Practicality

2020

" Unlike visual arts, the theatre aims to entertain " – this was a claim made by Matthias von Hartz during the first meeting about a planned cooperation between the Foreign Affairs festival and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Only our theatre colleagues themselves could decide what conclusions should be drawn from this statement about the theatre and the self-perception of its protagonists. From the perspective of visual arts, in any case, it appeared like an irritation. Not so much because it implied that visual arts are averse to sensuality and fun, but because it presumed an entirely different frame of reference for one's own activities than is customary in the context of the visual arts. In the self-perception of curators and visual artists, in fact, the concept of wanting to entertain anyone else quite simply does not feature. The possible reasons for this disdain, the motives on which the visual arts might instead be founded, and the way in which this cooperation has contributed to not only having a better understanding of our own codes but also seeing correlations for a more complex image of what we do in those forms of performing arts represented by Foreign Affairs – all these points will be dealt with in the following text.

Citeseer

In this paper, the nature of distinction drawing, in the sense of George Spencer Brown, is examined with special reference to the distinction between the self and the other. It is noted that a distinction, which must draw its self, also requires an other and a transfer distinction, both within a particular distinction and for that distinction to be part of, and that these can generate the purpose of the distinction as becoming, of, by and for itself.

Professor Rajul Bhargava Editor Voices vi • Acknowledgements Editor's Note Mirror, mirror on the wall Who is it that you see? Is it 'I' or 'me' or you? Who am 'I'? A part of 'Us' or 'Them'? Similar, Different, Other? '… we are our own foreigners, we are divided' said Jndia Kristeva in Strangers to Ourselves. Across all levels of various societies, not only now but down history, there has been a tension to include some and exclude others, a tension between sameness and otherness, be it due to colour, creed, caste, class, gender, religion, migration ….. So who is this 'Other' and who has the power to define, to decide who he is, for what purposes and under which sociocultural conditions? Isn't this growing 'othering' based on asymmetric power relations which create binary oppositions between the privileged and non-privileged, the 'sovereign subject' and the 'constitutive other'? Indeed, underlying such discriminations is 'the basic category of human thought which instantly posits an opposite when we think about what 'is' (Simone de Beauvoir). It was Emmanuel Levinas who believed that otherness/alterity should make us realize that there is a vast universe of mystry outside 'I', 'you', 'we', 'us'-something to fill us with awe, care and concern rather than casting stigmatizing categories of 'they' and 'them'. Had not Nietzsche in his Thus, Spake Zarathustra, analysing the many kinds of our relation with the 'other', said that the 'Overman' cannot but visualize his journey to Earth without the other-who becomes a catalyst of transformation? Playing on the role of the 'other', Nietzsche analysed that we reconstitute ourselves throughout our lives as another, our self-overcoming is therapeutic therefore how could 'othering' be an antagonism? The Heideggerian dasein too consists of a multiplicity of drives to become all that he comes to be-the 'other' incorporated. 'Othering' goes far beyond scapegoating and denigrating. The Greeks dis-including the rest besides themselves called them 'barbarians'; Columbus landing in the New World 'othered' the indigenous inhabitants-thus immense civilizations were despoiled, desecrated and destroyed forever. In more recent history the Imperial powers created the 'othered' Third World, creating differences of subalternity, liminality and alterity, and even within these there were further dissections arising out of 'narcissism of minor differences' (Freud); and then, ofcourse, 'self' othering where, according to Lacan, one can experience oneself as a stranger, the 'other' within as Hobbes had said 'a human is a wolf to a fellow other'. Levinas again in Tolality and Infinity had worked on the binaries of exteriority and interiority, on essence and dissonance, on semblance and resemblance. Hegal as well attested to the duality of perception where the 'subject' is the being and 'object' the other. Derridian 'inclusivity' and 'exclusively' principle affirms Levinas' binary. In a telling essay 'Psyche: Inventions of the Other' Derrida seems to conclude that whereas invention of the same is a homogeneous calculation, deconstruction is the invention of the 'other', which is different and also constantly gets deferred. Otherness/Othering today is a discourse of exclusion, of discrimination which projects tensions between dichotonomons identities, their relationality and postionality being governed by the spatio-temporal power dynamics which are in a continuous flux. Difference is in the realm of fact and 'otherness' in the realm of discourse. 'Otherness' is a part of the catastrophology of our times. We are constantly menaced by the magnified, augmented 'otherness', sometimes concrete but more often than not fantastic, surrealistic, which might perhaps be our Armageddon. Let us, beware of this shadow of a shadow, 'a dark chthonic figure 'the Luciferan element' (Jung). There are no strangers, no 'others'-only various versions of ourselves-unacknowledged, unembraced, most of which we wish to protect ourselves from and in this battle inclusively and belonging are at stake. The myriad voices collected in this issue take up this need-of-the-hour polemics and deconstruct this complex, multivalent issue.

Intercultural Relations in a Global World, 2011

The idea ofthe in-batween suhioct in social and cultural thoreght Clmpter rr f" lnt¡oduccion Ttac chapter identifies a discor¡¡se of the in-bew,ee¡r subiect clttluiû the work of soci,ologists, antfuopologists and post-coflonielists. This disaourse constnrcts a sociaf and cultural identity that goes heyre¡¡¿ com¡pntior¡a! ns- ,scntialist identities and transcends dominant epfutemologi,€el f,rerueuno¡ûis. The representationofthe in-batween subiect türatis prresentcd herc isagcncrafisod one ,and drawin6¡ on the History of ldeas [itcç¡tre¡e c¡rn be c¿aEfoüisod as an "unit idea'. These idcas serve a paFticrrlar heuristic prurpoae. Irt is ebstrected frorn the thinking of a number of sdlslaae end åcross e aerufii- ber of discþlines within the social sciences. The folüøwing analpis dcrmon- strates, in accumulative fashion, wa¡c inu¡hich tf'rc disoou¡se ofimåeturccnness constrnrcts an inSefwecm social actor $ihi€h has spociftc aaliicnt qualities. For sorrae schola¡s, ttre i¡rbetween idendry is cl¡a¡acterisod by amtri- valence and a critical perspecoivc. Other obserrcru hasne wgger$Êd ttr.at tlhis subiect position occerpies a place betweertr the ur¡ivarsal amd the parnicmlar, and thcrs hlurs and questions conwntiomd $ocia[, cuft¡n¡r¡l and qpi,sternolo. gicai boraoderies. CIocasion¡lly the arnbiwalence q¡{dcü is gcr,rorotcd frorn heing in the rliddle, is a diraet threat to the o¡dcriog and socrctüriÍrg proces,s r7g Viwc ù{øww T}IE IDEÁ OF T?{E IN-BETq¡EEN SUBJECT fN SOCTAL AND CULTUR,AL'I.I{OUGT{-f of society. Furthermore, ¡rs a cons,equerrce of being placed, or positioning oneself in-between one develops an enlightened and broader perspective of the social world, a perspective which is not available to thoae xùo are per- ceived to be either'insiders'or butsiders'. The state of in-betwee¡¡.r¡ess also fosters frcedom and creativity, but paradoxically encourages pc¡rhotqgical anxieties. Underþing these cornrnonalities within the discourse of in-betweenuess, however, are internal differences. Although the scholars elø¡uined in this chapter construct a¡r individual type which has similar characteristics, they approach this construction from different theoretical and political posi- tions. In addition, the in-berween subiect is characterised in multiple ways: it is manifested in te¡ms of the liminal or threshold phase of þrirnitive' and 'modem' societies, thc in-between cosmoBolitan stranger, 'the marginal man', the 'free-floating intellectual', the border mestiza personality and the hybrid sutriect. Underþing these differenr coric€prualisatioru are key thernes which allou¡ us to speak of a discor¡rse on the in-between subþct. Finally, this in-between identity or ex¡rerience, as \,Íill be dernonstrated throughout our discussion, has implications for the sociology and politics of knowledge. A,n intellectual histoqyon the in-between subiect emphasizes continuity as well as difference. This b¡oad brush approach has its lirnitatio¡rs in that it may not do þstice to the nuances of specific thinkers or bring togerher thinkers and disciplines that may have incompatible theoretical and con- ceptual frameworks. However, this broad brush approach does not ignore the internal differences within the discourse of in-betweenness. The irrportance of difference and continuity in intellecûual history is clearly ex- pressed in Foucault's Archaeolag of lfu.wledge in which the ardueologist "remains at one site, digging in all directions", urhille "unearthiog the spe- cificities of a particular discourse" (Poster r98z: r45). On one levcl the following discsssion is "ranearthi4g the specificities" of the discourse of in-betweenness but does not assume a perßct coherence within this discourse; my app¡oach adopts the attitude of, a presumption rather tl¡¿n an eryectation of cohercncc @evir, rggT: t68 er r83). The gene- alogical analysis provided here seeks to show horv the concefrt of the inbetwee n personality type has radicalty chang€d but it also illustratcs hou¡ the pfesumption of cohererrce and a presumption of difference ane Ílot rnutually exclusive. The chapter makes a entative claim that a discourse of in- between subþct exists, but does not ¡rssume that this discourse is uni{ied and unproblematic. The finat sections criticalty eqgages with the rntdtiple c@nstructions ofthe in-between sclf, the ¡ole that agencyandpowerplayin positioniqg oneself in-betwe€n, the e¡¡tent to which boundaries coristi'fi¡te in-betwecnness and the claim that the in-bet*vee¡¡,subþt adopts an antri-es- sentialist and anti-dualistic approach to the understanding ttre ¡ocial wotld.

Epistemology is an act of experience and an experience of the act, where of course proportions of conceptual universalized forms express existence as a self in relation to its Other through reified forms that have been represented throughout the context of an ontological projection of its signification, and what has been signified to the Other as a dialectical transmission or positing of objects in flux that have become determinable interobjectively. Where noematic components of the ontical existence sparks the world mind, the subject engages it through its abstract semiotic reflections and significations. In post-industrial times, this determines the cultural mass of representations, or the cultural signifier that bears a striking resemblance to the universal consciousness of Kant, Hegel or Marx. As a totality it has been founded by the representational Other that imposes the limitations upon Being that render sublation an abstract necessity, yet through a universal consciousness in-itself can act toward the sublated negation of the being-in-itself where it has been detached from its own subjectivity into a concretion of essence.

A chapter from Rational Freedom vol 6 Mediation by Dr Peter Critchley In the context of debates over postmodernity there is value in. integrating the critical insights of Marx and Weber in relation to capitalist modernity, relating the process of rationalisation to the process of capital accumulation. This is to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of the ideas of Marx and Weber by revealing how organisation in the modern world is based upon relations of power,, control and domination in many forms. These ideas converge with those of Marx, who locates the process of rationalisation in the need for surplus value and the accumulation of capital.

Tropos, 2022

In this article, I attempt to show how, by articulating the dialectics of Hegel, Nāgārjuna and Nishida, one could arrive at a fruitful way of conceiving intercultural philosophy by means of a dialectical method. To articulate the dialectics of those different philosophers in a method of doing philosophy interculturally, I shall also introduce Ram Adhar Mall and his conception of situated unsituatedness (orthafte Ortlösigkeit) into discussion. I believe that Mall's concept not only provides a foundation for articulating the different dialectics of Hegel, Nāgārjuna and Nishida in a method of doing intercultural philosophy, but Mall's concept can itself be better understood if comprehended dialectically and beyond the idea of "perennial philosophy". I hope to show that to do philosophy interculturally according to that method means to search for the (non-essential) commonalities between different traditions, in order to not only understand each of them in their differences and specificity, but, through those differences, also gain new insights into their shared commonalities.

Systems Research, 1991

Ashby[1] said that the fight against (too much) diversity is possible only by developing diversity. This is expressed also in the title of this conference and paper. Both need a methodological support. A phenomenological systems theory does not provide it. We have been developing an alternative paradigm on the basis of the “Dialectical System “ notion. Fifteen years of development on this basis are briefed in the paper.

The stipulation that a macro consciousness or universalized Being as a collective substance is comprised purely of exchange-value relations, presupposes a motility of ontological objects—where what in fact should be the case is that the noumenal will determines the quantum reality of the subjects based upon the universality present within the subject's positing of its legal identity at the point of contact where the conceptual status of subjects within the signifying chain achieve ontological self-awareness. This identity is based upon the unmediated empirical being of the subject as it posits the self to the general proximity where the object may be constituted (the inner space), and in connection with the substance of the subject as a member of a collective that aspires toward the same rational freedoms where concerns the necessary application of use-value. The particularization of this absolute subject will happen through its own work, yet it should remain unmediated where it first appears as a noumenal identity to the collective subjects' own phenomenal magnitudes or Objective Being. The speech act and ontological projections of the Other do mediate the noumenal identity of the subject as it becomes non-identical, and thus neither fully constituted through its universalization as a social interobjectivity, or resolute as an ontical and empirical conditionality.