In this essay I want to take some metaphors seriously. I want to push at their limits and ask whether this exercise can help us think differently about photographs and their relationship to what they depict. (Should it be ‘what they depict’ or ‘what they are seen as depicting’? The choice of phrasing depends on theoretical position: is depiction inherent in the image, or is it seen by the viewer?). The moel of citationality based on Cadava’s work is developed (...) by exploring in more detail the variety of bibliographic ciataions. (shrink)

This article seeks to lay out an analysis of Giorgio Agamben’s central claims with regard to the formation of a theory of citationality. By juxtaposing Walter Benjamin’s theory of citations alongside his more recent, critical engagements with the Western theological tradition, Agamben sets himself the goal of redefining ethics along Levinasian lines in order to arrive at a respect for the face of ‘whatever’ being before us, the true source towards which all citations point.

This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthropology's subject. Toward this, I examine Cohn's notion of `the colonial (...) situation' and reflect on how the emergence of the human sciences is intertwined with the proliferation of colonialism's enduring legacy within postcoloniality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article reinscribes a question asked by J. Hillis Miller nearly a decade ago: How can Derrida's political thought help us today? It answers this question by reading Derrida's treatment of the relationship between citationality and event, especially as this relationship is articulated in 9/11 and in autoimmune responses to 9/11—which continue to plague “us” today. In short, the citational structure of 9/11 demands that our responses to this trauma be “kept open” to the future and to the (...) democracy to come. Desires for nationalisms and walls are so many attempts to close off this openness, this future: desires to deny the citational structure of the event. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This article concerns a moment in French intellectual history when the self-evidences of structuralism become doubtful under the pressure exerted by _discourse_; it thus treats a _second turn_ within the linguistic turn as it occurred in France. The work of Emile Benveniste, and texts by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Paul Ricoeur, flesh out this development. I use them, as well as John Searle’s response, to approach anew Derrida’s essay “Signature Event Context.” Derrida’s distance from this second (...) linguistic turn thereby becomes visible, and the distinct status of _discourse_ in Derrida’s own thought emerges. Finally, critiquing Derrida’s folding of discourse into a notion of “signifying form” in SEC, while drawing on his account there of “citationality,” I sketch new directions for conceiving of context and discourse themselves, ones arguably able to withstand Derrida’s express concerns. (shrink)

Our everyday practices are meaningful in several ways. In addition to the linguistic meanings of our terms and sentences, we attach social meanings to actions and statuses. Philosophy of language and public debates often focus on contesting morally and politically pernicious linguistic practices. My aim is to show that this is too little: even if we are only interested in morally and politically problematic terms, we must counteract a pernicious linguistic practice on many levels, especially on the level of its (...) underlying social meanings. Otherwise, the critique of specific words as the most salient fruits of this practice will be futile. I trace out two paths through which pernicious social meanings feed into linguistic meanings and make the case for constructive contestations of social meanings as an alternative to criticising the use of a few highly pernicious terms in which these social meanings are manifest. My investigation into how social structures shape both social and linguistic meanings sheds further light on the ways in which social meanings enter linguistic exchanges. Moreover, it reveals that what is said in specific situations is more closely connected to our non-verbal actions than the current literature on semantics and the social sciences allows. (shrink)