Papers by Deniz Guvenc
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2015
This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Badiou... more This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Badiou’s category of ‘antiphilosophy’. We make four movements: firstly, a description of what antiphilosophy is; secondly, an explanation of why the category of antiphilosophy is important to a reading of Levinas; thirdly, an exposition of the antiphilosophical elements of the Carnets and Écrits on captivity; and fourthly, we situate our reading of the notebooks within the larger context of Levinas’s post-captivity work.
For all the charges laid against him—sophistry, nihilism, greedy individualism, ego-tism,
radica... more For all the charges laid against him—sophistry, nihilism, greedy individualism, ego-tism,
radical nominalism—I attempt to rescue something affirmative, something joyful in the work of Max Stirner. I argue that there exists another Stirner, one hidden beneath the fiery rhetoric and frenzied prose, a Stirner attentive and responsive to the intricate uncertainty of existence. Not without a hint of irony, I have found in his destructive anarchism a spirited celebration of invention and creation; in his wild anti-humanism, a gentle sympathy for the human life; in his aggressive atheism, an unwavering clemency for the heathen. Yet this other, joyful Stirner is not opposed to the dominant, ruinous image; rather, they are intimately bound up in one another. Stirner’s warm sympathy for those of us who are less than perfect—those of us who fail in our aspirations, who let ourselves down—is not opposed to his rejection of the human as such, but is in fact made possible by it. The rejection and the affirmation exist in and as a single motion, a single strike: this is perhaps the central idea in my reading of Stirner, borne out through analyses of his non-dialectical ontology, his descriptive ethics, and his anarchic politics.
PhaenEx, 2015
This paper critically assesses Edmund Husserl's concept of the ‘life-world’, found in his Crisis ... more This paper critically assesses Edmund Husserl's concept of the ‘life-world’, found in his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. We argue that Husserl's phenomenology fails to consider the social and material arrangements that allow subjectivity to emerge in our shared world. We begin by outlining the concept as formulated in Husserl’s Crisis. We then entertain Husserl’s critique by his most famous student, Martin Heidegger. We suggest a reformulation of intersubjectivity, along the lines of Heidegger’s mitdasein, accounts for subjectivity as it emerges in the shared world. Next, we introduce ethnomethodology, pioneered by Harold Garfinkel, which gives sociological support to this argument. Through the ethnomethodological disability studies of A.B. Robillard, we argue that the life-world is not always as democratic as Husserl's philosophy may suggest. This shows the necessity of disability politics. We end by asking what a phenomenology sensitive to this fact might look like, in terms of both disability studies and phenomenological philosophy more generally.
This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Bad... more This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Badiou’s category of ‘antiphilosophy’. We make four movements: firstly, a description of what antiphilosophy is; secondly, an explanation of why the category of antiphilosophy is important to a reading of Levinas; thirdly, an exposition of the antiphilosophical elements of the Carnets and Écrits on captivity; and fourthly, we situate our reading of the notebooks within the larger context of Levinas’s post-captivity work.
Conference Presentations by Deniz Guvenc
Miguel Abensour’s seminal reading of Marx’s 1843-48 texts discovers a subterranean form of emanci... more Miguel Abensour’s seminal reading of Marx’s 1843-48 texts discovers a subterranean form of emancipatory politics—one which contains both an anti-statist and properly utopian conception of democracy. This paper argues that, in light of Abensour’s discovery, the historically fraught Stirner-Marx relationship is in need of re-examination.
I argue that two radical ideas Abensour discovers in Marx are also present in Stirner’s work: first, a critique of reformism and state-focused revolutionary politics as utopian; second, a conception of true democracy as being positioned both outside of and explicitly against the State. Specifically, I show how Stirner’s critiques of Young Hegelianism and utopian socialism culminate in his distinction between revolution and insurrection [Empörung]. I argue that this distinction can be read as an elaboration of Marx’s distinction between partial and total revolution—yet one which explicitly takes the voluntary servitude hypothesis seriously. Secondly, I argue that Stirner’s union of egoists can be read alongside Marx’s critical notion of true democracy. The union in Stirner’s formulation not only escapes the State’s reach but also seeks to dissolve the institutional logic of statism itself. The union can therefore be read as part of Stirner’s response to the voluntary servitude hypothesis: it is not enough to rid ourselves of our masters—we must dissolve the authoritarianism and archism within ourselves, imbricated in and as political subjectivity. The paper concludes by considering the ways Stirner both fails and succeeds in responding to Abensour’s call for a new utopian spirit.
Uploads
Papers by Deniz Guvenc
radical nominalism—I attempt to rescue something affirmative, something joyful in the work of Max Stirner. I argue that there exists another Stirner, one hidden beneath the fiery rhetoric and frenzied prose, a Stirner attentive and responsive to the intricate uncertainty of existence. Not without a hint of irony, I have found in his destructive anarchism a spirited celebration of invention and creation; in his wild anti-humanism, a gentle sympathy for the human life; in his aggressive atheism, an unwavering clemency for the heathen. Yet this other, joyful Stirner is not opposed to the dominant, ruinous image; rather, they are intimately bound up in one another. Stirner’s warm sympathy for those of us who are less than perfect—those of us who fail in our aspirations, who let ourselves down—is not opposed to his rejection of the human as such, but is in fact made possible by it. The rejection and the affirmation exist in and as a single motion, a single strike: this is perhaps the central idea in my reading of Stirner, borne out through analyses of his non-dialectical ontology, his descriptive ethics, and his anarchic politics.
Conference Presentations by Deniz Guvenc
I argue that two radical ideas Abensour discovers in Marx are also present in Stirner’s work: first, a critique of reformism and state-focused revolutionary politics as utopian; second, a conception of true democracy as being positioned both outside of and explicitly against the State. Specifically, I show how Stirner’s critiques of Young Hegelianism and utopian socialism culminate in his distinction between revolution and insurrection [Empörung]. I argue that this distinction can be read as an elaboration of Marx’s distinction between partial and total revolution—yet one which explicitly takes the voluntary servitude hypothesis seriously. Secondly, I argue that Stirner’s union of egoists can be read alongside Marx’s critical notion of true democracy. The union in Stirner’s formulation not only escapes the State’s reach but also seeks to dissolve the institutional logic of statism itself. The union can therefore be read as part of Stirner’s response to the voluntary servitude hypothesis: it is not enough to rid ourselves of our masters—we must dissolve the authoritarianism and archism within ourselves, imbricated in and as political subjectivity. The paper concludes by considering the ways Stirner both fails and succeeds in responding to Abensour’s call for a new utopian spirit.
radical nominalism—I attempt to rescue something affirmative, something joyful in the work of Max Stirner. I argue that there exists another Stirner, one hidden beneath the fiery rhetoric and frenzied prose, a Stirner attentive and responsive to the intricate uncertainty of existence. Not without a hint of irony, I have found in his destructive anarchism a spirited celebration of invention and creation; in his wild anti-humanism, a gentle sympathy for the human life; in his aggressive atheism, an unwavering clemency for the heathen. Yet this other, joyful Stirner is not opposed to the dominant, ruinous image; rather, they are intimately bound up in one another. Stirner’s warm sympathy for those of us who are less than perfect—those of us who fail in our aspirations, who let ourselves down—is not opposed to his rejection of the human as such, but is in fact made possible by it. The rejection and the affirmation exist in and as a single motion, a single strike: this is perhaps the central idea in my reading of Stirner, borne out through analyses of his non-dialectical ontology, his descriptive ethics, and his anarchic politics.
I argue that two radical ideas Abensour discovers in Marx are also present in Stirner’s work: first, a critique of reformism and state-focused revolutionary politics as utopian; second, a conception of true democracy as being positioned both outside of and explicitly against the State. Specifically, I show how Stirner’s critiques of Young Hegelianism and utopian socialism culminate in his distinction between revolution and insurrection [Empörung]. I argue that this distinction can be read as an elaboration of Marx’s distinction between partial and total revolution—yet one which explicitly takes the voluntary servitude hypothesis seriously. Secondly, I argue that Stirner’s union of egoists can be read alongside Marx’s critical notion of true democracy. The union in Stirner’s formulation not only escapes the State’s reach but also seeks to dissolve the institutional logic of statism itself. The union can therefore be read as part of Stirner’s response to the voluntary servitude hypothesis: it is not enough to rid ourselves of our masters—we must dissolve the authoritarianism and archism within ourselves, imbricated in and as political subjectivity. The paper concludes by considering the ways Stirner both fails and succeeds in responding to Abensour’s call for a new utopian spirit.