Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy

What World is This? On Judith Butler's Ethico-Politics of Breath and Touch

2024-03-31T20:00:33-04:00

Where is the Place for Black Atlantic Literature and Authorship?

2023-06-07T12:37:54-04:00

In the wake of Black Atlantic terror, enslavement, colonialism and violence, is there a place for literature? Where is there a place for the author? In other words, to rethink poet Muriel Rukeyser’s question, where is there a place for Black Atlantic literature and authorship? Proposing Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic as the window through which to answer these questions, this essay focuses on the place for/of literature and authorship as Gilroy thinks them through an engagement with Richard Wright’s life and work, and also through the work of other Black Atlantic authors, primarily C.L.R. James, Toni Morrison, Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant. These figures show that the Black Atlantic author must persist in tenaciously writing through and within the violence that defines their experiences, revealing the necessity of such literature and the importance of producing such a literary practice. This essay poses that there is no place for Black Atlantic authorship if the author is not grappling, writing, and “living with,” as Toni Morrison would suggest, the unspeakable violence and absolute terrors of experience—scenes of horror must be (re)made through cultural production or there can be no poesis. This process of transformation amid (dis)location is grounded in the Black Atlantic experience of terror and diaspora, about which Gilroy writes, concluding his final chapter with an analysis of the Jewish diasporic experience. Because this essay engages a Jewish poet’s provocation in order to think the Black Atlantic, it is crucial to interrogate both the significance of this invocation and Gilroy’s assessment of the intimate interconnection and solidarity between the Black and Jewish experiences.

On the Limitations of Michel Foucault’s Genealogy of Neoliberalism

2023-01-07T11:58:16-05:00

Michel Foucault's genealogy of neoliberalism in Naissance de la biopolitique is surprisingly lacking in critical acumen vis-à-vis neoliberal rationality. Several interpretations explain Foucault's appreciative tone by hypothesising about Foucault's supposed conversion to neoliberalism. In this article, I argue that the problem lies not in Foucault's personal politics but in a disappointing application of the genealogical method. Compared to previous works, Foucault's lectures on neoliberalism focus exclusively on neoliberalism's self-presentation by the likes of Hayek, Becker, and Friedman. It does not explore the subjective effects of neoliberalism on the governed, which would have been impossible for Foucault in 1979. I argue that, by taking into consideration the negative effects of actually-existing neoliberalism, one reveals an immanent critique of neoliberalism at the heart of genealogy. Neoliberalism promises a post-disciplinary order conducive to subjective freedom, but actually requires subjects to adapt to the discipline of free market competition.

The Phenomenology of Pain and Pleasure: Henry and Levinas

2023-06-22T09:56:01-04:00

While Henry and Levinas are often juxtaposed, little attention has been given to their shared views on pain and pleasure. Both phenomenologists converge on the argument that an adequate account of pain and pleasure requires a critical confrontation with the theory of intentionality. This raises further questions. What roles do interiority and exteriority play in pain and pleasure? Should they be conceived as different tonalities of one essence or as heterogenous phenomena? Despite their shared critique of intentionality, Henry and Levinas respond differently to these questions. We argue that Henry’s account suffers from an imprisonment in immanence, leading to a homogenous account of pain and pleasure as derivatives of one essence. In our view, Levinas points toward a more fruitful phenomenological account, both in so far as he does not divorce pain and pleasure from exteriority, and also in the way his phenomenology preserves the heterogeneity of pleasure and pain.

Sartre and the Phenomenology of Pain: A Closer Look

2023-02-06T15:38:06-05:00

Conventionally distinguished as a problem for medical professionals, experiences of embodied pain have prompted a significant set of themes and perspectives in the Continental tradition of philosophy. The discipline of phenomenology, in particular, offers thought-provoking approaches for understanding the fullness and diversity of living one’s pain in everyday life. In contrast to scientific practices that tend to take for granted the subjective structures of human consciousness in action, the phenomenological framework of lived experience offers profoundly subtle accounts for explaining how a person’s pain alters their ways of relating to themselves, to others, and to the wider world around them. In recent years, scholars of phenomenology have undertaken extensive research on the complex relationality between health and human consciousness, including the behavioral grids and existential textures that come with that relationship. Greatly influenced by twentieth century phenomenology, this new development in the scholarship has undergone three distinct waves. The first wave focused on the work of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer to develop a hermeneutic of healthcare practice; the second wave incorporated Maurice Merleau-Ponty to understand illness from an increasingly carnal point of view; and the third and most recent wave has relied primarily on Edmund Husserl to construct the intentionality involved with the consciousness of pain.

The Gift of Mourning

2022-07-26T16:12:07-04:00

This paper explores the relationship of mourning and the gift in the work of Jacques Derrida. I argue that mourning is not a Derridean gift, but mourning does open us to the gift. Reading the works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Kierkegaard on friendship and love to the dead in the wake of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship makes this relation among mourning and the gift apparent for he presents mourning as the opening to a democracy to-come whose logic is the gift. Through these accounts, I maintain that in preparing us for the gift, mourning the dead other can help us to relate better with the living other in ethical, political, and ontological terms.

The Interrelation of Dialectic and Hermeneutics in Paul Ricœur’s Early Philosophy of the Self

2023-03-31T13:18:20-04:00

While Ricœur's œuvre is commonly known as hermeneutic philosophy, it is evident that he also deals with major problems dialectically - a discipline often put in opposition to hermeneutics. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of the relationship between dialectic and hermeneutic regarding Ricœur's early theory of the self, which he developed in the 1960s, beginning with the second volume of his Philosophie de la volonté, Finitude et Culpabilité. I argue that hermeneutic and dialectic refer to each other by combining a structural model of reflexive self-consciousness and a mediation of consciousness with a transcendent other. Only their interrelation allows for a sufficient theory of concrete reflexion.

Conflict of Interpretations on Ricoeur’s Contributions to the Philosophy of Technology

2022-07-10T14:48:42-04:00

Recent literature regarding how Ricoeur’s work relates to the philosophy of technology appears prima facie to be contradictory. In one established interpretation, Ricoeur’s contributions are merely indirect as he did not engage with the empirical turn of the discipline in the 1980s and maintained a suspicious view of technology based on a profound concern with the distinction between persons and things. In this view, Ricoeur’s work does not add anything new to the discipline but is still valuable to the philosophy of technology through other features of his corpus, such as his critical hermeneutics and narrative theory. In another interpretative approach, some argue Ricoeur adds to the field by directly thematizing technology when studying ethics and human capability–he cannot be thought of as merely ignoring the complex relationship between the social sphere and technology. The present paper offers a dialectical analysis of these interpretative approaches and argues that these positions are not mutually exclusive, but rather capture complementary aspects about the nature of Ricoeur’s hermeneutic and political projects. At one level, Ricoeur engages with core themes of philosophy of technology by exploring the ambiguity of specific technologies and techniques and their implications to social, cultural, and political spheres; in doing so, Ricoeur contributes directly to the field by avoiding the reduction of meaning into merely technical questions. On the other hand, it is also true that Ricoeur, particularly in the main thematic areas of his great works since the 1970s, has not been directly involved with specific questions of how different recent technologies are intertwined with social, political, and ethical aspects, and his emphasis against a reductionist type of technical mentality distanced him from a closer engagement with specific technological issues. In this sense, most of his contributions to the philosophy of technology are indirect. Nevertheless, this paper wants to emphasize that this dialectic analysis invites us to recognize the richness and potential of Ricoeur’s thought to understand how technologies are shaping our experiences in the world. The recently published volume Interpreting Technology, edited by Wessel Reijers, Alberto Romele, and Mark Coeckelbergh, is a powerful example of such potential.

La radicalité du manger

2023-02-24T05:22:32-05:00

Nous vivons aujourd’hui dans un monde où notre manière de manger est mise à la question du point de vue moral. Nous avons besoin d'une éthique du manger, nous avons à juger du bien ou du mal des différents points de vue – carnivorisme, végétalisme, véganisme, etc. – et à différents niveaux – libéralisme et élevage, droits des animaux, etc. La surconsommation et le gaspillage alimentaire posent toujours problème dans la société capitaliste contemporaine et provoquent des crises économiques et environnementales. Mais nous posons rarement la question fondamentale de savoir ce qu’est le manger ou, plutôt, celles de savoir quel est le rapport, dans l’acte de manger ou dans l’alimentation, entre le mangeant qui vit du mangé et le mangé qui nourrit le mangeant, comment le mangé se transmue en mangeant et, surtout, la question de savoir si le manger n’est pas un acte spécifiquement humain. Ces questions sont essentielles à quiconque se demanderait ce qu’une “éthique du manger” désigne du point de vue philosophique1. Nous voudrions ici tenter de répondre à cette série de questions. Notre but est de montrer que le sujet (le mangeant) et l’objet qu’il mange (le mangé) ne sont pas distincts l’un de l’autre et que la dichotomie qu’on dresse entre eux n’a lieu qu’après une opération subjective et artificielle, d’origine humaine. Cette dichotomie est au fondement de la hiérarchie qui prévaut dans le monde anthropocentrique, et que nous voudrions questionner.

The Seduction of Metaphors

2023-04-05T03:31:35-04:00

Nietzsche’s metaphor of seduction suggests that language catches philosophers in the trap of metaphysics. Nietzsche uses the poetic powers of language to fight against this metaphysical language. However, his use of the metaphor of truth as a woman seems to seduce him back in metaphysics. Metaphors become seductive because of their rhetorical and performative power. One must therefore be wary of the seduction of metaphors when attempting at revaluating the metaphysics of language. Hélène Cixous undertakes such a task, using a poetic language in order to escape the metaphysical dualisms embedded in language without falling back into its traps.

Testing Anthropocentrism: Lacan and the Animal Imago

2022-12-30T23:45:22-05:00

In an effort to complicate the human subject, this article considers the critical insights of psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan, focusing in particular on his essay, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I As Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (1949). ‘The Mirror Stage’ explains how we break from nature, differentiate ourselves from the animal and graduate from primordial subsistence as psychically folded into the first lightning strike of recognition that arrives with/as self-reflection. Curiously however, in sustaining his argument about the human specificity of the mirror stage phenomenon, Lacan relies upon ethological research on nonhuman self-recognition. This reliance of his argument on the figure of the animal has largely been interpreted in two ways: as an inconsequential detail, undeserving of theoretical exploration, or, as confirmation of Lacan’s self-evident anthropocentrism. For instance, Buse (2017) and Ziser (2007) have noted the significant discrepancies within ‘The Mirror Stage’ between Lacan’s understanding of primate self-recognition, and that of his main source, Wolfgang Köhler. Although, both thinkers hold the position that Lacan’s treatment of the animal in ‘The Mirror Stage’ provides sufficient textual evidence for a reading that endorses human exceptionalism. Departing from this prior research, I focus on these same textual irregularities within ‘The Mirror Stage,’ yet see something quite different taking place in these moments. In order to preserve the complexity of Lacanian material, in a detailed examination utilising close reading, I pick apart long passages of both Lacan and his sources and conclude that Lacan’s position on the animal is both ambivalent and ambiguous in character. This culminates in a lack of clarity regarding how to understand Lacan’s position on both the animal, and correlatively the human. In turn, acknowledging this uncertainty provides a novel way to approach this seminal text, and a justification to revise accusations of anthropocentrism, alongside dominant interpretations more broadly.

Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on Husserl’s Origin of Geometry

2023-02-06T18:36:48-05:00

Abstract: A number of claims made by Derrida concerning Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl will be carefully considered and evaluated here. First, Derrida’s claim that Merleau-Ponty’s mis-interprets Husserl’s letter to Lévy-Bruhl will be challenged. Secondly, Derrida’s claim that his criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology can be applied just as well to Merleau-Ponty’s will be challenged. Thirdly, it is a careful consideration of textual evidence that will be used to support these challenges. Finally, Merleau-Ponty’s late lectures will take us back to the Lévy-Bruhl letter and finally to Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenology of language, one that integrates perception and language and yet that still privileges not eidetic essences or linguistic expression but perception as its primary term.

Raymond Aron and the 'Sense of Compromise' in Democracy

2023-02-12T06:03:32-05:00

This article seeks to explore the relevance of compromise in Raymond Aron’s essays. The concept of compromise has never been subjected to critical scrutiny in his works. The paper offers a new interpretation of R. Aron’s democratic theory by arguing that “the sense of compromise”, mainly set out in Democracy and Totalitarianism, is a foundational and pivotal concept to highlight the specifics of his liberal thought and his understanding of democratic pluralism.

It aims to provide a critical analysis, presenting a focused exploration of three types of compromise, broken down into three areas (the political-pluralist compromise; the economic compromise; the foreign policy compromise). In each of these cases, key qualities and limitations of compromise solutions for deadlocked controversies are outlined.
The article argues that, for R. Aron, economic compromise is the easiest to achieve.
The paper further discusses possible criteria that can help to discriminate moral from immoral compromises. It concludes that “the sense of compromise” is inseparable from any serious attempt to think afresh R. Aron’s democratic theory.