„On a touché au vers“

Der Aufsatz schlägt vor, Stéphane Mallarmés Vers-Krise von der Berührung her zu denken. In einer berühmten Passage bringt Mallarmé die literarische Lage Frankreichs zu seiner Zeit auf den Moment der Berührung: „Es ist an den Vers gerührt worden“, steht im Zentrum seiner Diagnose. Eine solche Berührung lässt sich mit den literarischen Formexperimenten seiner Zeit in Verbindung setzen. Gerührt wird an das Dogma des Verses in seiner Unberührbarkeit. Nimmt man den Begriff der Berührung in seiner Ambivalenz ernst, so geht es bei dieser Berührung des Verses um mehr. Mallarmé rührt mit dem toucher au vers an die Vorstellung dessen, wie eine Berührung des Verses, das heißt wie das Schreiben von Literatur überhaupt zu denken wäre. Dabei entzieht er dem Vers seine Gegenständlichkeit und Instrumentalität. Über die Berührung entwirft er ein anderes, nämlich ein von Distanz bestimmtes Verhältnis zwischen Autor und Werk, das für die French Theory und ihr Konzept der Berührung essenziell sein wird.

Raymond Carré de Malberg – mało znany inspirator V Republiki Francuskiej

<p>The Fifth French Republic owes its originality and permanence to Charles de Gaulle’s constitutional convictions and his determination to reform. However, in the case of France, which intellectual culture presupposes that institutions are shaped by a logical sequence of ideas, also the scientific justification of the political change must have been of great importance. The author of the theoretical rationalization of the Fifth Republic and its institutional revolution within the republican tradition was the forgotten lawyer Raymond Carré de Malberg. Pioneering nature of his writings may not raise any doubts. Carré de Malberg challenged a theory of parliament’s sovereignty from the republican perspective, which had an impact on thinking of the juristic elites participating in drafting the Fifth Republic Constitution. Carré de Malberg opened the door of republican tradition wide to the general presidential elections and referendum. He delineated the solution he recommended as the one that was in full accord with the notions and principles of the French Revolution. He applied the legal language to underscore the fact that the republic democratization would allow for the subjectivization of the executive power, restoration of the constituting power of the nation, primacy of the constitution and, consequently, the review of the constitutionality of bills. Carré de Malberg made a breakthrough in the French theory of constitutional law and thus opened up an opportunity for staging a republican institutional revolution that was an act of the founders of the Fifth Republic.</p>

Michel Houellebecq contra Michel Foucault: representações contemporâneas do Islã político na França

Resumo Nas entrevistas e artigos jornalísticos de Michel Foucault sobre a Revolução Iraniana, escritos do final de 1978 até meados de 1979, e no romance de antecipação política Submissão (2015), de Michel Houellebecq, ambos os autores parecem oferecer representações positivas do Islã político. Neste artigo, argumentamos que essa interpretação repousa sobre um duplo equívoco: embora Foucault não tenha cunhado a noção de espiritualidade política como alternativa para a crise dos sistemas políticos liberal e marxista, conforme seus críticos erroneamente o acusaram, mas como um conceito capaz de descrever as aspirações dos iranianos testemunhadas em suas viagens ao país, Houellebecq retomou, em Submissão, essa suposta representação positiva do Islã político pelo principal teórico da French Theory, com vistas a apresentar, ironicamente, a islamização como a solução para a crise econômica e sexual enfrentada pela sociedade francesa contemporânea e, assim, denunciar os herdeiros dessa representação como colaboracionistas.

Theory on Theory

This chapter assesses three areas of theoretical work: metatheory, via Jason Demers’s The American Politics of French Theory: Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault in Translation and Galin Tihanov’s The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond; three studies that theorize on the history of theory, John E. Drabinski’s Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss, John Frow’s On Interpretive Conflict, and Anne Anlin Cheng’s Ornamentalism; and five texts indicative of a surge of interest in the linguisticity of ‘death’, David Wills’s Killing Times: The Temporal Technology of the Death Penalty, Michael Rothberg’s The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, David Simpson’s States of Terror: History, Theory, Literature, and Marc Crépon’s Murderous Consent: On the Accommodation of Violent Death and The Vocation of Writing: Literature, Philosophy, and the Test of Violence.

Theory for Beginners

As Chapter 2 emphasizes, theory isn’t merely interested in but also self-presents as a beginner. Theory is concerned with the beginner in part because theory needs beginners; theory cannot otherwise reproduce. The chapter first considers the tendency of certain strains of theory to present as for children or beginners. The chapter then turns to illustrated guides to theory, which launched in the 1960s and are still going strong. That material is theory-adjacent and may even qualify as theory itself. Taking creative as well as critical form, the graphic guides seek to encourage and amplify curiosity. The guides also had origin in leftist comic book writing in Mexico. The first such title was Cuba Para Principiantes, or Cuba for Beginners (1970), by the Mexican cartoonist and comic book artist Eduardo del Río, pseudonym Rius. The guides constitute a multimodal literature for beginners with links to imagetext genres for children. They raise fascinating questions about knowledge production and help us broaden the story of theory’s career in the United States, beyond accounts of “French theory.” The chapter concludes with some anecdotes of use.