The Trouble with Commonality: Theology, Evolutionary Theory, and Creaturely Kinship

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Evolutionary Science

This chapter examines the multispecies kinship sentiments that congeal around the theological figure of creaturely life. Analyzing confessions of creaturely kinship from both theologians and evolutionary science, the chapter argues against a reading of creaturely kinship that sees this bond as merely a form of commonality, or sameness. Working with contemporary figures such as Jacques Derrida and Karen Barad, as well as the early modern philosopher Anne Conway, the essay argues for a reading of creaturely kinship as a diffractive relational bond—one that highlights the differences and plurality in creaturely life and sees, in creatureliness, a “connective distinction” or a difference that also binds.

‘Have you the tongues?’

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-133
Author(s):  
Liz Oakley-Brown
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
Mind Set

This essay suggests that, as plays produced in the wake of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the Protestant Reformation, two early Shakespearean comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1590–91) and Love’s Labour’s Lost (c. 1594–95), engage with multilingualism’s and translation’s impact on early modern English identities in striking ways. While these late-sixteenth-century texts are products of a cultural mind-set grappling with the vicissitudes of Englishness via the dramatization of deftly layered social strata and linguistic differences, ultimately, I argue that they simultaneously anticipate cultural accord. — Keywords: Shakespearean comedy; the Reformation; identity politics in Elizabethan England; social exclusion; friendship We only ever speak one language […] — (yes, but) — We never speak only one language… (Jacques Derrida 1998: 10)

scholarly journals 1. Abstract Machines

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Johan Fredrikzon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Abstract Machines ◽  
The Us ◽  
Film And Media Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolutionary Science

Johan Fredrikzon spent one and a half years as a visiting research assistant at the Film and Media Studies Program at Yale University 2018/2019. Some months before he arrived, a two-day workshop on Simondon was held by the Yale-Düsseldorf Working Group on Philosophy and Media, titled Modes of Technical Objects, with scholars from the US and Germany. Fredrikzon decided to engage a few of the workshop participants for this special issue of Sensorium, with the purpose to discuss perspectives on Simondon as a theoretical instrument for thinking technology, how the French philosopher matters in their work, and why there seems to be a revival in the interest in the writing of Simondon these days. About Gary Tomlinson: Gary Tomlinson is John Hay Whitney Professor of Music and the Humanities and director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. Tomlinson has taught and written about the history of opera and early-modern musical thought and practice, but also on the philosophy of history and anthropological theory. In his current research, he combines humanistic theory with evolutionary science and archaeology to search for the role of culture in the evolution of man. Following A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity (MIT Press, 2015), his new book Culture and the Course of Human Evolution (Chicago, 2018) deepens the theoretical framework on how culture has shaped biology.  

scholarly journals Simondon (novo)materialismo? Um movimento para além do pensamento político moderno

DoisPontos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bardin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Strategic Experimentation ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Civil Science ◽  
Cybernetic Theory

Abstract: This paper combines Simondon’s philosophy of individuation with some aspects of post-humanist and‘new materialist’ thought, while, at the same time, remaining within the ambit of a more classically ‘historical’characterisation of materialism. Two keywords drawn from Karen Barad and Simondon respectively – ‘ontoepistemology’and ‘axiontology’ – represent the red thread of a narrative that connects the early modern invention of civil science(emblematically represented here by the conceptual couple Descartes-Hobbes) to Wiener’s cybernetic theory ofsociety. The political stakes common to these forms of what I call ‘banal’ materialism, Simondon attacked ontologically,epistemologically and politically. The conceptual tools Simondon’s philosophy of individuation elaborates prove tosupport a ‘non-banal’ materialist critique of the alleged ‘unsocial sociability’ of human nature theorised in modernpolitical theory. A genuine materialist approach, as I will argue, allows us to shift political thinking from politicsconceived as a problem to be solved to politics as an arena of strategic experimentation.

scholarly journals Mocroevolution, minimalism, and the paleobiological revolution

KÜLÖNBSÉG ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Bárdos
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Scientific Question ◽  
Long Run ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolutionary Science ◽  
The One

It is a basic question of evolutionary theory what sort of connections there are between microevolutionary and macroevolutionary processes, i. e. between changes below the level of species in the present and changes above the level of a given species in the long run. The paper argues that this question about the structure of evolutionary theory cannot be answered just by comparing arguments by modern synthesis theory on the one hand and those of paleobiology on the other. Modern synthesis theory remains sceptical of the use of microevolutionary mechanisms, while paleobiology maintains their importance. The paper claim that the question can only be answered within the context of the history of science that has been shaping it since the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. So the question about the use of microevolutionary mechanisms should be considered to be a struggle about the scope of evolutionary science and its methodologies rather than a scientific question about the reducibility of macroevolution.

scholarly journals Are we really seeing the big picture? Some reflections on the current debates in evolutionary biology

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
De-Xing Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Knowledge Framework ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
Evolutionary Science

Abstract After more than one hundred fifty years of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Darwin, scientists are still arguing on the relative importance of mutation and natural selection, on the driving force of organismal evolution, on microevo-lution and macroevolution, etc. Such periodically repeated debates appeared to have introduced more chaos than musings. What happened and why? Have we really considered our views, opinions and arguments under the big picture of evolution before posing the questions? Or are we talking past each other? We do need some reflections. While we believe that the current evolutionary theory is doing fine, perhaps a refinement or re-encapsulation of its knowledge framework can help promote a better understanding of the evolutionary science as a whole and blow off the mist over the big picture.

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