Machinery of Death or Machinic Life

Derrida Today ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wills
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Knife Edge ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Way

The notion of a ‘machinery of death’ not only underwrites abolitionist discourse but also informs what Derrida's Death Penalty refers to as an anesthesial drive that can be traced back at least as far as Guillotin. I read it here as a symptom of a more complex relation to the technological that functions across the line dividing life from death, and which is concentrated in the question of the instant that capital punishment (at least in order to be distinguished from torture) requires. Further indications of such a relation include the forms of automatic machinism that regulate, on one hand, the generalisable certainty that death occurs (in tension with the singular death of each convict), and on the other, the discursive contagion that the death penalty generates. But it can be analysed most productively in the way in which the putative instantaneity of an execution reveals how life is severed from, but also perhaps tethered to death by means of a machinery of time; how that machinery of time ‘abandons’ its indifference in order to decide the moment of death by execution, and at the same time, by contriving an instant at which death takes over from life, produces the uncanny result of having life and death meet on the same knife-edge.

Der Fall des Philosophen

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Gekle
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Ernst Bloch ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
History Of ◽  
Painful Experience ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

The history of mental development on the one and the history of his writings on the other hand form the two separate but essentially intertwined strands of an archeology of Ernst Bloch´s thought undertaken in this book. Bloch as a philosopher is peculiar in that his initial access to thought rose from the depths of early, painful experience. To give expression to this experience, he not only needed to develop new categories, but first and foremost had to find words for it: the experience of the uncanny and the abysmal, of which he tells in Spuren, is on the level of philosophical theory juxtaposed by the “Dunkel des gerade gelebten Augenblicks” (darkness of the moment just lived) and his discovery of a “Noch-nicht-Bewusstes” (not-yet-conscious), thus metaphysically undermining the classical Oedipus complex in the succession of Freud. In this book, psyche, work and the history of the 20th century appear concentrated in Ernst Bloch the philosopher and contemporary witness, who paid tribute to these supra-individual powers in his work as much as he hoped to transgress them.

scholarly journals Non-philosophical Christ-poetics beyond the mystical turn in conversation with continental philosophy of religion

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann-Albrecht Meylahn
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Negative Theology ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
Critical Conversation ◽  
Language Text ◽  
The Way

The religious turn in continental philosophy has opened the door for postmetaphysical mystical theology. Postmetaphysical mystical theology seeks to understand the non-relation relation of language (text) to the Other. Yet, this non-relation relation to the Other, who is every other, can also be interpreted differently to the mystical understanding. For example, Žižek argues that the Other, which is often experienced as the uncanny, the unpredictable and the contingent (lived spirituality), is not necessarily the result of some mystical unknowable Otherness but is a consequence of the way the subject’s own activity is inscribed into reality. These experiences of lived spirituality or experiences of Otherness can, rather than being interpreted as an in-breaking of the mystical Other, be interpreted otherwise, as a grammatological consequence of the inability and impossibility of language (Lacan). Therefore, in this article, Žižek’s thoughts function as a bridge to bring this mystical turn back into critical conversation with continental philosophy and particularly with the thoughts of Derrida, Laruelle and Stiegler. The contemporary mystical turn in theology rediscovers something of this non-religious religion. Derrida’s thoughts are in close proximity to negative theology and yet there is an important difference. This difference will be explored and further developed towards Laruelle’s non-philosophy, which does not translate into a non-religion religion or postmetaphysical metaphysics but remains a non-philosophy or maybe a science of Christ. This article will conclude with a tentative exploration of a postmetaphysical Christ-poetics beyond the mystical turn.

scholarly journals DEATH IN THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF J. DERRIDA: TERRORISM, SECRECY, DEATH PENALTY AND THE CRISIS OF THE MODERN NATIONAL STATE

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-197
Author(s):  
George Bakhtin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Integral Feature ◽  
Modern Nation State

The article outlines the main crisis points and trends in the development of the modern nation-state. Special attention is paid to the consideration of the phenomenon of terrorism as an inevitable product of the Enlightenment project. The coronavirus pandemic has made the problem points more relevant, calling into question not only the essence of democracies, but also the irreversibility of the processes of globalization. The author suggests following the logic of the argumentation of the French philosopher J. Derrida, who preferred to deconstruct the power discourse in order to find an answer to the question: how and to what extent is it possible to combat violence and terror, the products of modern Western civilization. The article consistently examines the prerequisites for understanding death not only as a secret rooted in antiquity and associated with the classical paradigm of philosophizing, phenomenology, Heideggerianism and existentialism, but also as an economy of mourning for the dead, which is close to psychologism and Freudianism. The focus is concentrated on the study of the mechanisms of the sovereign state that help it to claim comprehensive possession of the moment of death for a person sentenced to death. Capital punishment - an instrument of control on the part of sovereignty - is interpreted as the core of the theological and political tradition that determines the orthogenesis of any nation-state. Finally, the author considers the concept of the “heart of the other” as a starting point for the fight against abuse and for debunking phantasms and illusions that are an integral feature of the modern political organism. It is the deconstruction of the death penalty that is the key subject touched upon by the author of the article.

Undoing Death I

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Average Period

Capital punishment has been described as a ‘lottery’, implying that it operates at random; but in Ireland a pattern can be discerned. Murderers who avoided execution fell into one of six categories, with a clear gradient in how sympathetically they were viewed, as indicated by the duration of their coercive confinement and the likelihood that mercy would be recommended. At one end of the scale were those who destroyed an unwanted child, 92 per cent of whom aroused the sympathy of judge and jury and who were denied their liberty for 44 months, on average. At the other extreme were those whose treatment was capricious, only 20 per cent of whom received recommendations to mercy and whose average period of coercive confinement was 115 months. This chapter explores cases where the death penalty was imposed for the murder of an infant (usually, but not always, by the mother), romantic entanglements that had lethally soured, and sexual violence resulting in death.

Violence and Hyperbole

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Naas
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

The aim of this essay is to understand the underlying motivation behind Derrida’s initial objections to Foucault in his 1963 “Cogito and the History of Madness” and the way these objections anticipate so much of Derrida’s subsequent work. Beyond a disagreement over how to read a crucial moment in Descartes’ Meditations regarding the Cogito’s relation to madness, the “Cogito” essay provides a full-fledged theory of the relationship between history, language, and reason, on the one hand, and madness, silence, and death, on the other. Only through understanding this configuration is it possible to understand why Derrida would call Foucault’s The History of Madness not just a mistaken or misguided text but a “totalitarian” one. After outlining the reasons for Derrida’s strident critique of Foucault’s work on the basis of this underlying opposition between history and madness or reason and silence, Naas demonstrate how this same configuration is at work in early texts such as “Violence and Metaphysics,” right up through Derrida’s final seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign and, especially, The Death Penalty. Naas concludes by pointing out that while Derrida’s theoretical questions were always very different than Foucault’s, both thinkers ended up, curiously, on the same side in their critique of today’s carceral system and its forms of punishment. Only by taking into account both the similarities and the differences between Derrida and Foucault, in both their political positions and their philosophical texts, can we today really “do justice” to the history of their infamous debate.

scholarly journals A Gap Between Right to Live Protection and Death Penalty in Indonesia (Judges Decision on Cases Threatened Death Penalty)

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 02005
Author(s):  
Febrian ◽  
Nurhidayatuloh ◽  
Helena Primadianti ◽  
Ahmaturrahman ◽  
Fatimatuz Zuhro
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
District Courts ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Government

In Indonesia, right to life and death penalty has been perceived separately both by legislative and judiciary institutions. It can be seen from the government stand to ratify covenant regarding to right to life, but impose death penalty. This article is trying to elaborate judges’ decisions to cases threatened to death at district courts in South Sumatra and Yogyakarta Province. The research will contribute to provide an understanding of judges to the Article 6(2) ICCPR in both provinces. The main methods for this research comprise literature review and review of selected verdicts from district courts in both provinces. The data will be supported by several interviews to several judges serving in the district courts. As a result, none of the verdicts provide a consideration on human rights law set forth in the Article 6(2) for the cases threatened to death. In contrast, some judges believe that capital punishment has a deterrent effect for others. Fortunately, in some district courts, the judges are for sure that death penalty is the very last choice for very sadistic culprit when there is no mitigating circumstance in sentencing.

It Serves you Right

Philosophy ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 37 (142) ◽  
pp. 293-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Manser
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Good Starting Point

In this paper I want to examine the notion of desert, which seems to have been neglected by contemporary philosophers. Apartfrom its interest in its own right, it is important to be clear about the meaning of the word if there is to be any understanding of the idea of punishment. And that we are confused over the whole issue of punishment is obvious both from the remarks of professional philosophers and from the comments of the ‘man in the street’. Because of this confusion, the discussion of any actual punishment seems to take place between two parties who never get to grips with the arguments of the other, as in the whole debate over the death penalty. To one set of people, it is obvious that the retention of hanging depends to a large extent on the question of its effectiveness in deterring murderers; to another it is equally obvious that the murderer ‘deserves’ to hang, and that there is no more to be said about the matter. Capital punishment is not a good starting-point for a discussion of punishment in general, for death is clearly unique among penalties; in addition, the topic gives rise inevitably to much sentimentality and resulting muddle-headedness.

Varieties of Attack on the Death Penalty

1969 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Greenberg ◽  
Jack Himmelstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Challenge ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
The Way

The latest execution in the United States occurred on June 2, 1967. Since then, death sentences have been stayed as courts across the country consider a legal challenge to the constitution ality of the death penalty. This paper describes the distorting effect that capital punishment has had on the legal system and the discriminations in the way it has been administered—for example, in rape cases it is applied almost exclusively to Negroes convicted of raping while women. The legal attack focuses on those procedural vices that reflect the arbitrariness and irration ality inherent in capital punishment. Courts are being called on to subject the death penalty to a reasoned examination and to test its validity against the commands of the Constitution, while the number of persons on the nation's death rows continues to grow past the 500 mark. This confrontation on the issue of capital punishment is part of the more general conflict taking place over how society may best cope with its problems without resort to violence.

Reading the ‘lay of the land’: intercessory advocacy and causal process in the HIV/AIDS treatment and death penalty abolitionist campaigns

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Noakes
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
The Other ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
Hiv Positive ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Improve Treatment ◽  
Hiv Aids

The cases presented in this chapter—those to improve care for the HIV positive and to abolish capital punishment—jointly call attention to the need to pay close attention to sequence and causal force in TAN campaigns. The HIV/AIDS campaign is an example of ‘intercessory advocacy,’ in which a campaign seized upon an opportunity to play a role in a state-led effort to improve treatment programs. By packaging its message in a manner palatable to the state, it was able to play a role in crafting China’s emergent anti-HV strategy. The campaign to abolish capital punishment, on the other hand, exercised very little effect on China’s much publicized effort to reduce reliance of on the death penalty. Rather, the scaling back of the death penalty is driven mostly by domestic political considerations, namely a desire to retain the practice of capital punishment for purposes of crime control while simultaneously strengthening the rule of law by introducing greater accountability into the death penalty process through the highly publicized policy of ‘kill fewer, kill carefully.’

scholarly journals O PRAWNOKARNEJ OCHRONIE NASCITURUSA W III STATUCIE LITEWSKIM

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Sławomir Godek
Keyword(s):  
Pregnant Woman ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
German Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Criminal Protection ◽  
The One

Legal and Criminal Protection of ‘nasciturus’ in the Third Lithuanian StatuteSummary The Third Lithuanian Statute of 1588 regulated the issue specified in the title only partly and quite inconsistently. On the one hand, the Third Statute introduced criminal responsibility for injuring a pregnant woman, which caused a miscarriage; nevertheless, the penalty was insignificant. On the other hand, the legislation stipulated that carrying out a capital punishment must be put off until a child’s birth, which shows the the Lithuanian legislator’s intention to respect the fetus’ right to life. The Statute also provided for the death penalty for abortion and infanticide; nevertheless - contrary to the German law applied in cities - it did notintroduce an explicit distinction between these two crimes. Another inconsistency of the Statute is a lack of punishment in case of a homicide of a bastard child.

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