Jean-François Lyotard's work remains a largely untapped resource for film-philosophy. This article surveys four fundamental concepts which indicate the fecundity of this work for current studies and debates. While Lyotard was generally associated with the “theory” of the 1980s which privileged language, signs, and cultural representations, much of his work in fact resonates more strongly with the new materialisms and realisms currently taking centre stage. The concepts examined here indicate the relevance of Lyotard's work in four related contemporary contexts: the (...) renewed interest in the dispositif, new materialism, the affective turn, and speculative realism. The concept of the dispositif (or apparatus) is being rehabilitated in the contemporary context because it shows a way beyond the limiting notion of mise en scène which has dominated approaches to film, and Lyotard's prevalent use of this concept feeds into this renewal. While matter is not an explicit theme in Lyotard's writings on film, it is nevertheless one at the heart of his aesthetics, and it may be extended for application to film. Affect was an important theme for Lyotard in many contexts, including his approaches to film, where it appears to subvert film's “seductive” (ideological) effects. Finally, the Real emerges as a central concept in Lyotard's last essay on cinema, where, perhaps surprisingly, it intimates something close to a speculative realist aesthetics. Each of the fundamental concepts of Lyotard's film-philosophy are introduced in the context of the current fields and debates to which they are relevant, and are discussed with filmic examples, including Michael Snow's La Région centrale (1971), Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli (Stromboli, terra di Dio, 1950), Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), and neo-realist cinema. (shrink)

This article interrogates the specter of resistance in the writings of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault, arguing they open up divergent ways of theorizing resistance to power. This article’s focus is on both philosophers’ use and interpretation of the dispositif, or apparatus, which controls and orders subjects, and which is the target for forms of resistance. Whereas for Foucault resistance is a practice existing as a transcendent possibility for any individual, Agamben reads such transcendent forms of resistance as (...) ultimately reinforcing the control of the dispositif, arguing that only a turn to ontology and immanent politics can resistance be meaningful. (shrink)

Abstract and Keywords Mainstream philosophers take for granted that disability is a prediscursive, transcultural, and transhistorical disadvantage, an objective human defect or characteristic that ought to be prevented, corrected, eliminated, or cured. That these assumptions are contestable, that it might be the case that disability is a historically and culturally specific, contingent social phenomenon, a complex apparatus of power, rather than a natural attribute or property that certain people possess, is not considered, let alone seriously entertained. This chapter draws (...) on the insights of Michel Foucault to advance a historicist and relativist conception of disability as an apparatus (dispositif) of power and identify mechanisms of power within philosophy that produce the underrepresentation of disabled philosophers in the profession and the marginalization of philosophy of disability in the discipline. -/- Keywords: disability, Michel Foucault, apparatus, historicist, relativist, underrepresentation of disabled philosophers. (shrink)

La notion d’expologie est relativement récente : ce néologisme est apparu au cours des années 1990, dans la littérature muséologique, pour évoquer l’étude des expositions d’un point de vue théorique. Cet article tente de rassembler les différents éléments pouvant être mis en œuvre dans le contexte d’une telle étude, depuis les premières illustrations de catalogues de cabinets de curiosités, les textes plus théoriques apparaissant à partir du 18ème siècle, jusqu’à la littérature contemporaine visant à analyser ce dispositif particulier que (...) constitue l’exposition, et notamment le secteur des études de visiteurs. (shrink)

While Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus is quite rightly considered a fully fledged response to May ’68 and as one with the radical politics of the 1970s, their 1980 follow-up, A Thousand Plateaus, has tended to provoke a more perplexed reaction. In this article, I will argue that we can nonetheless extract a definite line of argumentation serving a precise political end if we relate the text back to Foucault's mid-1970s output on power/knowledge. In particular, I will emphasise Deleuze and Guattari's (...) appropriation of the Foucaultian notion of dispositif via their concept of the assemblage, the former being understood as a concrete articulation of lines of power, knowledge and subjectivation, as well as the Foucaultian ‘diagram’, the latter being a more abstract or indeterminate stage of the dispositif whose relative indeterminacy, for Deleuze and Guattari, offers a means of escape. I will show that, making room for the assemblage's opening back onto the relative indeterminacy of its generative stages, the assemblage incorporates into itself a more immanent alternative to the dispositif that is focused on collective desire rather than power, within which resistance becomes a primary and generative dimension rather than a counter-attack. In the first section, I will outline Foucault's approach to power, knowledge and subjectivation, emphasising Deleuze's reading of Foucault though without trying to overdetermine my reading in this way. Next, I will turn to the Foucaultian diagram. In the third section, I will focus on A Thousand Plateaus, demonstrating how the notion of assemblage developed in this text responds to and builds upon Foucault's approach to power/knowledge and subjectivation in order to reconceive resistance. (shrink)

A growing body of work approaches the current environmental devastation from the perspective of a “crisis of sensitivity”: our inability to care for the living around us is said to be a failure of perception and feeling. The article explores several versions of the narrative of modern insensitivity through a study of Günther Anders and Jane Bennett, highlighting the limitations of such approaches. I suggest the notion of a desensitization apparatus to specify and politicize the diagnosis of a “crisis (...) of sensitivity”. (shrink)

This paper looks at the development of certain Foucauldian concepts and themes within the work of the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Where Agamben is well-known for his critique of biopower in Homo Sacer, his recent work a more complex engagement with Foucault both in terms of his subject matter, governmentality and economy, and his critical methodology, most notably, his reaffirmation of the value of Foucault’s archaeological method. Focusing on three of Agamben’s recent publications, Signatura Rerum: Sul Metodo, Il regno e (...) la gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo and What is an Apparatus?, the article looks first at Agamben’s development of Foucault’s archaeological method within his own concept of the signature. It then goes on to consider Agamben’s identification of an economic theology in contradistinction to Schmitt’s political theology and how Agamben’s discussion of collateral damage might be related to Foucault’s notion of security as developed in Security, Territory, Population. Finally, the article considers how Agamben links Foucault’s notion of ‘dispositif’ [apparatus] to an economic theology of government, calling for the development of counter-apparatuses in a similar way to Foucault’s call for ‘resistances.’ The article concludes by considering both the benefits and the limitations of Agamben’s engagement with Foucault. (shrink)

This study aims to grasp the two distinct artworks one is from the literary field: Penal Colony, written by F. Kafka and the other one is from painting: The Large Glass, designed by M. Duchamp. This text tries to unravel the similarities betwe- en these artworks in terms of two main significations around “The Officer” from Penal Colony and “The Bachelors” from The Large Glass. Because of their vital role on the re-production of status-quo, this text asserts that there is (...) a similarity between them in the name of being part of the dispositions of body and desire. First of all, the text focuses on Penal Colony, especially on “The Officer” in or- der to observe his obsession towards the order that ruled by former and the late officer of colony. Deleuze & Guattari conceptualize it as “abstract-machines” and it refers to a contingent state of being which is produced as an obligatory entity. Besides, The Officers’ application via a “labeling machine” on inmates creates a framewok of a dispositif in Foucauldian terminology. Secondly, it is emphasized that The Bachelors from the Large Glass for his context, due to its reference for the concept of desire and a metaphorical connotation for desire as “cocoa”. The Large Glass is also turn around the dispositif in a different way: love. It is stated that criticizing the love to nowhere which belongs to The Bachelors and it can be found that there is an abstract-machine again in back of this practice and it converts The Bachelors’ energeia to make an apparatus possible and operative. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to investigate one common adult representation of childhood that will serve both to reflect on and to problematize current and varied representations. As such, our object of study will always be a representation and not a substantialist definition. We propose to analyze the adult concept “child” from a critical perspective by reviewing it through a historical lens—that is, as it is expressed in the political and educational world of 19th century Chile, which, in turn, we (...) can glimpse in the historical writings of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. To carry out this journey, we propose three guiding thematic axes: 1) how all school apparatuses embody, configure and assume a certain identifiable representation of “child’ and childhood; 2) an analysis of the characteristics and objectives of the 19th century Chilean school apparatus, particularly in its function as a government device, or dispositif; 3) just how that dispositif becomes visible to inquiry in the historical record, particularly in what it can reveal to us about the image or images of childhood held by adults. To be understood by adults as a boy or a girl in Chile during that period is communicated in the historical record through a myriad of diverse sources, each requiring consideration in its context. Magazines, syllabaries, school textbooks and children's stories configure different perspectives on and attitudes toward childhood, which in turn are associated with the social origin of these documents and the purposes they embody. The images, ideas and signs of interaction that appear in these school documents act cumulatively to reveal a cultural image of “child” and aid us in understanding the political and socio-cultural significance attributed to that period in the human life-cycle. And while we cannot claim to have identified how all adults of 19th century Chile understood and represented childhood, such documents do offer insights into the beliefs and assumptions of the political and ruling classes. (shrink)

Police and pastoral power: governmentality and correctional forensic psychiatric nursing Since 1978, the federal inmates of Canada have had access to a full range of psychiatric care within the penitentiary system. Several psychiatric units are now integrated into the correctional services of Canada. This paper presents the results of a grounded theory doctoral study undertaken in a multilevel secured psychiatric ward within the Canadian federal penitentiary system. The author describes and discusses the results of qualitative data that emerged from his (...) fieldwork. The concept of governmentality, as defined by the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, constitutes one of the major theoretical tools that were helpful in analyzing these data. Police and pastoral power, two dimensions of the security apparatus of governmentality, were found to be useful in understanding and characterizing nursing practice caught between the penal and the psychiatric dispositifs. A Foucauldian perspective allows one to understand the manner in which forensic psychiatric nursing is involved in the governance of mentally ill inmates through three forms of power — sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral — which have posited nursing practice as a strategic tool of the correctional services. This research consists of a study of nursing practice in an extreme setting that deserves a radical analysis. (shrink)

The distinct French and Italian concepts of appareil/apparato and dispositif/dispositivo have frequently been rendered the same way as "apparatus" in English. This presents a double problem since it collapses distinct conceptual lineages from the home languages and produces a false identity in English. While there are good reasons for which translators have chosen to use "apparatus" for dispositif , there is growing cause for evaluating the theoretical and empirical specificity of each concept, and either to rethink (...) the rendering as "apparatus" or to keep in mind the specific philosophical trajectories of each one. In particular, the ongoing release of Michel Foucault’s Collège de France lecture courses (in which the term is frequently used), and the essays by Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben bearing directly on the dispositif and the dispositivo present a strong case for reevaluating the usage and rendering of these concepts. This paper presents a number of minute considerations on the productive distinction between them. (shrink)

Marcuse and Sartre take up the problem of alienating otherness from a Marxist perspective, Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man and Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason. For Sartre, the “series” is a social relation that places individuals in competition, mediated by the materialized result of past praxis. For Marcuse, the loss of agency results from the productive apparatus determining the needs and aspirations of individuals. The question is how to convert alienating negativity into a negation of the society that (...) negates individuals. For Sartre, this “negation of the whole” can come only from a mortal threat facing all members of the serialized group. For Marcuse, it comes from the individual becoming aware of her alienation, especially through works of art. For both, revolt must be a historically constituted, collective “living contradiction.”Marcuse et Sartre abordent le problème de l’altérité aliénante à partir d’une perspective marxiste, Marcuse dans L’homme unidimensionnel et Sartre dans sa Critique de la raison dialectique. Pour ce dernier, la « série » est une relation sociale qui met les individus en compétition, médiatisée par le résultat matérialisé de la praxis passée. Pour Marcuse, la perte de pouvoir est causée par le dispositif de production qui régule les besoins et les aspirations des individus. La question est ainsi comment transformer la négativité aliénante en une négation de la société qui nie les individus : d’après Sartre, cette « négation du tout » ne peut venir que d’une menace mortelle subie par tous les membres du groupe sérialisé ; si l’on en croit Marcuse, elle vient plutôt du fait qu’un individu prenne conscience de son aliénation, notamment à travers l’oeuvre d’art. Pour les deux, la révolte doit être, dans tous les cas, une « contradiction vivante » collective et historiquement constituée. (shrink)

This article contains an analysis of Warren Neidich’s early photographic work of 1997 until 2002. These works are linked to the extensive theoretical production of the artists who connect them to the concepts of the dispositif and apparatus respectively. The article provides a close description of the parameters of four pivotal work groups of Neidich’s early practice, Brain Wash, Double Vision, Shot Reverse Shot and Law of Loci. These works were realized with the aid of low-tech devices stemming (...) from neuro-ophthalmology, marking the interface between current neuro-philosophical discourses such as the plasticity of the brain, the apparati of visual, i.e. analog and digital, culture and the philosophy of memory. It is suggested that Neidich, even though he intervenes and contributes importantly to these intermingling discourses in a broad manner, is particularly interested in the degraded and infirm implementations of human vision in order to explore new sensations and habits of perception. (shrink)

Pour une certaine psychologie sociale, la société n'a que des effets contextuels sur les processus de traitement de l'information. Ainsi la communication n'est-elle « sociale » que demanière conjoncturelle ou alors banalement pléonastique . Dans cette conception, la cognition individuelle est fondatrice et finalisatrice, première et dernière. Mais nombre de travaux suggèrent au contraire l'équivalence de la communication, de la cognition et de la sociabilité: parler de l'un de ces termes, c'est nécessairement parler des deux autres; travailler l'un, dans le (...) cadre d'un dispositif théorique et/ou empirique rigoureux, c'est nécessairement travailler les deux autres. Il en résulte des effets de connaissance, souvent inattendus et parfois subversifs, de la psychologie sociale.In some social psychology constructs, society holds only contextual influences over human information processing. Therefore, communication is considered to be "social" only in a cyclical fashion or else in a pleonastic manner . Yet a number of works conversely suggest the equivalent nature of communication, cognition and sociability. When considering one of these terms, we are necessarily referring to the other two; when working with one of them in the framework of a theoretical or empirical apparatus, we are inevitably working with the other two. The consequences of this view of social psychology are often unforeseen and at times even subversive. (shrink)

Mental Images: Towards a Media History of the Psyche around 1900. Presupposing that visual practices are inherent to the social constitution of knowledge, this article suggests juxtaposing photographs and films produced in a psychiatric environment to popular films run in theaters around 1900, thus identifying cinema’s particular “Denkstil” (Fleck). Rejecting science’s dominating paradigm of visual objectivity (Daston/Galison), the visual apparatus [dispositif] of early cinema facilitates subjective experience of unreason and irrationality and thus initiates a different epistemological approach to (...) knowledge as self‐knowledge of a modern, self‐reflexive subject. This is particularly evident in early cinema’s depiction of the psyche, which does not solely focus on the physical manifestation of the ‘mad’, ‘insane’ body, but also visualizes the subject’s inner life: technical means like montage, multiple exposure or stop motion can be employed to illustrate subjective visions, fantasies or dreams. Thus, the invisible mind becomes visible as the “unthinkable within thinking” (Deleuze), while the subject is invited to participate in cinema’s “gay science” (Nietzsche). (shrink)

Comment Luc réalise-t-il une œuvre littéraire ? A quel titre le livre des Actes des Apôtres peut-il être reçu comme un témoignage d' « effet littéraire » ? A travers le rapport particulier entre discours et narration que révèle à plusieurs reprises l'œuvre de Luc, Ph. Asso tente de montrer les « visées persuasives » qui y sont mises en œuvre. Ainsi, cette œuvre historiographique relève de l'art réthorique, témoignant du talent de son auteur et montrant à la fois sa (...) maîtrise du dispositif aristotélicien, sa connaissance profonde de l'historiographie, et son habileté à conjuguer formes et genres littéraires de manière à servir ses objectifs : faire s'interroger l'auditeur-lecteur comme témoin de Jésus-Christ sur la nécessité d'agir.How does Luke achieve a literary work? By what right can the book of the Acts of the Apostles be received as a witness of a “literary effect”? Ph. Asso tries to show the “persuasive aims” that are brought into play through the particular relationship between discourse and narration that the work of Luke reveals on several occasions. Thus, this historiographic work depends on the art of rhetoric, attesting to the talent of its author. At the same time it shows his mastery of the Aristotelian apparatus, his profound knowledge of historiography, and his adeptness at conjugating literary forms and genres in a way to serve his objectives: to make the hearer-reader to question himself as a witness of Jesus Christ on the necessity of action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article explores Wittgenstein's little known remarks on colour from his notebooks of the early 1930s. It emphasizes the importance of the notion of logical multiplicity contained in these remarks. The notion of logical multiplicity indicates that Wittgenstein, as in the years of the Tractatus, is committed to a theory of logical space in which every colour is embedded. However, logical multiplicities in his remarks of the early 1930s do not depend on an apparatus of simple objects, states (...) of affairs, and elementary propositions. I suggest that, in this period, the logical multiplicity of colour space is a matter of how we see colours.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine les remarques trap peu connues de Wittgenstein sur les couleurs dans ses cahiers du début des années 1930. Je souligne l'importance qu'y prend la notion de multiplicité logique, qui est le signe que Wittgenstein souscrivait alors, tout autant que dans les années du Tractatus, à une théorie de l'espace logique propre à chaque couleur. Dans ces remarques du début des années 1930, les multiplicités logiques ne dépendent toutefois pas du dispositif conceptuel constitué par les objets simples, les états de choses et les propositions élémentaires. Mon propos est de montrer que, dans cétte periode, la multiplicité logique de l'espace chromatique est relative à la manière dont nous voyons les couleurs. (shrink)

Tout le trajet de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty est traversé – en certains cas de manière plus évidente que d’autres – par ce que je propose de définir comme une idée de la littérature et de la philosophie en tant que dispositifs de vision, pour utiliser une expression qui est née – et ce n’est pas un hasard – dans le domaine des études cinématographiques. Plus précisément, je voudrais montrer que Merleau-Ponty voit la littérature et la philosophie de son époque (...) opérer comme des dispositifs de vision convergents, vision qui est à considérer, à son tour, comme une pratique corporelle et pas seulement oculaire. Cela dit, il faut souligner que de tels dispositifs visuels convergents ont la particularité de fonctionner avec les mots, et que Merleau-Ponty met l’accent sur leur différente efficacité à exprimer son époque. De plus, je pense que l’idée implicite de la philosophie en tant que dispositif de vision opérant par des mots « comme toute la littérature » a une place importante, mais pour l’instant pas assez développée, dans la dernière période de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty. En outre, je voudrais souligner qu’une telle perspective est cruciale aussi pour notre époque, bien que je crois qu’elle soit différente de celle de Merleau-Ponty. En effet, je pense que notre époque et celle de Merleau-Ponty sont toutes deux caractérisées par une tension entre l’importance croissante des images et la centralité traditionnelle du concept dans notre culture.The whole path of Merleau-Ponty’s thought is crossed – some times more evidently than others – by what I propose to qualify as the idea of literature and philosophy as visual apparatuses, to use an expression that was born – and not by chance – in the field of Film Studies. More precisely, I aim at asserting that Merleau-Ponty sees literature and philosophy working in his epoch as convergent apparatuses of vision, in turn understood as a bodily and not merely ocular practice. Immediately after that, I should specify that such convergent visual apparatuses peculiarly function by words, and that Merleau-Ponty stresses their different efficiency in expressing his epoch.Moreover, I think that the implicit idea of philosophy as a visual apparatus working by words “like all literature” has a particularly relevant but so far not consequently developed place in in the last period of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Also, I would like to stress that such a perspective is crucial in our own time too, even though I consider it to be different from Merleau-Ponty’s. Indeed, I think that both our time and Merleau-Ponty’s are characterized by a tension between the increasing importance of images and the traditional centrality of the concept in our culture.L’intero percorso del pensiero di Merleau-Ponty è attraversato, in certi casi in modo più evidente, da quella che propongo di definire come un’idea di letteratura e di filosofia come dispositivi di visione, per usare un’espressione nata, non a caso, nell’ambito dei Film Studies. Più precisamente, vorrei mostrare come Merleau-Ponty concepisca la letteratura e la filosofia della sua epoca come dispositivi di visione convergenti, intesi come una pratica corporea e non già meramente ottica. Specificherò, poi, che tali dispositivi di visione convergenti operano attraverso la parola e che Merleau-Ponty sottolinea la loro diversa efficacia nell’esprimere la sua epoca. Ritengo inoltre che l’idea implicita di filosofia come dispositivo di visione che agisce tramite la parola, “come tutta la letteratura”, occupi un posto particolarmente decisivo, anche se non del tutto esplicitato, nell’ultimo periodo del pensiero di Merleau-Ponty. Vorrei poi mostrare come tale prospettiva si riveli cruciale anche nel nostro tempo, per quanto diverso rispetto a quello di Merleau-Ponty. Infatti, penso che tanto la nostra epoca quanto quella di Merleau-Ponty siano caratterizzate da una tensione tra l’importanza sempre crescente delle immagini e la tradizionale centralità riservata al concetto nella nostra cultura. (shrink)

Cet article discute, à travers le parcours critique d’un récent ouvrage d’Anselm Jappe, la thèse d’une illimitation « narcissique » constitutive de la forme subjective propre aux rapports de production capitalistes contemporains. Montrant que cette perspective est fondée sur une conception monolithique et unilatérale de l’histoire du capital et de ses sujets, ainsi que sur une réduction illégitime de toute forme d’in????inité au « mauvais in????ini » de l’illimitation, nous soutenons la nécessité de penser un infini positif irréductible tant à (...) l’illimitation abstraite de la valorisation qu’aux dispositifs capitalistes qui limitent les puissances d’autodétermination et d’autoactivation des individus.This article critically discusses the thesis, recently developed by Anselm Jappe, of a “narcissistic” illimitation constitutive of the subjective form typical of contemporary capitalist relations of production. By showing that this perspective is grounded on a monolithic and one-sided conception of the history of capital and its subjects, as well as on an illegitimate reduction of every form of infinity to the “bad infinity” of illimitation, we defend the necessity to conceive a positive form of infinity, irreducible to both the abstract illimitation of valorization and the capitalist apparatuses that limit the individual power of self-determination and self-activity. (shrink)

How can the medium be addressed when it is always already saturated in religious over-determinations and ever marked by theological concerns (such as revelation and incarnation) while, at the same time, religion would not be practiced and theology not be done without using some such medium? We encourage methodological and conceptual shifts, first, from medium to mediality; second, from religion to its partial negation (or, perhaps, partial permeation); third, from theology to doing the theological differently. With these shifts we desire (...) to initiate, continue, and intensify debates, specifically between theologians and scholars of religious studies and media theory. (shrink)