The Light of the Leaf: A Theological Critique of Timothy Morton’s ‘Dark Ecology’

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of the Holy Trinity in a Trinitarian Ontology, in which the originary difference of the Son from the Father is related through the Holy Spirit, and given again in accelerating gratuity—like the light of the leaf that shines forth from any flower.

A Wandering Hyphen, The Reader and the Work

This is a reply to commentary by Matt Cohen, Ian Cornelius, and Alan Galey occasioned by the publication of Paul Eggert’s The Work and the Reader in Literary Studies: Scholarly Editing and Book History (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and to a review of the book by John K. Young. A theory of the work based on the negative dialectic of document and text grounds the work as a regulative idea rather than an ideal entity and finds the role of the reader to be constitutive of it. The relationship (envisaged in the book as a slider) of archival and editorial digital projects, the potential cross-fertilization of philology and textual criticism, and an expanded role for textual studies inspired by D. F. McKenzie’s writings are discussed.

El (Im)posible Rango Crítico-Decolonial en la Dialéctica Negativa de Adorno.

The current paper addresses the need to respond critically to the theoretical challenges that arise from the matrix of decolonial thinking and its relation to Theodor W. Adorno’s negative dialectics. Methodologically, a conceptual framework has been developed to establish the possible communicating vessels between the different elaborations on decolonial thinking and Adorno’s theoretical production. Bearing in mind the Castro-Gómez critique of Foucault, this approach disassociates itself from the idea that a thinker is Eurocentric on the mere basis of the locus of enunciation. This work posits that it is perfectly feasible to find an analytical exercise that allows a closer approach to Adorno’s thinking. This implies a paradoxical double movement in the analysis. One is the critical study of the Adornian approach or negative dialectic from decolonial criticism, and the other is determining the possibility of tracing plexuses of concrete interpenetration between both theoretical universes.

Η ανάδυση του ξενοφοβικού εαυτού στην τρέχουσα ελληνική κοινωνική εμπειρία: Ευρήματα από ομάδες εστίασης

The present paper provides a theoretical discussion of the qualitative findings generated by 14 focus groups conducted as a means to study phenomena of xenophobia and racism, individual and collective reactions of host majority members towards immigrants under the contemporary conditions of economic crisis that the country is facing.The focus groups were organized in order to examine how these social and economic conditions shape the ways host majority members and immigrants coexist, their daily experiences, the type and quality ofintergroup relations. Content analysis was focused on the host society members’ lines of arguments, beliefs and perceptions that they developed on issues related to immigrants and immigration. The analysis revealed four different themes; a) xenophobia as negation and rejection of the foreigners, b) xenophobia as a reaction that derives from the idea of the “indigenous citizen” who is entitled to his/her resources, c) xenophobia as an ambivalent reaction, and d) the political production of xenophobia. The contemporary conditions of the country characterized by structural violence contribute in the emergence of a new type struggling xenophobic self as a generator of a negative dialectic relationship between an individual xenophobic reaction and acollective one.

Negative Dialectics before Object-Oriented Philosophy: Negation and Event

An important question in Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and its associated literature is how OOO relates to its competitor theories. This article is a meta-philosophical investigation into OOO and its grounding, which hopes to fully theorise this relation, deriving ultimately a “negative dialectic” that emphasises the irreducible differences between OOO and non-OOO. Beginning by analysing the use of OOO as a “starting point”, I consider Althusser’s various contributions to meta-philosophical debates. This leads me to focus on Harman’s notion of “hyperbolic reading”, and on how attempts to hyperbolically ground OOO force it to immanently include its competitors. Finally, I apply these insights to systematise both the negative dialectical relation between OOO and non-OOO and the becoming-OOO of thinking, by applying Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy.

Hegels negative Dialektik

Hegel’s approach to ancient scepticism is often discussed only in the context of epistemological questions. But it is also of crucial importance for his practical philosophy. Hegel draws on central figures of Pyrrhonian scepticism in order to subject Kant’s antinomies – i. e., Kant’s cosmology – to a fundamental revision. He radicalises Kant’s sceptical method to “self-completing scepticism”. At the same time he gives Kant’s concept of the world a practical twist: In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, world means an inhabited sphere in which powers and counter-powers are in conflict with each other. In doing so, he opens up the tradition of negativist thinking in political philosophy, which ranges from Marx and Adorno to the current theories of radical democracy. When Hegel calls Pyrrhonian skepticism a “negative dialectic”, he thereby marks what he views as a deficit: the inferiority of Pyrrhonian skepticism to speculative philosophy. However, it is precisely the practical dimension of Hegel’s dialectic that suggests that the sceptical motives of his thinking should be given great weight. This can be seen most clearly in Hegel’s concept of Bildung, which defines emancipation processes as the reactivation of open power relations in static conditions of domination.

As belas imagens corporais

ResumoNeste ensaio, tendo por objeto o potencial regressivo da heteronomia provocada pelas belas imagens padronizadas das atividades físicas midiatizadas pela Indústria Cultural, optamos em narrar a história deste mecanismo repressivo que paralisa e prende a subjetividade; isto por meio do procedimento dialético negativo e tendo como instrumento de análise a categoria estética na interlocução com Nietzsche e Adorno, para relacionar este conhecimento com o que ele não é: instintivo, sensível, pois, historicamente tem suas bases no pensamento identificante que está na essência da produção social. Assim, tentamos avançar no sentido de compreender este sistema racional que insiste em resumir a essência do desigual em ideias iguais e essenciais, apresentando como formas/aparências universais, técnicas corporais com um caráter estático, arquétipos de mediação entre o sujeito e o objeto, mas subtraindo daquele a experiência sensível com este, com o conteúdo, com a realidade corporal.Palavras-chave: Semiformação. Experiência Formativa. Técnicas Corporais. Indústria Cultural.The beautiful body imagesAbstractIn this essay, which aims at the regressive potential of the heteronomy caused by the beautiful and standardized images of physical activities extensively promoted in the media by the Cultural Industry, we chose to narrate the history of this repressive mechanism that paralyzes and binds subjectivity. We carried this out by means of the negative dialectic procedure and by using the aesthetic class in the interlocution with Nietzsche and Adorno as an instrument of analysis to relate such knowledge to what it is not: instinctive, sensitive; once, historically, it is rooted in the identifying thought which is in the essence of social production. Thus, we tried to move ahead in the attempt to understand this rational system that insists on curtailing the essence of the unequal into equal and essential ideas, by presenting universal shapes/appearance as bodily techniques having a static character which are archetypes of mediation between the subject and the object, but they subtract from the former the sensitive experience with the latter, with the content, and with its body reality.Keywords: Semi-Formation. Formative Experience. Body Techniques. Cultural Industry.Las hermosas imágenes corporalesResumenEn este ensayo, centrándose en el potencial regresivo de la heteronomía por las hermosas imágenes estandarizadas de las actividades físicas corporales mediadas por la Industria Cultural, elegimos narrar la historia de este mecanismo represivo que paraliza y encarcela a subjetividad; esto a través del procedimiento dialéctico negativo y la categoría estética en la interlocución con Nietzsche y Adorno, para relacionar este conocimiento con lo que no es: instintivo, sensible, porque históricamente tiene sus bases en el pensamiento identificativo que está en la esencia de la producción social. Así que tratamos de avanzar hacia la comprensión de este sistema racional que insiste en resumir la esencia de lo desigual en las ideas iguales y esenciales, presentando como formas/apariencias universales, técnicas corporales con carácter arquetipos de mediación entre el sujeto y el objeto, pero restando de aquel, la experiencia sensible con esto, con contenido, con la realidad corporal.Palabras clave: Semiformación. Experiencia Formativa. Técnicas Corporales. Industria Cultural.

“Abandoning This Sinking Ship America”: The Classical Bildungsroman, Minor Characters, and the Negative Dialectic of Race in Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle

This article explores the way The White Boy Shuffle delinks American citizenship’s hold on Black political subjectivity. Through a narrative analysis of Shuffle’s protagonist and minor characters, the author argues that the novel forwards what cultural historian Nikhil Pal Singh calls the “negative dialectic of race.” At the level of the protagonist, Shuffle’s deliberate adherence to the conventions of the classical bildungsroman but failed achievement of its aesthetic-spiritual ideal of bildung leads to a breakdown of the dialectic that would reconcile Black history and social experience with American identity and citizenship. Yet, at the level of minor characters, Shuffle is less negating racial ideologies and more forwarding a global conceptualization of race. Specifically articulated through a series of non- Black or white minor characters, Shuffle offers alternative racial subjectivities to post–civil rights US racial common sense by highlighting racialized social and historical experiences beyond and below the horizon of the US nation-state as a reminder of the alternative global geographies of race. Ultimately, the novel both negates American citizenship as sufficient to the aspirations and desires of Black political life and reorients Black political subjectivity back to what Singh calls “Black worldliness.”