Book Chapters by Emma Ingala
Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism, G. Rae and C. Ó Fathaigh (eds.), 2025
Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity-the notion that gender is the result of a series ... more Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity-the notion that gender is the result of a series of performative acts collectively enacted and sustained in time-has long garnered diametrically opposed interpretations. 1 One reading maintains that Butler's theory implies a voluntarism wherein "one w[akes] in the morning, peruse[s] the closet or some more open space for the gender of choice, don[s] that gender for the day, and then restore[s] the garment to its place at night," 2 while another accuses it of determinism because it reduces the subject to an effect of social norms, power relations, and hegemonic discourses that leave no space for free action, choice, autonomy, and subjective agency. 3 Butler has clarified that they 4 reject both characterizations: performativity is neither the act of a self-determined and unhindered individual inventing itself at will nor the mechanic enactment of instructions and norms prescribed by power that reduces subjects to purely passive marionettes with no agency whatsoever. Instead, Butler aims to produce and preserve a "general theory of agency" 5 by rethinking what this agency is, how it works, and what possibilities it comprises. This, however, depends upon a radical critique of a number of commonly held assumptions, including that (1) agency requires a pregiven agent or subject; (2) agency requires a subject that is self-determining, autonomous, sovereign, independent, and/or unencumbered from its history and sociopolitical contexts; (3) agency is an inherent or innate property or attribute of the subject; (4) agency must be independent of any power whatsoever and rely on nothing but the power of the subject itself; and (5) agency can only be thought of within the logic of binary oppositions, such as between voluntarism, free will, or autonomy, on the one hand, and determinism on the other, or between freedom and power, or between an inner life and an external sociopolitical world. Against these assumptions, Butler defends that (1) the subject is not ontologically prior, but a result of its cultural and sociopolitical context in which it is always already embedded; (2) this context conditions but does not determine the subject's actions, and this
Deleuze, Guattari, and the Problem of Transdisciplinarity, 2020
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were ... more third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, 2021
The right of Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala to be identified as the authors of the editorial material,... more The right of Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics ( New York: Routledge, 2021).
Introdution to the volume "Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism" (New York:... more Introdution to the volume "Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism" (New York: Routledge, 2021).
Rethinking Vulnerability and Exclusion (eds. Blanca Rodríguez López, Nuria Sánchez Madrid, Adriana Zaharijevic), 2021
Twentieth-century French philosophy, and in particular poststructuralism, has often been accused ... more Twentieth-century French philosophy, and in particular poststructuralism, has often been accused of being pervaded, if not ultimately seduced, by the motif of violence, to the extent of promoting an ontologization of violence. 1 Admittedly, a number of thinkers have not only reflected on violence, but also defended, albeit in a very specific context and with a very particular aim, the recourse to violence. 2 Gilles Deleuze, for example, articulated a noetics-a theory of what it means to think-of violence in his book Difference and Repetition, where he maintained that
'Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 1-11.
Introductory chapter to the edited volume 'Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspecti... more Introductory chapter to the edited volume 'Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 1-11.
The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 1-9.
Introduction to the edited volume 'The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics,... more Introduction to the edited volume 'The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics, edited by Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (New York: Routledge, 2019).
The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (eds. Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala), 2019
In H. Somers-Hall, J. A. Bell, J. Williams (eds.), A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
In Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala (eds.), Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives, New York, Routledge, 2018
En Gérard Lebrun philosophe. Dir. Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Vinicius de Figueiredo, Nuria Sánchez Mad... more En Gérard Lebrun philosophe. Dir. Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Vinicius de Figueiredo, Nuria Sánchez Madrid (Beauchesne)
En José Luis Pardo y Marco Díaz Marsá (eds.), Foucault y la cuestión del derecho (Escolar y Mayo)
En J. L. Villacañas y C. Ruiz Sanjuán (eds.), Populismo versus Republicanismo. Genealogía, historia, crítica, Biblioteca Nueva, 2018
Una interpretación muy extendida, casi mayoritaria --especialmente en la literatura anglosajona-,... more Una interpretación muy extendida, casi mayoritaria --especialmente en la literatura anglosajona-, del pensamiento de Gilles Deleuze y del de Jacques Lacan, así como de las implicaciones políticas de sus teorías, los sitúa en polos antitéticos e incompatibles. Frente a esta lectura, mi objetivo es examinar qué tipo de conclusiones se podría sacar con respecto a la -concepción de lo político a partir de un diálogo menos enfrentado entre ambos. En particular, quisiera abordar el encuentro que se produce entre estos dos autores en un lugar poco transitado por sus exegetas, a saber: la noción de pueblo.
En Ricardo Gutiérrez Aguilar (ed.), Predicar con el ejemplo. Ser y deber (de) ser en lo público, 2019
Papers by Emma Ingala
Journal of Italian Philosophy, 2024
The body, its materiality, and the images through which we apprehend them have been a constant co... more The body, its materiality, and the images through which we apprehend them have been a constant concern in Adriana Cavarero's philosophy. The contention of this paper is that her work on this topic lays out the foundations for (1) an understanding of the relationship between the imaginary and the corporeal as one of entanglement and inseparability; and (2) responding to the questions of what an image and a body can do. To develop this, this paper focuses on two texts, Stately Bodies and Inclinations, that provide, respectively, (1) an account of the assemblages and frictions between images and bodies through an analysis of the metaphor of the body politic in Western thought; and (2) an ontology of bodily images. Although both texts critically engage with Western hegemonic images of the body, I argue that the presence of the body as a powerful physical givenness articulates the narrative of Stately Bodies, while Inclinations is rather focused on the capacity of images to constitute different subjects and different worlds. These two perspectives are complementary rather than contradictory. Reading them together allows for the distillation
Distinktion. Journal of Social Theory, 2022
Critique has been recently accused of not being able to respond to the challenges of our times, s... more Critique has been recently accused of not being able to respond to the challenges of our times, such as the climate emergency and the pandemic crisis. The new materialisms, which have posited themselves as a corrective to critique's alleged overinflation of culture and language by proposing a (re)turn to matter, affirm that ours is a post-critical era. Against this diagnosis, the aim of this paper is to defend both the importance of critique for our current conjuncture and the need to rethink what it involves. Drawing from the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and Butler, I develop a specific but multidimensional understanding of critique that combats the vagueness and inconsistencies surrounding many post-critical approaches to this notion. Specifically, I suggest that critique entails (1) an enquiry into the conditions that structure, organise, and determine what can and cannot be perceived, experienced, and thought; (2) a clinical diagnosis or symptomatology of our present; (3) a political exercise of freedom; and (4) a practice of care. I conclude by showing how this conception of critique helps us to understand different dimensions of the Covid pandemic that might otherwise be ignored.
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2020
Through an engagement with the notions of metapsychology and the death drive as presented in Beyo... more Through an engagement with the notions of metapsychology and the death drive as presented in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, this paper explores the significance and different dimensions of Freud’s trope of the ‘beyond’. Against readings that reduce it to a questioning of the dominance of the pleasure principle and the introduction of an opposing principle, the death drive, I propose to understand the ‘beyond’ as (1) the transcendental condition of possibility of psychic life and (2) the occasion to articulate a critique of violence, where violence is understood to entail the foreclosure or erasure of the ‘beyond’.
The controversy over humanism in the second half of the twentieth century seemed to promote an ir... more The controversy over humanism in the second half of the twentieth century seemed to promote an irreversible abandonment of the concept of the human, famously illustrated by Foucault's image of the face sketched in the sand at the seashore being erased by the water. In the last two decades, however, a number of philosophers have reassessed and returned to a certain notion of the human all the while incorporating the arguments of the anti-humanist and anti-anthropocentric critiques. Judith Butler and E ´ tienne Balibar are among them. The aim of this article is to explore and compare the particular tropes that both put into play to refigure the human (namely, catachresis in Butler and mis-being in Balibar), and to show how, in light of these tropes, a different reading of Foucault's metaphor emerges; one in which the human is understood as a continuous and tensional process of doing and undoing, of drawing and erasing lines in the sand.
Isegoría
Emma Ingala: In Precarious Life (2004), precariousness and vulnerability are presented as a gener... more Emma Ingala: In Precarious Life (2004), precariousness and vulnerability are presented as a generalized condition of human beings-and of non-human beings-that cannot be willed away, constituting almost a sort of transcendental and universal condition beyond the particular socio-political norms and discourses-even though it is only realized and actualized through those norms and discourses. In Frames of War (2009), the distinction between precariousness and precarity, already implicit in Precarious Life, shifts the emphasis from 'the more or less existential conception of "precariousness"' to 'a more specifically political notion of "precarity"' 2 that takes into account the differential allocations and distributions of vulnerability. In Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), the notion of 'precariousness' has almost disappeared and left all the theoretical weight to that of 'precarity'. Does this shift respond to the need to take distance from transcendental a-historic stances? What is the
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Book Chapters by Emma Ingala
Papers by Emma Ingala
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Historical Traces
1. Nietzsche and the Emergence of Poststructuralism
Alan D. Schrift (Grinnell College, USA)
2. Poststructuralism in America: From Epistemological Relativism to Post-Truth?
Kevin Kennedy (CY Cergy Paris University, France).
3. From Choirboy to Funeral Orator: Foucault’s Complicated Relationship to Structuralism
Guilel Treiber (KU Leuven, Belgium)
4. Haunted by Derrida: Reading Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ in Constellation
James R. Martel (San Francisco State University, USA).
Part II: Future Pathways: Aesthetics
5. A Poststructuralism for the Visual Arts
Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee, Scotland).
6. What Moves Music?: Poststructuralism, Pulsion, and Musical Ontology
Michael David Székely (Temple University, USA)
Part III: Ethical Openings
7. Not Just a Body: Lacan on Corporeality
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
8. The Ethics and Politics of Temporality: Judith Butler, Embodiment, and Narrativity
Rosine Kelz (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies—Potsdam, Germany)
Part IV: Political Apertures
9. Re-thinking Poststructuralism with Deleuze and Luhmann: Autopoiesis, Immanence, Politics
Hannah Richter (University of Hertfordshire, England)
10. Kristeva’s Wager on the Future of Revolt
S. K. Keltner (Kennesaw State University, USA)
11. Strategies of Political Resistance: Agamben and Irigaray
Gavin Rae (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).
Table of Contents
Editor’s Introduction: Between Subjectivity and the Political
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
PART I: Political Subjectivities
1. The Limits of Nomos: Hannah Arendt on Law, Politics, and the Polis
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium)
2. From Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler: The Conditions of the Political
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
3. Between Failure and Redemption: Emmanuel Levinas on the Political
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
4. The Significant Nothing: Agamben, Theology, and Political Subjectivity
Piotr Sawczyński (Jagiellonian University, Poland)
5. Aporias of Foreignness: Transnational Encounters through Cinema
Katarzyna Marciniak (Ohio University, USA)
PART II: Political Subjectivities
6. The Abject and the Ugly: Kristeva, Adorno, and the Formation of the Subject
Surti Singh (American University in Cairo, Egypt)
7. Antonio Gramsci: Persons, Subjectivity, and the Political
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
8. Embodied Consciousness and Political Subjectivity in the work of Merleau-Ponty
Stephen A. Noble (Université de Paris-Est—Créteil , France)
9. John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Genius
Yoel Mitrani (Sciences Po Paris, France)
10. Hegel’s Ethical Life and Heidegger’s ‘They’: How Political is the Self?
Antonio Gómez Ramos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain).
Table of Contents
The Meanings of Violence: Introduction
Gavin Rae and Emma Ingala
Part I: Political Myth and Social Transformation
1. Walter Benjamin and the General Strike: Non-Violence and the Archeon
James Martel (San Francisco State University, USA)
2. Violence, Divine or Otherwise: Myth and Violence in the Benjamin-Schmitt Constellation
Hjalmar Falk (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
3. Violence and Civilization: Gramsci, Machiavelli, and Sorel
Robert P. Jackson (Manchester Metropolitan University, England)
4. The Violence of Oblivion: Hannah Arendt and the Tragic Loss of Revolutionary Politics
Liesbeth Schoonheim (KU Leuven, Belgium,)
Part II: Sociality and Meaning
5. The World and the Embodied Subject: Humanism, Terror, and Violence
Stephen A. Noble (Universite de Paris X (Paris—Nanterre), France)
6. Dialectics got the Upper Hand: Fanon, Violence, and the Quest[ion] of Liberation
Nigel C. Gibson (Emerson College, USA)
7. Sartre’s Later Work: Towards a Notion of Institutional Violence
Marieke Mueller (King’s College London, England)
8. The Original Polemos: Phenomenology and Violence in Jacques Derrida
Valeria Campos-Salvaterra (Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile)
Part III: From Subjectivity to Biopolitics
9. Taming the Little Screaming Monster: Castoriadis, Violence, and the Creation of the Individual
Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
10. Judith Butler: From a Formative Violence to an Ethics of Non-Violence
Emma Ingala (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
11. Biopolitics and Resistance: The Meaning of Violence in the Work of Giorgio Agamben
German Primera (University of Brighton, England).
"Un amor salvaje que arruina nuestra paz" es una propuesta curatorial que investiga las posibilidades de introducir, a través de la práctica artística, aquello que el discurso capitalista rechaza en todo momento y que el psicoanalista Jacques Lacan detectó y nombró como “las cosas del amor”. En el discurso capitalista, donde todo es aparentemente posible y en el que desaparecen los límites, un cierto amor puede irrumpir como el desestabilizador de un totalitarismo imperante.
Diseño de José Duarte.