Leading scholars explore the later thought of Merleau-Ponty and its central role in the modernism-postmodernism debate.

Leading scholars explore the later thought of Merleau-Ponty and its central role in the modernism-postmodernism debate.

The fragility of democracy and the political aesthetics of public art -- Voices and places: the space of public art and Wodiczko's the homeless projection -- Democracy's "empty place": Rawls's political liberalism and Derrida's democracy to come -- Public art's "plain tablet": the political aesthetics of contemporary art -- Democracy and public art: Badiou and Ranciere -- The political aesthetics of Chicago's Millennium Park -- The political aesthetics of New York's National 9/11 Memorial -- Public art as an act of (...) citizenship -- Badiou on "being and the void.". (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism seeks a political ethics of world togetherness and a political aesthetics that can contribute to this task critically and imaginatively. Regarding political ethics, I explore the world as a “cosmopolitan mind” composed of “dialogic voices” and threatened by neoliberalism, neofascism, and other nihilistic “oracles.” I also construct a criterion for determining which public artworks (1) resist oracles and (2) help us imagine a “cosmopolitan democracy” and its political ethics. The latter includes the concordance of three ethico-political virtues—solidarity, heterogeneity, and (...) fecundity (creating new voices through the interplay among other voices)—and must appeal to different peoples worldwide. I also examine how this political ethics and aesthetics can be applied to nonhuman life and non-sentient formations in a non-anthropocentric manner; indeed, how the cosmos in its entirety and plurality can also be thought of as voices and participants in the cosmopolitan mind and its artistic expression. Moreover, I contend that my ontology of dialogic voices and proposed public art criterion, like the cosmopolitan mind itself, are “events” or “becomings.” This means that there can never be an articulation of the ontology that is final nor a public art criterion that could curtail the imaginative reach of art. (shrink)

The multivoiced body is both one and many: heterogeneous voices that at once separate and bind themselves together through their continuous and creative interplay.

Ethnic cleansing and other methods of political and social exclusion continue to thrive in our globalized world, complicating the idea that unity and diversity can exist in the same society. When we emphasize unity, we sacrifice heterogeneity, yet when we stress diversity, we create a plurality of individuals connected only by tenuous circumstance. As long as we remain tethered to these binaries, as long as we are unable to imagine the sort of society we want in an age of diversity, (...) we cannot achieve an enduring solution to conflicts that continue unabated despite our increasing proximity to one another. By envisioning the public as a multivoiced body, Fred Evans offers a solution to the dilemma of diversity. The multivoiced body is both one and many: heterogeneous voices that at once separate and bind themselves together through their continuous and creative interplay. By focusing on this traditionally undervalued or overlooked notion of voice, Evans shows how we can valorize simultaneously the solidarity, diversity, and richness of society. Moreover, recognition of society as a multivoiced body helps resists the pervasive countertendency to raise a chosen discourse to the level of "one true God," "pure race," or some other "oracle" that eliminates the dynamism of contesting voices. To support these views, Evans taps the major figures and themes of analytic and continental philosophy as well as modernist, postmodernist, postcolonial, and feminist thought. He also turns to sources outside of philosophy to address the implications of his views for justice, citizenship, democracy, and collective as well as individual rights. Through the seemingly simple conceit of a multivoiced body, Evans straddles both philosophy and political practice, confronting issues of subjectivity, language, communication, and identity. For anyone interested in moving toward a just society and politics, _The Multivoiced Body_ offers an innovative approach to the problems of human diversity and ethical plurality. (shrink)

In For More than One Voice, Adriana Cavarero argues that “voice” has primacy over other concepts characterizing human existence.1 She introduces this claim through an exegesis of Italo Calvino’s text “A King Listens”.2 The fictitious king, paranoid, insomniac, has reduced himself to a “great ear.” He no longer pays attention to the content of what his courtiers say to him. His ear picks up only the “vocal timbre of their voices.” This timbre is “artificial, false, ‘cold,’ like death.” But it (...) is sufficient for the king’s fanatical vigilance to distinguish between fawning fidelity and furtive betrayal. One day, however, the king’s auditory world is disturbed by the singing of a woman whose voice he hears... (shrink)

This paper pursues two goals. The first concerns clarifying the relationship between Deleuze and the Russian linguist and culturologist, Mikhail Bakhtin. Not only does Deleuze refer to Bakhtin as a primary source for his emphasis on voice and indirect discourse, both thinkers valorise heterogeneity and creativity. I argue Deleuze's notions of ‘deterritorialisation’ and ‘reterritorialisation’ parallel Bakhtin's idea of ‘heteroglossia’ and ‘monoglossia’. Clarifying the relationship between Deleuze and Bakhtin leads directly to the second of my two other goals. I will argue (...) that an important difference in their characterisation of voice reveals a strong point in Deleuze's philosophy, one related to the political sphere. At the same time, however, Deleuze's particular way of articulating this point conceals a weakness, one related to the idea of the subject. I will conclude my paper by suggesting a way to address this weakness. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism has ancient roots in the West and the East. A view that appeals to a quasi‐transcendental basis for cosmopolitan democracy can seem unacceptably ephemeral; yet a conditional view may amount to no more than a worldwide modus vivendi despite its claims to moral bonds of unity. This chapter shows how Jacques Derrida's notion of democracy or cosmopolitanism confronts this issue. Contemporary Marxism provides one of the most systematic characterizations and criticisms of the modern form of globalization. Derrida says that (...) he agrees with the spirit of Marxism, particularly its openness to transformative self‐critique and even more to “a certain emancipatory and messianic affirmation... or promise”. The notion of a “call” plays a pivotal role in Derrida's analysis of democracy and many of his other ideas. Derrida appeals to the notion of autoimmunity to formalize the sense in which he says democracy to come is “impossible.”. (shrink)

Genealogy is a critical method employed most notably by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. Although he does not explicitly acknowledge it, Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian linguist and philosopher of language, also uses this method. I examine the way these three thinkers construe both the critical and the affirmative roles of genealogy. The 'affirmative role' refers to what genealogy itself valorizes in exposing the limits of the universal claims it critiques. I identify three tasks of the critical role of genealogy and (...) explore what I feel are two limitations of its affirmative side: the anonymity of Nietzsche's 'eternal return of the same' and the indeterminacy of Foucault's 'undefined work of freedom'. I argue that a judicious use of Bakhtin's notions of 'voice' and 'dialogized heteroglossia' can help genealogy to overcome these two limitations without resurrecting the totalizing systems of thought that all three thinkers repudiate. Key Words: Bakhtinian 'voice' • Friedrich Nietzsche • genealogy • 'heteroglossia' • Michel Foucault • Mikhail Bakhtin • multi-voiced body • power resistance • will-to-power. (shrink)

Taking up the significance of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death in an Iranian street protest and novelist Zadie Smith’s analysis of President Obama, I offer an account of society as a “multivoiced body.” This body consists of “voices” that at once separate and bind themselves together through their continuous and creative interplay. Viewing society in this manner implies the simultaneous valorization of solidarity, diversity, and the creation of new voices as well as the kind of “hearing others” that makes these three political (...) virtues possible. It also encourages resistance to the always present countertendency of raising a particular voice to the level of the “one true God,” “pure race,” “Capital,” or any other “oracle” that eliminates the dynamism of contesting voices. (shrink)

Maria Lugones and other writers of post-colonial discourse emphasize hybrid over univocal identities. I argue that a significantly expanded version of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “dialogized heteroglossia” reveals that the linguistic community and the “voives” at play in the latter constitute a form of dialogic hybridity. This view of the linguistic community offers an alternative to the notion of pure identities and the politics of exclusion that it has supported either overtly or tacitly. Moreover, a political principle - “the interplay (...) of equally audible voices” - can be derived from this view; it permits us simultaneously to affirmmulticulturalism and to deny racism, sexism, classism and other exclusionary discourses the right to become policy-making voices.Maria Lugones et d’autres théoriciens du discours post-colonial mettent l’accent sur les identités hybrides par opposition à univoques. Je soutiens qu’une version significativement plus large de la notion bakhtinienne d’“hétéroglossie dialogisée” fait ressortir que la communauté linguistique et les “voix” en jeu dans cette dernière constituent une forme d’hybridité dialogique. Cette conception de lacommunauté linguistique offre une alternative à la notion d’identité pure et à la politique d’exclusion qu’elle a défendue, ouvertement ou de façon tacite. De plus, un principe politique - “le jeu de voix audibles au même degré” - peut être tiré de cette conception, lequel permettrait à la fois d’affirmer le multiculturalisme et d’empêcher que le racisme, le sexisme, le classicisme et tout autre discours d’exclusion puissent devenir des voix qui déterminent fes pofitiques du jour. (shrink)

I argue that an icon in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the “circle of candles” represents an alternative to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilization” thesis. But I also put forward a public policy that initially may seem to contradict this alternative: group or cultural rights, beyond, and even sometimes conflicting with, individual rights. Such rights at first blush appear to ensconce the same sort of walled-in, homogeneous and exclusionary cultural entities that Huntington’s thesis implies (...) I begin by stating Huntington’s thesis and the opposition to it that Amartya Sen has voiced in a recent book. I then provide a way of understanding the circle of candles that reinforces but also goes beyond the multi-identity type of multiculturalism that Sen places in opposition to Huntington’s warring monocultures. This understanding of the circle of candles, I will argue, shows how group or cultural rights, properly construed, can be incorporated into the type of hybrid society–what I call a “multivoiced body”– that constitutes a compelling alternative to the exclusionist responses to 9/11. My argument is reinforced by consideration of the current Zapatistas movement and their demands for group rights. (shrink)

Political activists can cheer when Jacques Derrida says that his idea of “democracy to come” is “a call for militant and interminable political critique.” Our acclamations grow louder when he adds that this idea is “a weapon aimed at the enemies of democracy.” He identifies these “enemies” as people who use the discourse of democracy as an “obscene alibi” for “tolerating the plight” of people “deprived of bread and water” and “equality or freedom.”1 He accuses the United States of committing (...) this sort of hypocrisy when it denounces other states for practicing the very roguery in which it indulges.2We can also praise Derrida for what he offers us as well as rejects. He comments that there is a need for a “European... (shrink)

The cosmology of Deleuze and Guattari emphasises the new. I raise the question of whether this emphasis cancels out two other political virtues, solidarity and heterogeneity, and thereby amounts to a fascism of the new. I reply that what Deleuze and Guattari say about cosmological unity and difference suggests that they can avoid this negative designation. I support this conclusion by considering their statements on ethics and politics and by translating their cosmological philosophy into the more immediate ethico-political context of (...) the alloplastic stratum. The latter effort is abetted by elaborating the two thinkers’ use of the term ‘voice’, for example, in Deleuze's statement that Being is the ‘single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple … a single clamour of Being for all beings’ or in the two authors’ notion of a ‘constellation of voices’ that makes up the ‘molecular’ or ‘unconscious’ collective assemblage of enunciation. This elaboration is pertinent because political ethics is essentially which voices are heard, and which not, or at least their relative levels of audibility in the alloplastic regime. I further clarify this treatment of Deleuze and Guattari's political ethics by linking it to the idea of parrhesia, courageous speech and hearing. (shrink)

In an age where diversity is increasingly accepted as a value as well as a fact, ethico-political cosmopolitanism should propose a notion of global unity that is composed of rather than imposed on difference. Jacques Derrida and Walter Mignolo offer different versions of this view of cosmopolitanism. Derrida’s version is based on his notion of “democracy to come”. He characterizes this notion as an “unconditional” or “quasi-transcendental” injunction. Mignolo castigates this injunction as an “abstract universal”. He offers instead “a critical (...) and dialogic” view of cosmopolitanism that is based more speci cally on the “colonial difference” or “border thinking” of Latin American subaltern groups. I argue that Derrida’s many implicit and explicit references to “voices” suggest a third alternative. This contender avoids certain problems in Derrida’s and Mignolo’s otherwise compelling views of cosmopolitanism. It also retains the universality of Derrida’s unconditional injunction but on the basis of the sort of worldly immanency urged by Mignolo’s border thinking. (shrink)

I argue that an icon in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the “circle of candles” represents an alternative to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilization” thesis. But I also put forward a public policy that initially may seem to contradict this alternative: group or cultural rights, beyond, and even sometimes conflicting with, individual rights. Such rights at first blush appear to ensconce the same sort of walled-in, homogeneous and exclusionary cultural entities that Huntington’s thesis implies (...) I begin by stating Huntington’s thesis and the opposition to it that Amartya Sen has voiced in a recent book. I then provide a way of understanding the circle of candles that reinforces but also goes beyond the multi-identity type of multiculturalism that Sen places in opposition to Huntington’s warring monocultures. This understanding of the circle of candles, I will argue, shows how group or cultural rights, properly construed, can be incorporated into the type of hybrid society–what I call a “multivoiced body”– that constitutes a compelling alternative to the exclusionist responses to 9/11. My argument is reinforced by consideration of the current Zapatistas movement and their demands for group rights. (shrink)

This study on the contemporary relevance of Rousseau’s ethical and social thought, the “ethic of authenticity,” responds to the tensions of modern morality and rivals the answers generated by the more mainstream tradition of the “ethic of autonomy.”.

Taking up the significance of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death in an Iranian street protest and novelist Zadie Smith’s analysis of President Obama, I offer an account of society as a “multivoiced body.” This body consists of “voices” that at once separate and bind themselves together through their continuous and creative interplay. Viewing society in this manner implies the simultaneous valorization of solidarity, diversity, and the creation of new voices as well as the kind of “hearing others” that makes these three political (...) virtues possible. It also encourages resistance to the always present countertendency of raising a particular voice to the level of the “one true God,” “pure race,” “Capital,” or any other “oracle” that eliminates the dynamism of contesting voices. (shrink)