speaks loudly to queer ears attuned to the noises of strife and recognition. But the degree to which this meeting will prove b o rd e rla n d s 8 :2
This essay investigates the troubling notion of perversion, first by tracing its emergence, in Fo... more This essay investigates the troubling notion of perversion, first by tracing its emergence, in Foucault’s Lectures on the ‘Abnormal’, as a ‘third term’ between reason and madness that prefigures psychoanalytic ideas on perversion more closely than Foucault’s cherished anti-psychoanalytic stance would allow. Subsequently, psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe’s own genealogical work helps unearth a paradox: it was attempts, such as Foucault’s, to denounce normative assumptions that helped create a system (the DSM) that not only refashions the denounced norms (perversions are now paraphilias) but organises a field of ‘multiple implantations’ no different to the old sexological taxonomies. This strange loop becomes a target for psychoanalytic critiques aiming either at situating perversion as transhistoric human truth (Roudinesco), or at using perversion as the very critical lever with which to undo perversion’s historicisation (Zizek). Perversion becomes either too dissipated into its constituent sexual aberrations to serve as anything other than normative bug-bear; or so reflexively involved in its own theorisation as to be divorced from sexuality altogether. When no-one is any longer a pervert, chances are everyone could be. But the trouble with perversion is that there is always someone assuming the pervert’s role – and it is they who have the last laugh.
thinking. There are also of course many differences. Schopenhauer's assertions that reflectiv... more thinking. There are also of course many differences. Schopenhauer's assertions that reflective consciousness emerges from the thing in itself and his claims that our 'experience' of affection can only be accounted for in physiological terms would presumably have horrified Fichte, and seem in may ways to undermine and subvertjrom within the very spirit of transcendental philosophy. Positing/Hovering: The Early Romantic Reading of Fichte
The aim of this thesis is to present the fundamental philosophical positions of Early German Roma... more The aim of this thesis is to present the fundamental philosophical positions of Early German Romanticism, focusing on the three following writers: J. C. F. Holderlin, Novalis, and F. Schlegel. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of the first-philosophical, or ontological foundations of Romanticism and discusses its appropriation and critique of the work of Fichte, arriving at an elucidation of Romantic ontology as an ontology of differencing and production. The second chapter looks at how epistemology is transformed, in the hands of the Romantics, and due to the attention they paid to language, semiotic theory, and the operations of irony in discourse, into poetology-a theory of knowledge, into a theory of poetic production. In the third chapter a confrontation between the philosophical positions of Romanticism and those of the main currents of German Idealism (Schelling, Hegel) is undertaken; through this confrontation, the essential trait of Romantic thought is arrived at, namely the thought of an incomplete Absolute, as opposed to the absolute as totality in Idealism. The final chapter considers the avenue left open by the notion of the incomplete Absolute, and the Romantics' chief legacy, namely the theory of literature; literature is thus seen as coextensive with philosophy, and analysed under three conceptual categories (the theory of genre, the fragment, criticism) which all betray their provenance from the thought lying at the core of Romanticism: the incomplete Absolute. Finally, in the conclusion a summation of this exposition of romanticism is presented, alongside a brief consideration of the relevance of the Romantic project in contemporary critical/philosophical debates. 5 1794 to 1800. And, to make matters even more limited, I will not be dealing with the traits that the OED defines as "romantic", for the simple reason that, even though there may be ample scope to claim that such traits are in evidence in the literary works of the figures I shall be discussing, I will only concern myself with philosophical and literary-theoretical writing. Thus, when the word "Romanticism" is used, from this point onwards, readers could do well to forget the OED definition altogether, for "Romanticism" in the next two hundred pages or so means something quite different. What, then, is meant, in the context of this thesis, by "Romanticism"? As anticipated by the title, it is the actual task of the thesis to give the full answer to this question. I aim to show what Romanticism, Early German Romanticism, and in particular the philosophy and literary theory of Early German Romanticism "mean". I aim to undertake an exposition of the theory of Early German Romanticism, to present (in a sense which may be complicated later on in the course of the 'presentation') the philosophical and literary-theoretical positions of (Early German) Romanticism. Nevertheless, as an introduction to, and a first exposition of the problem, I propose to circumscribe the limits of "Romanticism" even further, and to demonstrate why it is that "Romanticism" should be a problem, an area, or a field of research worthy of treatment on the level of a PhD thesis (and well beyond it). To begin with, my thesis is concerned primarily with the work of three men, three proper names: Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), and Friedrich Holderlin. "Romanticism" therefore is designated expressly as an umbrella description for what unites the work of all of them, and, as I will have the chance to discuss further, what that Romanticism thus defined pretty much circumscribes the artistic production of the entire 19 th each other in a continuum-which is what I will be doing in what follows. The 'story' I aim to tell, and as I hope to render evident, is not a story based on the unity or the identity of the ideas discussed, but rather on their coextensive ness, their belonging together in a kind of metonymic chain, if you wish, as opposed to a metaphorical unified stratification. In other words, I am not aiming to show that Romanticism, as the umbrella term I am here utilising, is a vertical accumulation of self-same, or metaphorically corresponding, ideas; rather, I propose to view Romanticism as an expansive, 'progressive' (in the quintessentially Romantic sense which I will be treating later) succession of concepts and conceptions. The 'overall' picture, the unity of Romanticism as a whole is something that Romanticism itself does not allow, and I believe that, had I attempted to draw such a unifying, totalising picture and had I not had recourse to the equivocation and resistance to closure that Romanticism always presents itself with (and as), I would have done grave injustice to the insights of all three of these proper names, and also to the continuum, the loose "constellation" they form together. If this appears counter-intuitive, even paradoxical, I would suggest that this appearance would be due to the eccentricity and, at least in some cases, paradoxicality of what constitutes Romanticism. Ultimately, the aim of this thesis is to 'present' Romanticism as precisely such an essentially eccentric enterprise, to demonstrate, in other words, that Romanticism, the philosophical and theoretical Romanticism of Holderlin, Novalis and Schlegel marks a radical departure for philosophy and literary theory. Without wishing to preempt the arguments of the following pages, I ought summarily to indicate where this new departure lies. Once again, it is not here a question of claiming that the radical departure or the eccentric path of Romanticism has not been detected in the past, 10 These two progenitors of Romantic metaphysics are singled out as such by Manfred Frank in his 'Philosophical Foundations of Early Romanticism', in Ameriks & Sturm a, eds. 'The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy' (SUNY, 1995). Frank takes it for granted that Fichte's project is a deeply foundationalist one, but there are growing dissenting voices on that matter among Fichte scholars. See in particular Tom Rockmore's 'Antifoundationalism, Circularity, and the Spirit of Fichte', in Breazeale & Rockmore, eds., 'Fichte: Historical Contexts / Contemporary Controversies', (Humanities Press, 1994). The volume also contains two 'responses' to Rockmore's position, in articles by D. Breazeale, and A. Perrinjaquet. It needs to be noted that Rockmore's antifoundationalist reading of the 'spirit' (as opposed to the foundationalist 'letter') of the Wissenschaflslehre is precisely the reading of the Romantics, Schlegel and Novalis in particular, even though Rockmore makes no reference to them. His radical double reading of a "foundationalist idea of grounded system and an antifoundationalist idea of ungrounded system" (op.cit., p. 110) is then short-circuited by his own insistence that it is a matter of deciding in favour of the antifoundationalist idea, on the dubious grounds of its being at one with contemporary concerns. Without wanting to anticipate too much of the discussion which follows later in this chapter, I wish simply to quote, in response, Schlegel's Athenaum fragment 53: "It is equally fatal for the mind to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to decide to combine the two."
This article aims to present the work of Guillaume Dustan (1965-2005) as exemplary of a contempor... more This article aims to present the work of Guillaume Dustan (1965-2005) as exemplary of a contemporary tendency in French queer writing, a double-faced tendency towards autobiographical writing, on the one hand, and on the other, towards the frank recording of lives consumed by sexual compulsion. My reading of Dustan's ethically and aesthetically challenging texts is influenced by a psychoanalytic understanding of sexual compulsion as stemming from the dictates of the drive, and this informs my presentation of Dustan's 'autofiction' in the first part of the article. In the second part I extend my remarks to Dustan's little-understood pronouncements and provocations concerning a form of sexual politics that finds its basis, perhaps even its 'inspiration', in the dictates of the drive, as well as examining the explosive writerly style that Dustan adopts, which I see as a 'writing of the drive'.
This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend... more This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend of constructionism and interrogating the possibility of queer origins in the work of Jean Genet. In a reading of his novel Querelle de Brest, I seek to demonstrate that queer is located less in the self-assumption of subjectivity and more in the act of
The concept of impersonal narcissism Bersani and Phillips envisage and advocate in 'Intimacies' h... more The concept of impersonal narcissism Bersani and Phillips envisage and advocate in 'Intimacies' has a long history, not least in Bersani's attempt to rethink male homosexuality as 'homo-ness', alongside his even longerlasting project of reconceptualising some of the fundamentals of psychoanalytic thought. Tracing these developments in Bersani's thought, this article seeks to align them with a much-maligned and prone to misuse concept, taken from a very different psychoanalytic vocabulary, namely Lacanian perversion. Elaborating a notion of perversion that can confidently be traced in Lacan's teachings but that, at the same time, veers resolutely away from the facile condemnations of perversion in much 'orthodox' accounts indebted to Lacan, and which have significantly contributed to the all-out rejection of psychoanalysis within the dominant currents of queer theory, I aim to bring Lacan's pervert and Bersani's impersonal narcissist together, rehabilitating the concept of perversion as supremely useful and salutary. Thanks to the alignment between a seemingly-but only superficially-homophobic Lacan, and the core of Bersani's ideas around impersonal narcissism as inseparable from a narrower conception of male homosexuality, the goal of this article is to help us understand the ineluctable relation between the transgression of a sexual norm and the generation of that very norm.
This article discusses Jacques Rancière's theory of literature as centred on an agonistic con... more This article discusses Jacques Rancière's theory of literature as centred on an agonistic concept of literature, where literature is seen as a ‘positive contradiction’. This positive contradiction arises from what Rancière sees as literature's origins in the ‘errant letter’, which is conceived as an intrinsically democratic principle that, for Rancière, also results in the tendency of literature to incarnate the word and to propose an extra-textual truth which would signal the end of literature as democratic errancy. Asking whether it is possible to identify Rancière as ‘taking sides’ in what he sets up as a struggle, the article analyses three examples of…
This article seeks to interrogate the moment of queer theory's ‘birth’ out of French influenc... more This article seeks to interrogate the moment of queer theory's ‘birth’ out of French influences, or what is designated by the umbrella term ‘French Theory’. It specifically points to the operations of transformation and dislocation, subversion and perversion of French theoretical influences at work in two distinctive ‘pairings’ of French ‘progenitor’ and American queer ‘offspring’: Jacques Derrida with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Jacques Lacan with Judith Butler.
Jacques Derrida has perhaps done Jean-Luc Nancy little favour by distilling a lifetime s work in ... more Jacques Derrida has perhaps done Jean-Luc Nancy little favour by distilling a lifetime s work in the shorthand of a title bearing Nancys name after a single, if semantically ambiguous, substantive and thus 'immortalizing him with the honour of a tribute-book and the title of 'philosopher of the touch'. 1 Of course this is not intended to cast aspersions on a rich and rewarding reading which ultimately, and unsurprisingly given Derrida's own philosophical trajectory, can well eschew the reductive 'thematics' that may have been announced in its title. This of course pertains to the characteristically Derridean problem of the title, a problem which Nancy himself has on many occasions approached, not least in the dense analysis of his own book's title undertaken with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe in their very first published work The Title of the Letter. 2 A title can perhaps never avoid the pull of systematization and summation that is its very purpose, much as any reading proposed in a title may never completely avoid being reducible to the themes or concerns announced by (at least) the substantives in the same title, but to do justice to the polyphony in Nancy's work, to the almost forbiddingly wide range of his interests and references, one can do worse than broadening the scope of substantives, attributes, and proper names in one's title. Thus, the reading of Nancy proposed here will unavoidably be focused on the themes of form and syncope-, it even seeks to stake a claim for the notion of form, in the elaboration of what follows, as being as central and 'systematizing' a notion when thinking of Nancy's thought as the notion of touch-but, at the same time, the range of Nancy's work I aim to address, as evidenced in the proper names of the above title, is such that any attempt at a totalizing 'thematics' under the rubrics of form and/or syncope will appear seriously compromised. 3 Despite such provisional guards against the centripetal pull of thematics and systematicity that I think are indispensable when dealing
Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought. By MIRIAM LEONARD. ... more Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought. By MIRIAM LEONARD. Oxford University Press, 2005. x + 264 pp. Hb £45.00. This is a thorough study, perhaps more intended for a readership of classical scholars, of the reception of Greek thought ...
Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe. Edited by ML CLE´ MENT and S. VAN WESEMAEL. Amsterdam, Rodopi. ... more Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe. Edited by ML CLE´ MENT and S. VAN WESEMAEL. Amsterdam, Rodopi. 2007. 405 pp. Pb E80.00. In December 2004, two academics from the University of Amsterdam approached the future participants at the 'World of Houellebecq' ...
This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend... more This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend of constructionism and interrogating the possibility of queer origins in the work of Jean Genet. In a reading of his novel Querelle de Brest, I seek to demonstrate that queer is ...
Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol Nicholas de Villiers Opaci... more Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol Nicholas de Villiers Opacity and the Closet interrogates the viability of the metaphor of "the closet" when applied to three important queer figures in postwar American and French culture: the philosopher Michel Foucault, the literary critic Roland Barthes, and the pop artist Andy Warhol. Nicholas de Villiers proposes a new approach to these cultural icons that accounts for the queerness of their works and public personas. Rather than reading their self-presentations as "closeted," de Villiers suggests that they invent and deploy productive strategies of "opacity" that resist the closet and the confessional discourse associated with it. Deconstructing binaries linked with the closet that have continued to influence both gay and straight receptions of these intellectual and pop celebrities, de Villiers illuminates the philosophical implications of this displacement for queer theory and introduces new ways to think about the space they make for queerness. Using the works of Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol to engage each other while exploring their shared historical context, de Villiers also shows their queer appropriations of the interview, the autobiography, the diary, and the documentary-forms typically linked to truth telling and authenticity. Download Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, ...pdf Read Online Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucaul ...pdf Online Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers ebook PDF download Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers Doc Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers Mobipocket Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers EPub
After Blanchot: literature, criticism, philosophy, 2005
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: Reading Materiality in Blanchot and de Man Hector Kollias Yes, litera... more A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: Reading Materiality in Blanchot and de Man Hector Kollias Yes, literature is unquestionably illegitimate, there is an underlying deceitfulness in it. But certain people have discovered something beyond this: literature is not only illegitimate, it is also ...
This article stages a confrontation between Jacques Rancière's political philosophy and the figur... more This article stages a confrontation between Jacques Rancière's political philosophy and the figure of the queer, particularly as reconfigured recently by Lee Edelman with his Lacan-inspired notion of the 'sinthomosexual'. Starting by investigating the currency of Rancièrian terms such as the demos, equality, and subjectivation for an articulation of queer politics, the article moves on to argue that Edelman's notion of the queer as a figure constitutively outside politics may be located both outside what Rancière calls 'the police,' and also outside what he calls 'politics' altogether, thus highlighting an optimistic (Rancière) and a pessimistic (Edelman) conception of the queer political subject. The article then considers the fundamental difference between Rancière's and Edelman's conceptual worlds, locating it in the psychoanalytic configuration of the queer subject, before arguing for the necessary though impossible choice queer theory is faced with when considering these two seemingly opposed viewpoints. In his introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet Michael Warner asked: 'what do queers want?' The answer was 'not just sex' (Warner, 1993: vii). Ever since then, if not before, queer theory has sought to branch out from the narrowing confines of sexuality studies and identity politics to embrace the big bad world of minoritarian solidarities, interdisciplinarity, and collective struggles, all of which should also by rights be seen as the fruitful continuation of a much longer tradition of queer activism and politics. It is with this expansive, inclusive thrust that queer theorists have now been called upon, if only by the editors of this volume, to meet the political thought of Jacques Rancière, whose radical articulation of politics, equality, subjectivation, and emancipation speaks loudly to queer ears attuned to the noises of strife and recognition. But the degree to which this meeting will prove b o rd e rla n d s 8 :2
This essay investigates the troubling notion of perversion, first by tracing its emergence, in Fo... more This essay investigates the troubling notion of perversion, first by tracing its emergence, in Foucault’s Lectures on the ‘Abnormal’, as a ‘third term’ between reason and madness that prefigures psychoanalytic ideas on perversion more closely than Foucault’s cherished anti-psychoanalytic stance would allow. Subsequently, psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe’s own genealogical work helps unearth a paradox: it was attempts, such as Foucault’s, to denounce normative assumptions that helped create a system (the DSM) that not only refashions the denounced norms (perversions are now paraphilias) but organises a field of ‘multiple implantations’ no different to the old sexological taxonomies. This strange loop becomes a target for psychoanalytic critiques aiming either at situating perversion as transhistoric human truth (Roudinesco), or at using perversion as the very critical lever with which to undo perversion’s historicisation (Zizek). Perversion becomes either too dissipated into its constituent sexual aberrations to serve as anything other than normative bug-bear; or so reflexively involved in its own theorisation as to be divorced from sexuality altogether. When no-one is any longer a pervert, chances are everyone could be. But the trouble with perversion is that there is always someone assuming the pervert’s role – and it is they who have the last laugh.
thinking. There are also of course many differences. Schopenhauer's assertions that reflectiv... more thinking. There are also of course many differences. Schopenhauer's assertions that reflective consciousness emerges from the thing in itself and his claims that our 'experience' of affection can only be accounted for in physiological terms would presumably have horrified Fichte, and seem in may ways to undermine and subvertjrom within the very spirit of transcendental philosophy. Positing/Hovering: The Early Romantic Reading of Fichte
The aim of this thesis is to present the fundamental philosophical positions of Early German Roma... more The aim of this thesis is to present the fundamental philosophical positions of Early German Romanticism, focusing on the three following writers: J. C. F. Holderlin, Novalis, and F. Schlegel. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of the first-philosophical, or ontological foundations of Romanticism and discusses its appropriation and critique of the work of Fichte, arriving at an elucidation of Romantic ontology as an ontology of differencing and production. The second chapter looks at how epistemology is transformed, in the hands of the Romantics, and due to the attention they paid to language, semiotic theory, and the operations of irony in discourse, into poetology-a theory of knowledge, into a theory of poetic production. In the third chapter a confrontation between the philosophical positions of Romanticism and those of the main currents of German Idealism (Schelling, Hegel) is undertaken; through this confrontation, the essential trait of Romantic thought is arrived at, namely the thought of an incomplete Absolute, as opposed to the absolute as totality in Idealism. The final chapter considers the avenue left open by the notion of the incomplete Absolute, and the Romantics' chief legacy, namely the theory of literature; literature is thus seen as coextensive with philosophy, and analysed under three conceptual categories (the theory of genre, the fragment, criticism) which all betray their provenance from the thought lying at the core of Romanticism: the incomplete Absolute. Finally, in the conclusion a summation of this exposition of romanticism is presented, alongside a brief consideration of the relevance of the Romantic project in contemporary critical/philosophical debates. 5 1794 to 1800. And, to make matters even more limited, I will not be dealing with the traits that the OED defines as "romantic", for the simple reason that, even though there may be ample scope to claim that such traits are in evidence in the literary works of the figures I shall be discussing, I will only concern myself with philosophical and literary-theoretical writing. Thus, when the word "Romanticism" is used, from this point onwards, readers could do well to forget the OED definition altogether, for "Romanticism" in the next two hundred pages or so means something quite different. What, then, is meant, in the context of this thesis, by "Romanticism"? As anticipated by the title, it is the actual task of the thesis to give the full answer to this question. I aim to show what Romanticism, Early German Romanticism, and in particular the philosophy and literary theory of Early German Romanticism "mean". I aim to undertake an exposition of the theory of Early German Romanticism, to present (in a sense which may be complicated later on in the course of the 'presentation') the philosophical and literary-theoretical positions of (Early German) Romanticism. Nevertheless, as an introduction to, and a first exposition of the problem, I propose to circumscribe the limits of "Romanticism" even further, and to demonstrate why it is that "Romanticism" should be a problem, an area, or a field of research worthy of treatment on the level of a PhD thesis (and well beyond it). To begin with, my thesis is concerned primarily with the work of three men, three proper names: Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), and Friedrich Holderlin. "Romanticism" therefore is designated expressly as an umbrella description for what unites the work of all of them, and, as I will have the chance to discuss further, what that Romanticism thus defined pretty much circumscribes the artistic production of the entire 19 th each other in a continuum-which is what I will be doing in what follows. The 'story' I aim to tell, and as I hope to render evident, is not a story based on the unity or the identity of the ideas discussed, but rather on their coextensive ness, their belonging together in a kind of metonymic chain, if you wish, as opposed to a metaphorical unified stratification. In other words, I am not aiming to show that Romanticism, as the umbrella term I am here utilising, is a vertical accumulation of self-same, or metaphorically corresponding, ideas; rather, I propose to view Romanticism as an expansive, 'progressive' (in the quintessentially Romantic sense which I will be treating later) succession of concepts and conceptions. The 'overall' picture, the unity of Romanticism as a whole is something that Romanticism itself does not allow, and I believe that, had I attempted to draw such a unifying, totalising picture and had I not had recourse to the equivocation and resistance to closure that Romanticism always presents itself with (and as), I would have done grave injustice to the insights of all three of these proper names, and also to the continuum, the loose "constellation" they form together. If this appears counter-intuitive, even paradoxical, I would suggest that this appearance would be due to the eccentricity and, at least in some cases, paradoxicality of what constitutes Romanticism. Ultimately, the aim of this thesis is to 'present' Romanticism as precisely such an essentially eccentric enterprise, to demonstrate, in other words, that Romanticism, the philosophical and theoretical Romanticism of Holderlin, Novalis and Schlegel marks a radical departure for philosophy and literary theory. Without wishing to preempt the arguments of the following pages, I ought summarily to indicate where this new departure lies. Once again, it is not here a question of claiming that the radical departure or the eccentric path of Romanticism has not been detected in the past, 10 These two progenitors of Romantic metaphysics are singled out as such by Manfred Frank in his 'Philosophical Foundations of Early Romanticism', in Ameriks & Sturm a, eds. 'The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy' (SUNY, 1995). Frank takes it for granted that Fichte's project is a deeply foundationalist one, but there are growing dissenting voices on that matter among Fichte scholars. See in particular Tom Rockmore's 'Antifoundationalism, Circularity, and the Spirit of Fichte', in Breazeale & Rockmore, eds., 'Fichte: Historical Contexts / Contemporary Controversies', (Humanities Press, 1994). The volume also contains two 'responses' to Rockmore's position, in articles by D. Breazeale, and A. Perrinjaquet. It needs to be noted that Rockmore's antifoundationalist reading of the 'spirit' (as opposed to the foundationalist 'letter') of the Wissenschaflslehre is precisely the reading of the Romantics, Schlegel and Novalis in particular, even though Rockmore makes no reference to them. His radical double reading of a "foundationalist idea of grounded system and an antifoundationalist idea of ungrounded system" (op.cit., p. 110) is then short-circuited by his own insistence that it is a matter of deciding in favour of the antifoundationalist idea, on the dubious grounds of its being at one with contemporary concerns. Without wanting to anticipate too much of the discussion which follows later in this chapter, I wish simply to quote, in response, Schlegel's Athenaum fragment 53: "It is equally fatal for the mind to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to decide to combine the two."
This article aims to present the work of Guillaume Dustan (1965-2005) as exemplary of a contempor... more This article aims to present the work of Guillaume Dustan (1965-2005) as exemplary of a contemporary tendency in French queer writing, a double-faced tendency towards autobiographical writing, on the one hand, and on the other, towards the frank recording of lives consumed by sexual compulsion. My reading of Dustan's ethically and aesthetically challenging texts is influenced by a psychoanalytic understanding of sexual compulsion as stemming from the dictates of the drive, and this informs my presentation of Dustan's 'autofiction' in the first part of the article. In the second part I extend my remarks to Dustan's little-understood pronouncements and provocations concerning a form of sexual politics that finds its basis, perhaps even its 'inspiration', in the dictates of the drive, as well as examining the explosive writerly style that Dustan adopts, which I see as a 'writing of the drive'.
This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend... more This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend of constructionism and interrogating the possibility of queer origins in the work of Jean Genet. In a reading of his novel Querelle de Brest, I seek to demonstrate that queer is located less in the self-assumption of subjectivity and more in the act of
The concept of impersonal narcissism Bersani and Phillips envisage and advocate in 'Intimacies' h... more The concept of impersonal narcissism Bersani and Phillips envisage and advocate in 'Intimacies' has a long history, not least in Bersani's attempt to rethink male homosexuality as 'homo-ness', alongside his even longerlasting project of reconceptualising some of the fundamentals of psychoanalytic thought. Tracing these developments in Bersani's thought, this article seeks to align them with a much-maligned and prone to misuse concept, taken from a very different psychoanalytic vocabulary, namely Lacanian perversion. Elaborating a notion of perversion that can confidently be traced in Lacan's teachings but that, at the same time, veers resolutely away from the facile condemnations of perversion in much 'orthodox' accounts indebted to Lacan, and which have significantly contributed to the all-out rejection of psychoanalysis within the dominant currents of queer theory, I aim to bring Lacan's pervert and Bersani's impersonal narcissist together, rehabilitating the concept of perversion as supremely useful and salutary. Thanks to the alignment between a seemingly-but only superficially-homophobic Lacan, and the core of Bersani's ideas around impersonal narcissism as inseparable from a narrower conception of male homosexuality, the goal of this article is to help us understand the ineluctable relation between the transgression of a sexual norm and the generation of that very norm.
This article discusses Jacques Rancière's theory of literature as centred on an agonistic con... more This article discusses Jacques Rancière's theory of literature as centred on an agonistic concept of literature, where literature is seen as a ‘positive contradiction’. This positive contradiction arises from what Rancière sees as literature's origins in the ‘errant letter’, which is conceived as an intrinsically democratic principle that, for Rancière, also results in the tendency of literature to incarnate the word and to propose an extra-textual truth which would signal the end of literature as democratic errancy. Asking whether it is possible to identify Rancière as ‘taking sides’ in what he sets up as a struggle, the article analyses three examples of…
This article seeks to interrogate the moment of queer theory's ‘birth’ out of French influenc... more This article seeks to interrogate the moment of queer theory's ‘birth’ out of French influences, or what is designated by the umbrella term ‘French Theory’. It specifically points to the operations of transformation and dislocation, subversion and perversion of French theoretical influences at work in two distinctive ‘pairings’ of French ‘progenitor’ and American queer ‘offspring’: Jacques Derrida with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Jacques Lacan with Judith Butler.
Jacques Derrida has perhaps done Jean-Luc Nancy little favour by distilling a lifetime s work in ... more Jacques Derrida has perhaps done Jean-Luc Nancy little favour by distilling a lifetime s work in the shorthand of a title bearing Nancys name after a single, if semantically ambiguous, substantive and thus 'immortalizing him with the honour of a tribute-book and the title of 'philosopher of the touch'. 1 Of course this is not intended to cast aspersions on a rich and rewarding reading which ultimately, and unsurprisingly given Derrida's own philosophical trajectory, can well eschew the reductive 'thematics' that may have been announced in its title. This of course pertains to the characteristically Derridean problem of the title, a problem which Nancy himself has on many occasions approached, not least in the dense analysis of his own book's title undertaken with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe in their very first published work The Title of the Letter. 2 A title can perhaps never avoid the pull of systematization and summation that is its very purpose, much as any reading proposed in a title may never completely avoid being reducible to the themes or concerns announced by (at least) the substantives in the same title, but to do justice to the polyphony in Nancy's work, to the almost forbiddingly wide range of his interests and references, one can do worse than broadening the scope of substantives, attributes, and proper names in one's title. Thus, the reading of Nancy proposed here will unavoidably be focused on the themes of form and syncope-, it even seeks to stake a claim for the notion of form, in the elaboration of what follows, as being as central and 'systematizing' a notion when thinking of Nancy's thought as the notion of touch-but, at the same time, the range of Nancy's work I aim to address, as evidenced in the proper names of the above title, is such that any attempt at a totalizing 'thematics' under the rubrics of form and/or syncope will appear seriously compromised. 3 Despite such provisional guards against the centripetal pull of thematics and systematicity that I think are indispensable when dealing
Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought. By MIRIAM LEONARD. ... more Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought. By MIRIAM LEONARD. Oxford University Press, 2005. x + 264 pp. Hb £45.00. This is a thorough study, perhaps more intended for a readership of classical scholars, of the reception of Greek thought ...
Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe. Edited by ML CLE´ MENT and S. VAN WESEMAEL. Amsterdam, Rodopi. ... more Michel Houellebecq sous la loupe. Edited by ML CLE´ MENT and S. VAN WESEMAEL. Amsterdam, Rodopi. 2007. 405 pp. Pb E80.00. In December 2004, two academics from the University of Amsterdam approached the future participants at the 'World of Houellebecq' ...
This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend... more This article engages with debates in queer theory by attempting to look beyond the dominant trend of constructionism and interrogating the possibility of queer origins in the work of Jean Genet. In a reading of his novel Querelle de Brest, I seek to demonstrate that queer is ...
Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol Nicholas de Villiers Opaci... more Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol Nicholas de Villiers Opacity and the Closet interrogates the viability of the metaphor of "the closet" when applied to three important queer figures in postwar American and French culture: the philosopher Michel Foucault, the literary critic Roland Barthes, and the pop artist Andy Warhol. Nicholas de Villiers proposes a new approach to these cultural icons that accounts for the queerness of their works and public personas. Rather than reading their self-presentations as "closeted," de Villiers suggests that they invent and deploy productive strategies of "opacity" that resist the closet and the confessional discourse associated with it. Deconstructing binaries linked with the closet that have continued to influence both gay and straight receptions of these intellectual and pop celebrities, de Villiers illuminates the philosophical implications of this displacement for queer theory and introduces new ways to think about the space they make for queerness. Using the works of Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol to engage each other while exploring their shared historical context, de Villiers also shows their queer appropriations of the interview, the autobiography, the diary, and the documentary-forms typically linked to truth telling and authenticity. Download Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, ...pdf Read Online Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucaul ...pdf Online Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers ebook PDF download Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers Doc Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers Mobipocket Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol by Nicholas de Villiers EPub
After Blanchot: literature, criticism, philosophy, 2005
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: Reading Materiality in Blanchot and de Man Hector Kollias Yes, litera... more A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: Reading Materiality in Blanchot and de Man Hector Kollias Yes, literature is unquestionably illegitimate, there is an underlying deceitfulness in it. But certain people have discovered something beyond this: literature is not only illegitimate, it is also ...
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