Search

I consider and support two claims about aesthetic experience: 1) that it involves encounters with a reality that is not conceptualized via such encounters; 2) that it can generate ruptures in established norms or in the production of shared worlds. This thesis is developed in the teeth of contemporary rationalist inhumanisms that draw on Nelson Goodman’s cognitivist aesthetics and his irrealist account of ‘worldmaking’ to translate the logical insights of inferentialism (or conceptual role semantics) into an aesthetics oriented towards concept-laden practices and their revision through the techniques of experimental art. I employ Derrida’s iterability argument to show that inferentialism presupposes a realist metaphysics that treats repetition and event individuation as independent of constitutive rules, conceptual schemes or ‘world versions’; indicating one way in which aesthetic material remains outside of, even recalcitrant to, the conceptual order. The aesthetic implications of this metaphysics of undecidable events are further explored by considering Jean-Pierre Caron’s recent discussion of Henry Flynt’s idea of ‘constitutive dissociations’ and, finally, the concept as, ambivalently, victim or suicide in the experimental horror of Gary Shipley’s novel Warewolff! and my own Snuff Memories. Author(s): David Roden Title (English): Ways of Unworlding: Against Aesthetic Inferentialism Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 54-64 Page Count: 11 Citation (English): David Roden, “Ways of Unworlding: Against Aesthetic Inferentialism,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 54-64. Author Biography David Roden, Open University David Roden’s research has addressed the relationship between deconstruction and analytic philosophy, philosophical naturalism, the metaphysics of sound and posthumanism. His monograph Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (New York, 2014) explores the ethical and epistemological ramifications of Speculative Posthumanism: the thesis that there could be agents originating in human social-technical systems that become posthuman as a result of some technological alteration of their powers. His current work considers posthumanist theories of agency and their implications for aesthetics and philosophical method. Roden also writes experimental fiction and concept horror works. His experimental novella SnuffMemories is published by Schism Press (2021).

F. Laruelle soumet à notre attention son Tétralogos, un Opéra de Philosophies. Le but qui est nôtre est de faire justice à l’endroit d’un ouvrage fondamental. L’enjeu est de grande importance, surtout à une époque saturée par les propos historiens—en philosophie précisément. En l’occurrence il importe de s’interroger sur le projet laruellien. L’Essentiel, ici, tient en deux mots. L’invention philosophique est le problème-clef. Telle est la force de cette question, totalement originale. Il est urgent de produire une Fiction, c’est-à-dire un processus qui crée en se créant, ou qui invente en s’inventant. Ce faisant nous reprenons la démarche des grands Romantiques s’exprimant après Kant, en lien avec Kant. Chez ces derniers il faut répéter que le souci d’une esthétique est patent. Et il s’agit de conjoindre alors esthétique et esthésique. Telle est la portée du concept de fiction. Chez F. Laruelle la théorisarion passe par ailleurs, du côté de la connaissance dont on bénéfice ou qu’on ignore. En ce sens et à notre avis, Laruelle échappe au nihilisme passif de nos contemporains. Mais Kant n’est pas adopté tout simplement. Car la fiction, selon F. Laruelle, est positive, et surtout pas fictive. Elle est fictionnante plus que nouménalement ; elle invente dans un réel « écouménal » qui n’est pas ectypal pour autant. Avec Laruelle, nous quittons la psychologie des Facultés, et même celle qui plus tard sera reprise par Modernes et Postmodernes. La fiction, bien entendue, est de ressort créateur. Elle dit inventer du réel et ce dans le réel. Elle est de/dans le réel. Esthésique et esthétique collaborent unement. Et ce encore en brisant la contemporanéité illusoire de la fonction sujet et de la fonction objet. Oui : le fictionnement invente en s’inventant, fait un effect dans l’affect. En termes laruelliens, une Tétralogie, ici très puissante, est un domaine de référence. Par exemple, il convient de dire avec force que la Philosophie non-standard touche à l’immense, alors que la Culture Europe, ou Culture Occident, compose sans broncher ni additivement, ni soustractivement. En résumé, la mesure projective, ou de mensuration, qui est effective, éloigne de l’immensité affective, tandis que la démesure, celle qui mord sur soi, s’effondre dans son soi, mais dans un potentiel non-philosophique, ou en Univers unionnant. Depuis son soi d’Univers, travaille un forcing, comme le conçoivent Cohen et Badiou. Ce dernier modélise scientistement le passage de l’Être à l’Événement. Chez Laruelle, on échappe totalement au scientisme malgré l’avis des tenants idéologisants de notre culture Europe. Nous pensons aux péri-philosophes de l’Institution, en France notamment. Author(s): Serge Valdinoci Title (English): François Laruelle: Pour une pensée-fiction a Review Essay on François Laruelle’s Tétralogos: Un opéra de philosophies Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 34-40 Page Count: 7 Citation (English): Serge Valdinoci, “François Laruelle: Pour une pensée-fiction a Review Essay on François Laruelle’s Tétralogos: Un opéra de philosophies," Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 34-40. Author Biography Serge Valdinoci Serge Valdinoci is a French philosopher, author of numerous publications and, for the most part of his career, professor of philosophy at Université de Reims (Champagne-Ardenne).

This essay contributes in part to the discussion of the concept of the border [frontière] and its relations between philosophies and sciences present within the work Épistémologie des frontières. It suggests that borders function as both a separation and a union between the domains of philosophies and sciences in their multiplicity. Borders are determinant in the times of interdisciplinarity, and such investigations are necessary because the accustomed links between philosophies and sciences can no longer be assumed. This essay proposes some hypotheses concerning methodology and the relation to the real to exercise a modelization as the articulation of multiple points of view. Modelization allows for the invention of democratic pragmatics of philosophy/philosophies towards a global re-evaluation of the relations that disciplines, such as the sciences and ethics, share with philosophy Author(s): Anne-Françoise Schmid Translator: Jeremy R. Smith Title (English): Sciences, Philosophies, and the Question of Borders Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 66-73 Page Count: 8 Citation (English): Anne-Françoise Schmid, “Sciences, Philosophies, and the Question of Borders,” trans. Jeremy R. Smith, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 66-73. Author Biography Anne-Françoise Schmid, Mines ParisTech Philosopher and epistemologist, Anne-Françoise Schmid works on the multiple interactions between sciences and arts, between epistemology and the multiplicity of philosophies. These dynamic relationships can only be understood and systematized by a science of terms and relationships, a modality of Design. AFS sees in philosophical invention, rather than a result of criticism, the effect of a conception of and in philosophy, which occurs when philosophy touches another discipline. The Design, rather than a method external to the philosophy, allows it to manifest its construction in its links to the other knowledge, doctored or indoctrinated. Philosopher among scientists (EPFL, INSA, INRA, MinesParisTech), more recently philosopher among artists (vimeo film Letre, Philosophical Scripts for a festival of lost films (Gwangju), collaborations with Robin Mackay, Benoît Maire, Alice Lucy Rekab, Gallien Déjean, Ivan Liovik Ebel). A specialist in Poincaré and editor of Russell and Couturat, she has taught philosophy and epistemology at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre, and mathematical logic at the University of Geneva. She has been teaching at the New Center of Research and Practice since 2016. Her problem is the question of how to avoid exclusions, exclusions of emerging scientific methods in science in view of what she saw in laboratories and research centers, exclusion of philosophies in the name of the supremacy of one of them. To this end, she has manifested the hypotheses of classical epistemology and has made extensions of them to take into account the generalized interdisciplinarity of contemporary sciences (in collaboration with Jean-Marie Legay, biologist, Muriel Mambrini-Doudet, biologist, Armand Hatchuel, management sciences, Nicole Mathieu, geographer, Maryse Dennes, Russian philosophy). At the same time, she works on a philosophical style not in but with philosophies considering their multiplicity (Philo-fiction, La revue des non-philosophes).

Uncanny valley (不 気 味 の 谷 ) is a notion introduced by the Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970. The basic claim of his hypothesis states that the anthropomorphic machines cause uncanny effect due to their imperfect resemblance to the human. Humanoids seem almost like people, but exactly the distance of this almost provokes hot debates. There are two trends in robotics, animation, architecture, and computer games. The first trend seeks to overcome the uncanny valley, constructing such an incredible machine that perfectly mimics human actions. The second trend – Masahiro Mori takes this side – consciously constructs non-anthropomorphic machines. The machine’s appearance, structure, shape, proportion of the parts, and motion must be visibly different from the human ones. The term uncanny valley appears in a European context soon after its introduction, due to Jasia Reichardt’s translation in 1978. She is an art critic and curator who is interested in the role of cybernetics in art. The joint between the uncanny valley in robotics and the legacy of Freud and Jentsch is established with this translation at the intersection point between aesthetics and science. This link opens new fields to theoretical and aesthetic imagination.

Author(s): Oscar Pichardo Isaak Title (English): An Algorithmic Socialism in Defense of the Lived Without Life: A Political Proposal through Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals by Katerina Kolozova Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 100-104 Page Count: 5 Citation (English): Oscar Pichardo Isaak, “An Algorithmic Socialism in Defense of the Lived Without Life: A Political Proposal through Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals by Katerina Kolozova,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 100-104. Author Biography Oscar Pichardo Isaak, Independent researcher Oscar Pichardo Isaak is a writer, musician, filmmaker and self-taught philosopher from Mexico. His first full feature film, Aimee, has been shown at several international film festivals and is inspired in lacanian psychoanalysis and its discourse about psychosis. His current research is situated in the crossroad of non-standard philosophy, science, and political economy.

We are currently living through a time in which the line dividing capital and state has dissolved beyond repair, where free-market economics and rules of governance have become nothing more than a totality of bio-political control for capitalist and subjective fixes, and, where the distinctions between corporate hegemony, policy making, free-speech and mainstream media have become seemingly non-existent. This text attempts to act as a remedy to this by examining and analyzing some of the key tenets of what must be done in order to create a post-capitalist society, and move towards a reimagined oikos and oikonomia. It focuses largely on the necessity of moving away from subjectivity-centered thought, and towards a new form of materialist universality. Author(s): Zachary De Jong Title (English): Reimagining the Oikos Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 74-82 Page Count: 9 Citation (English): Zachary De Jong, “Reimagining the Oikos,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 74-82. Author Biography Zachary De Jong, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje Zachary De Jong is an MA student at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities Skopje, where he is supervised by Professor Katerina Kolozova.

The question of the book is how a radical critique of capitalism is possible when critique in the tradition of Kant and Hegel means that the criticized subject itself has to “give” the measure of its critique. The thesis is that, while in Kant this reflexivity is achieved by transcendental subjectivity and reason and in Hegel by self-consciousness, self-relation of the concept and the absolute reason of spirit, in Marx we find a materialist turn. The turn shows that capitalist society became reflexive by a kind of self-measurement, done by the functions of money, on the one hand, and the valorization of labour power and capital, on the other. Money, by its function as the measure of value and the means of its realization and mediation, measures in the commodities the productive relations of their production, thus determining from the past valorization of labour and capital the magnitudes necessary for their further productive valorization — and hence for a productive use of money itself. That is how, in money’s capital form, the measured magnitudes become reflexive, while money itself becomes in its capitalist self-relation the form to measure the same valorization process which by this form becomes possible in the first place. The aim of the book is to translate this process into an economy of time, showing that money’s quantification of social relations is nothing else than this translation itself. Author(s): Frank Engster Translator: Isidora Hennig Title (English): Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014) Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021). Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 42-52 Page Count: 11 Citation (English): Frank Engster, “Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014),” trans. Isidora Hennig, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 42-52. Author Biography Frank Engster, Independent researcher Frank Engster wrote his PhD thesis on the subject of time, money and measure. He is interested in the different — (post-)operaist, (post-)structuralist, form-analytic, (queer-)feminist etc. — readings of Marx’s critique, especially in money as a technique and its connection with measurement, quantification, time and (natural) science. Some publications are available on academia.edu

Starting from a scholarship (in particular, Judith Butler) who puts forward a new approach to the politics of loss, this article analyzes the relationship that the families of the militaries who died in the international missions carried out in Afghanistan since 2001 have established with war-oriented national discourse: have they (women especially) limited themselves to amplify it, accepting the role assigned to them by the sacrifice for the homeland (and world peace) narrative, or has the experience of loss stimulated a critical reassessment of the pact State-citizens?