Deconstruction on the Move: From Libidinal Economy to Liminal Materialism

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1041-1059 ◽  
Author(s):  
M A Doel

In the wake of the Möbius spiralling of relativism and reflexivity, much of the theoretically inclined literature within human geography has turned to the motifs of difference and otherness as a possible basis for fostering a coming together and rapprochement of previously incommensurate theoretical-practices. Much of this effort has been undertaken in an explicit attempt to maintain political, moral, and ethical responsibility in the face of a dangerous slide into passive nihilism and indifference. In the first half of the paper I argue that the attempt to forge a universal currency which would enable difference to circulate freely within contemporary human geography is flawed for three interrelated reasons. First, by working through a libidinal economy of negation it forces difference to conform to the Same. Specifically, difference is captured as so-many standard deviations from the Norm. Second, this apparatus of capture is predestined to yield a state of confusion, imprecision, and indistinction which can only be contained within a quotation market. Third, by dwelling upon negation and appropriation, and through capturing difference within a normalized economy of the Same, the forging of a universal currency within a quotation market deprives itself of the ability to effectively affirm difference, otherness, alterity, and singularity in and of themselves. Such an affirmation would require an act of ex-appropriation, rather than one of appropriation. Consequently, by drawing upon the liminal materialism of a deconstructive experience, in the second half of the paper I explore four movements of ex-appropriation: radical passivity, destabilization on the move, telephony, and picnolepsy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethics of the event.

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 10573-10590 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Bernhard ◽  
A. Dahlback ◽  
V. Fioletov ◽  
A. Heikkilä ◽  
B. Johnsen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Greatly increased levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation were observed at thirteen Arctic and sub-Arctic ground stations in the spring of 2011, when the ozone abundance in the Arctic stratosphere dropped to the lowest amounts on record. Measurements of the noontime UV Index (UVI) during the low-ozone episode exceeded the climatological mean by up to 77% at locations in the western Arctic (Alaska, Canada, Greenland) and by up to 161% in Scandinavia. The UVI measured at the end of March at the Scandinavian sites was comparable to that typically observed 15–60 days later in the year when solar elevations are much higher. The cumulative UV dose measured during the period of the ozone anomaly exceeded the climatological mean by more than two standard deviations at 11 sites. Enhancements beyond three standard deviations were observed at seven sites and increases beyond four standard deviations at two sites. At the western sites, the episode occurred in March, when the Sun was still low in the sky, limiting absolute UVI anomalies to less than 0.5 UVI units. At the Scandinavian sites, absolute UVI anomalies ranged between 1.0 and 2.2 UVI units. For example, at Finse, Norway, the noontime UVI on 30 March was 4.7, while the climatological UVI is 2.5. Although a UVI of 4.7 is still considered moderate, UV levels of this amount can lead to sunburn and photokeratitis during outdoor activity when radiation is reflected upward by snow towards the face of a person or animal. At the western sites, UV anomalies can be well explained with ozone anomalies of up to 41% below the climatological mean. At the Scandinavian sites, low ozone can only explain a UVI increase of 50–60%. The remaining enhancement was mainly caused by the absence of clouds during the low-ozone period.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Molloy

The image of the death house with its polished tiles and gleaming oak chair is fading. I turn my attention to where life is. Although I have decided that I will not be going to death row again, I cannot bear to think that there are some men there now who are facing death alone. The other man's death calls me into question, as if, by my possible future indifference, I had become the accomplice of the death of the other, who cannot see it; and as if, even before vowing myself to him, I had to answer for this death of the other, and to accompany the Other in his mortal solitude. The Other becomes my neighbour precisely through the way the face summons me, calls for me, begs for me, and in so doing recalls my responsibility, and calls me into question.


Author(s):  
Enda McCaffrey

This article establishes that reparation from grief is a process of “working through” trauma in which death is a catalyst for a re-imagination of the human form. “Working through” trauma comes about in different ways in Tom est mort. It manifests itself firstly as a process “outside” Judeo-Christian and socio-cultural signifiers and outside traditional limits of cognition and subjectivity. Darrieussecq views reparation as a process of nonanthropocentric and anthropogenic relationality (with other species and other non-human phenomena) in which new coalitions and affinities offer an alternative post-human ontology founded in the reduction and dissolution of human form into atoms and particles. Secondly, reparation finds an ecopoetic continuity and sustainability in the narrator’s proximity to and approximation with the physics and spherical production of motion (energy, air, cosmos) and the reparative possibilities posed by this physics to traditional, psychic forms of communication. Darrieussecq’s vision is the hidden energy that operates in space around us. It is a knowledge of the hidden that comes from an acknowledgement of human redundancy in the face of the planet’s eco-vitality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jouni Häkli

This commentary on James Ash’s ‘Flat Ontology and Geography’ makes three points. First, it notes the prominence of different versions of flat ontology in human geography and supports Ash’s attempt to make sense of how flat ontology thinking has impacted human geographical scholarship by working through a politically contested real-world case. Second, by framing Ash’s project as a ‘reality check’, the commentary engages in a critical assessment of what added value flat ontological approaches, Tristan Garcia’s thinking included, may have to offer to our understanding of the non-flat world of value, hierarchy and difference. Third, it locates a problematic gap between flat ontological imaginaries and the phenomenal world of importance and suggests that to avoid academic escapism, we need convincing ways to bridge this gap. To conclude, the commentary joins in Ash’s caution against the overemphasis of connectedness, emergence and contingency in much flat ontological thought.


2021 ◽  
Vol 884 (1) ◽  
pp. 012039
Author(s):  
Assriyani ◽  
Hastuti

Abstract A disaster is an event or series of events which threaten and disrupt the human lives. The studies of disaster are constantly considered related to humans because humans act as the causative factor, victim and at the same time the executant of the effort in disaster handling. Pioneered by Gilbert White and pursued by other experts, human geography later shows the roles in examining issues in disaster studies especially in disaster mitigation. Based on several research and notions, many experts in human geography agree that there is nothing natural in natural disaster. Although the disasters are often affected by geosphere physical phenomenon but various human actions and activities on the face of the earth cause certain population to be more prone to natural disaster. If the risks toward disaster need to be reduced, bigger attention needs to be given to minimize population vulnerability, increase people capacity to overcome disaster and strengthen people capability to adapt to disaster area in a long term. Currently, UN as the responsible party in reducing risk of international disaster has been doing community resilience effort adopting Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005–2015: building the nation and community resilience towards disaster, followed by Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDR) 2015-2030: reducing disaster risk and loss.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-44
Author(s):  
Christian Delacroix

The aim of this article is to analyze the work of the event’s relative desingularisation that Ricœur operates by coupling with the narrative in Time and Narrative in the early 1980s, then the re-opening of the question of the singularity and uniqueness of the event in Memory, History, Forgetting (in 2000) in the reconstructed theoretical frame of historical representation put to the test of the "event at the limits" which is the Shoah. In Time and Narrative Ricœur intends to transcend, through the interweaving of history and fiction applied to founding events of collective identity like the Shoah, the epistemological aporia of the dichotomy between a history which dissolves the event in the explanation and a purely emotional attitude in the face of events of considerable ethical intensity. However, this narrativisation of the event runs up against the traumatic power of the radical extra-textual of the event — the Shoah, which thus constitutes a challenge for the historical representation of the past. It is this question that Ricœur takes up in Memory, History, Forgetting, but this time the investigation has been largely reconfigured by the dialectic of memory and history, contributing to the representation of the past. While distinguishing the absolute moral incomparability of the Shoah and the incomparability relative to the historiographical plane (i.e., possible comparability), Ricœur maintains that the entanglement between historiographical judgment and moral judgment is inevitable, thus opening up the great question of the social, political and ethical responsibility of the historian.


Babel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-392
Author(s):  
Vanessa Everson

Abstract The purpose of this article is to examine certain cultural and ethical aspects which make the translator’s task arduous. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the indissolubility of language and culture (Nida 2002) means that the translator must possess high-level cultural competency and an understanding of context (Herbulot 2004). Secondly, by applying Narrative Theory to translation (Baker 2006), the article highlights ethical considerations associated with translating certain narratives and advances Fisher’s narrative paradigm as a possible response (Fisher 1984, 1985, 1997). Citing the example of a translated, contemporary, African novel (Mouanda Kibinde 2004, 2015), the translator-author’s ethical responsibility of prioritizing the reader of the translated text (Leclercq 2002) is examined against the backdrop of reception theory (Rosenblatt 1969, 1978 (1994)). The article concludes by suggesting which courses of action are open to the translator, in the face of weighty, cultural and ethical constraints (Ortega y Gasset 2013).


Author(s):  
Gary A. Phillips

This chapter describes a variety of self-identified ethical-critical readings of biblical narrative. The essay situates narrative ethics in relation to the “turn to ethics” traversing literary, philosophical, and biblical studies. Narrative ethics is seen as a multidisciplinary critical and creative response to contested assumptions about the nature of self, society, and ethical responsibility and the urgent need to assess the ethical impact biblical narratives and their readings have on readers. Biblical readings are discussed in terms of their philosophical, ethical, and rhetorical influences, in particular the Aristotelian virtue ethics and phenomenological/hermeneutical traditions. The contributions of Wayne Booth, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas’s are traced. The chapter concludes with a narrative-ethical reading of Luke 10:38–42 using Levinas’s notions of the “face” and “excessive responsibility” to demonstrate ethical engagement with a problematic text and its commentators.


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