No One's Witness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Zolf
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Experimental Poetics

In No One's Witness Rachel Zolf activates the last three lines of a poem by Jewish Nazi holocaust survivor Paul Celan—“No one / bears witness for the / witness”—to theorize the poetics and im/possibility of witnessing. Drawing on black studies, continental philosophy, queer theory, experimental poetics, and work by several writers and artists, Zolf asks what it means to witness from the excessive, incalculable position of No One. In a fragmentary and recursive style that enacts the monstrous speech it pursues, No One's Witness demonstrates the necessity of confronting the Nazi holocaust in relation to transatlantic slavery and its afterlives. Thinking along with black feminist theory's notions of entangled swarm, field, plenum, chorus, No One's Witness interrogates the limits and thresholds of witnessing, its dangerous perhaps. No One operates outside the bounds of the sovereign individual, hauntologically informed by the fleshly no-thingness that has been historically ascribed to blackness and that blackness enacts within, apposite to, and beyond the No One. No One bears witness to becomings beyond comprehension, making and unmaking monstrous forms of entangled future anterior life.

Prayin’ for Queer Times: Choir Boy and enactments of transient performance

2020 ◽  
pp. 092137402093451
Author(s):  
Sean Metzger ◽  
Kimberly Chantal Welch
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Transient Performance ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Movement Performance ◽  
Prep School ◽  
Point Of Departure

“Prayin’ for Queer Times: Choir Boy and Enactments of Transient Performance” serves an introduction to this special issue of Cultural Dynamics on Transient Performance. Using a young, queer black man’s coming-of-age story at an African American all–boys prep school as a point of departure, the article elaborates transient performance as a new analytic that can account for the intersections of transnational movement, performance, geography, black and refugee peoples, and fugitivity as previewed in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, Choir Boy. The authors weave together queer theory and black feminist theory to articulate the spatiotemporal dimensions of transient performance. This theorization is followed by a brief synopsis of each contributor’s article. “Prayin’ for Queer Times” closes with a return to Choir Boy, specifically the sonic movements of the protagonist and the ways in which his performance gestures to marginalized peoples’ everyday practices of survival. It is the editors’ and contributors’ hope that this issue will spark conversation and action that helps lead to the fruition of more inhabitable, and thus queer, geographies.

Event, Death, and Poetry

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-268
Author(s):  
Harris B. Bechtol ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
The World ◽  
Novel Approaches ◽  
Existential Concerns

Since Heidegger, at least, the theme of the event has become a focal point of current debate in continental philosophy. While scholars recognize the important contributions that Jacques Derrida has made to this debate, the significance of his considerations of the death of the other for his conception of the event has not yet been fully appreciated. This essay focuses on Derrida’s efforts to develop the notion of the event in reference to the death of the other through his engagement with Paul Celan in “Rams—Between Two Infinities, The Poem.” I argue that Derrida’s approach results in a three-fold contribution to the debate about the character of the event. Derrida turns to one of Celan’s poems in an effort to find the kind of speech that attests to the event in its singularity, and in this turn, he develops not only the structure of the event’s appearance in the death of the world when the other dies but also the ethical impetus that accompanies this event of the death of the other, namely a call for workless mourning. Through Derrida’s contribution, we learn that the concern for the event not only includes novel approaches to ontology but also attempts to weave together ontological, ethical, as well as existential concerns.

The Catastrophe

Qui Parle ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-372
Author(s):  
Calvin Warren
Keyword(s):  
Black Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
Black Feminist

Abstract This essay argues that black feminist poethics uncovers a deep philosophical problem between pure form and pure matter. Mathematics is the site of such contention, and the decision to retain form or destroy form presents ontological and epistemological complexities for a philosophy of mathematics in Black studies. Ultimately, this essay offers mathematical nihilism as the only hope for blacks in an antiblack world.

Fuck off! recasting queer anger for a politics of (self-)discomfort

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommaso M. Milani
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Black Feminist

While anger is often treated as a ‘dirty’ feeling or a pathology, queer anger holds the potential for a renewed politics of (self-)discomfort. I draw upon queer theory in order to strategically highlight that anger is what constitutes queer both as a homophobic slur and as a reclaimed label of self-identification. Put differently, it is impossible to understand how ‘queer’ works pragmatically without its affective loading. Moreover, inspired by the Black feminist tradition, I argue that it is imperative to forge angry coalitions with other activist and academic projects against discrimination. Fuck off! is the rallying cry for building a broader defying alliance that not only marshals together various streams of anger directed at different sides of the same Leviathan, hegemony, but also does not shy away from internal annoyances and is not afraid of constantly discomforting itself. Mentre la rabbia è spesso trattata come un sentimento ‘sporco’ o una patologia, la rabbia queer detiene il potenziale per una rinnovata politica di (auto) scomodamento. Attingo alla teoria queer per evidenziare strategicamente che la rabbia sia costitutiva di queer sia come un insulto omofobico che come una rivendicata etichetta di auto-identificazione. Detto diversamente, è impossibile capire come ‘queer’ funzioni pragmaticamente senza la sua carica affettiva. Inoltre, ispirandomi alla tradizione del femminismo nero sostengo che sia necessario creare coalizioni infuriate con altri progetti accademici e militanti contro la discriminazione. Fuck off! è il grido di battaglia per costruire una più ampia alleanza provocativa che non solo metta insieme varie correnti di rabbia dirette a diversi aspetti dello stesso Leviatano, l’egemonia, ma anche che non rifugga dai contrasti interni e non abbia paura di scomodarsi costantemente.

Blackpentecostal Breath

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashon T. Crawley
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Speaking In Tongues ◽  
Reading Culture ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Theology And Philosophy

Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility investigates the relationship of aesthetic productions to modes of collective, social intellectual practice. Engaging black studies, queer theory, sound studies, literary theory, theological studies, continental philosophy, and visual studies, Blackpentecostal Breath analyses the ways otherwise modes of existence are disruptions of marginalization and violence. The immediate objects of study Blackpentecostal Breath engages are the aesthetic practices—whooping, shouting, noise-making and speaking in tongues—found in Blackpentecostalism, a multiracial, multi-class, multi-national Christian sect that has one strand of its modern genesis in 1906, Los Angeles, California. Blackpentecostal Breath argues that the aesthetic practices of Blackpentecostalism constitute a performative critique of normative theology and philosophy that precede the twentieth-century moment. These performances constitute an atheological-aphilosophical project, produced against the desires and aspirations for the liberal subject of modern theological-philosophical thought. In contradistinction to the desire for subjectivity, Blackpentecostal Breath theorizes the extra-subjective mode of being together that is the condition of emergence for otherwise worlds of possibility. These choreographic, sonic, and visual aesthetic practices and sensual experiences are not only important objects of study for those interested in alternative modes of social organization, but they also yield a general hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture.

A Desire Called America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian P. Haines
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Nineteenth Century Literature ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
The Relationship

A Desire Called America examines the relationship between American exceptionalism and U.S. literature. It focuses on how literary works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon draw on the utopian energies of American exceptionalism only to overturn exceptionalism’s investments in capitalism and the nation-state. The book analyzes what it terms the excluded middle between American exceptionalism and its critique, or the conceptual and libidinal space in which critique and complicity mutually determine one another. The book also offers a theory of the relationship between biopolitics and utopia, arguing that in the context of American literature, bodies become figures for alternative forms of social life. It pays particular attention to how these figures contribute to a literary commons, or the imagination of non-capitalist forms of cooperation and non-sovereign forms of democratic self-governance. In doing so, it articulates a model of literary history linking nineteenth-century literature to contemporary literature by way of the rise and decline of American hegemony. The book draws on and contributes to the fields of American Studies, American literary history, Marxist criticism, queer theory, political theory, continental philosophy, and utopian studies.

scholarly journals Fighting for Trans* Kids: Academic Parent Activism in the 21st Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley Manning ◽  
Cindy Holmes ◽  
Annie Pullen Sansfacon ◽  
Julia Temple Newhook ◽  
Ann Travers
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Black Feminist Thought ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Academic Activism ◽  
Critical Feminist

In this article we explore some of the affective and ethical dimensions that we have faced as parent academic-activists seeking to understand and undo some of the structural transphobia that currently exists in Canadian society.  Informed by critical feminist, critical race and black feminist thought, trans* scholarship, queer theory, and anti-oppression analysis, we discuss how our academic-activism assumes complex configurations of privilege and vulnerability.

Anti-Racism and Existential Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Philosophy Of Race ◽  
Jean Paul

Kathryn Sophia Belle’s (formerly Kathryn T. Gines’) publications engaged in this interview:2003 (Fanon/Sartre 50 yrs) “Sartre and Fanon Fifty Years Later: To Retain or Reject the Concept of Race,” Sartre Studies International, Vol. 9, Issue 2 (2003): 55-67, https://doi.org/10.3167/135715503781800213.2010 (Convergences) “Sartre, Beauvoir, and the Race/Gender Analogy: A Case for Black Feminist Philosophy” in Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy, pages 35-51. Eds. Maria Davidson, Kathryn T. Gines, Donna Dale Marcano. New York: SUNY, 2010.2011 (Wright/Legacy) “The Man Who Lived Underground: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Philosophical Legacy of Richard Wright,” Sartre Studies International, Vol. 17, Issue 2 (2011): 42-59, https://doi.org/10.3167/ssi.2011.170204.2012 (Reflections) “Reflections on the Legacy and Future of Continental Philosophy with Regard to Critical Philosophy of Race,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 50, Issue 2 (June 2012): 329-344, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2012.00109.x.

Georg Trakl’s Poem “Hölderlin”

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-317
Author(s):  
Ian Alexander Moore ◽  
Hans Weichselbaum ◽  
Georg Trakl ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
German Word ◽  
Poetic Response

This document includes the first English translation of Georg Trakl’s recently discovered poem “Hölderlin,” along with two commentaries on it. Moore’s commentary highlights the significance of this poem for continental philosophy (especially Heidegger and Derrida) by focusing on the German word for madness, Wahnsinn, which Trakl (mis)spells with three n’s. Moore argues that this word resists the sense of gentle gathering that Heidegger locates in Trakl’s poetry and therefore in Hölderlin and his madness. Trakl is, rather, a precursor to Paul Celan. Moore’s commentary concludes with a new translation of Celan’s own poetic response to Hölderlin, titled “Tübingen, Jänner.” Weichselbaum’s commentary discusses the background for the genesis and discovery of Trakl’s “Hölderlin.” Weichselbaum compares this poem with other moments in which Trakl alludes to Hölderlin.

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