Sprawozdanie z działalności OBI: VIII Krakowska Konferencja Metodologiczna, Sympozjum w Pasierbcu, Festiwal Nauki, Działalność wydawnicza, OBI w Internecie.

By examining the idea found in the works of several contemporary philosophers that the multiplicity of worlds is no longer merely possible – as it was for Leibniz – but actually determines our experience of reality, the article proposes an understanding of worlds as transcendental structures that frame the ontological multiplicity. The article argues that such a proliferation of actual worlds implies that the concept of world should be seen today as a category that belongs to the order of fiction, (...) making the world-building devices of literature relevant for understanding the contemporary experience of reality. The first part examines the conceptions of multiple worlds of Leibniz, Deleuze, and Badiou through the structural differences and similarities between possible and fictional worlds. While Deleuze actualises possible worlds, Badiou actualises fictional worlds. The second part explores worlds as political fictions, revisiting Kant’s conception of cosmopolitanism via Rancière’s definition of politics as a conflict of worlds. Rancière’s formulation of political dissensus in fictional and narrative terms sheds a new light on Kant’s description of cosmopolitanism as a perspective that presents history as a novelistic narrative. (shrink)

The essay discusses a significant shift in conceptualizing the notion of representation found in Alain Badiou’s ontology and Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics. From Heidegger to Deleuze, the artwork was able to express an ontological truth about the world on the condition that it does not represent it. Badiou’s ‘subtractive’ approach to ontology and Rancière’s redefinition of the modern aesthetic break with representation, however, suggest that there is nothing to express beyond the veil of representation. Instead, representation can only be counteracted by (...) the occurrence of surplus representations that subvert the principles of the dominant regime of representation. The essay provides an understanding of this shift by reversing the Leibnizian conceptual metaphor Adorno used to describe the modern artwork. Unlike ‘windowless monads’, whose seclusion from the world enables them to convey an ontological truth, artworks as ‘monadless windows’ reframe the parameters of what is perceived as reality. (shrink)

The article explores Adorno’s understanding of fetishism and melancholy as immanent to the artwork’s autonomous structure. In order to understand the relation between them, the Freudian understanding of fetishism and melancholy has to be considered along with the more explicit reference to the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism. Analysing the implications of Adorno’s claim that commodity fetishism is at the origin of artistic autonomy, the article shows how it should be understood not only as a materialist demystification but also as (...) a reaffirmation of art’s apparent self-sufficiency and its capacity to resist the commodification of society. Nevertheless—the article claims—thas this is only possible if art’s fetishism is dialectically opposed to its melancholy, through which art establishes a relation to the heterogeneous element of the lost object produced by its autonomous form. (shrink)

In this provocative and original work, Slavoj Zizek takes a look at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock's Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish Joke, the author's acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society. Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political (...) significance of these fantasies of control. In so doing, The Sublime Object of Ideology represents a powerful contribution to a psychoanalytical theory of ideology, as well as offering persuasive interpretations of a number of contemporary cultural formations. -- Back cover. (shrink)

A peculiar trait unites Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag’s famous accounts of photography: both emphasize the anti-Proustian character of the medium. Two versions of the same assertion are presented in Camera Lucida and On Photography, namely that the nature of photography prevents it from being able to provide the experience needed to regain what was lost in time. Curiously enough, in Raoul Ruiz’s film adaptation, Marcel Proust’s Time Regained, photographs are used by the director to set the world of the (...) novel into motion. Does the opening scene, which shows the writer browsing through photographs of the people he used to know, merely present Proust’s documented habit of collecting photographs of the... (shrink)

The affective turn in photography theory takes as its point of departure Roland Barthes’s move from semiology to affective phenomenology in Camera Lucida. This article, however, considers the way affective phenomenology is itself grounded in the semiological structure of photography. It looks at how, before Camera Lucida was even written, Thierry de Duve had already discussed the affective implications of Barthes’s understanding of photography’s indexical nature. The article then proceeds to rethink the structural affectivity of photography beyond Barthes’s and de (...) Duve’s emphasis on a direct relation between indexicality and loss. Reconsidering photography through Jacques Rancière’s conception of the aesthetic regime of art, the article rather puts emphasis on the indeterminacy of photography, which results from the way the camera captures and isolates a spatio-temporal fragment. Shifting the focus from indexicality to indeterminacy sheds a different light on the loss implied by the structure of photography, parallel to how Freud understood the difference between mourning and melancholy. (shrink)

The article examines the transformations of the philosophical concept of world as it appears in the cosmopolitan tradition of political thought and its relation to the problem of the border. It focuses particularly on how world is understood as either lost or multiplied in the contexts of modernity, globalisation, and migration. The article discusses postcolonial conceptions of cosmopolitics and the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt to show how the universal ideal of the world is replaced by singular constructions of worlds (...) in terms of the experience of migrants and refugees or the phenomenological horizon of political action. I conclude by suggesting that Jacques Rancière’s understanding of politics as a conflict of worlds can take us beyond the traps of both cosmopolitan universalism and the phenomenological singularity of being-in-the-world. (shrink)

In Less Than Nothing, the pinnacle publication of a distinguished career, Slavoj i ek argues that it is imperative that we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more ...

This paper attempts to clarify the aesthetical, ontological, and political grounds upon which certain modern philosophers (above all Heidegger and Deleuze) denounce the metaphor as an alternative device for producing meaning through language. It comes to the conclusion that the critique of metaphor is based on the critique of analogy as defined by the laws of representation, which should be replaced by a more direct expression of immanence or being. On the basis of other philosophical assumptions from various traditions and (...) the insights of literary theory, it proposes an alternative model of the metaphor that is no longer founded on analogy and demonstrates its philosophical implications. (shrink)

The latest book by the Slovenian critic Slavoj Zizek takes the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the beginning of a dazzling inquiry into the realms of radical politics, philosophy, film (Hitchcock, Fight Club ), and psychoanalysis. Of Organs without Bodies Joan Copjec ( Imagine There's No Woman ) has written: "With all his ususal humor and invention, Zizek -- the acknowledged master of the 180 degree turn -- here takes a trip into "enemy" territory to deliver Deleuze of (...) a marvelously rebellious child, one that seriously challenges Deleuze's other progeny with a surprising but convincing bid for succession. Those who thought Deleuze's forward march into the future would follow a straight path are forced to rethink their stance. From now on all readings of Deleuze will have to take a detour through this important -- even necessary -- book." Eric Santner ( On the Psychopathology of Everyday Life ) describes Organs without Bodies as offering "an entirely new degree of conceptual clarity and political urgency. Through his deep engagement with the logic of Deleuze's project, Zizek opens up new possibilities of thought beyond the terms of the current political debates on globalization, democratization, war on terror. Once again, Zizek has produced an utterly timely and radically untimely meditation." Recently profiled in The New Yorker , and hailed by the Village Voice as "the giant of Ljubljana," Zizek is one of the most provocative and entertaining thinkers at work today. (shrink)

With his characteristic wit, Zizek addresses the burning question of how to reformulate a leftist project in an era of global capitalism and liberal-democratic ...

Book synopsis: In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Zizek looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past. Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism and Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the 'right steps in the wrong direction.' On the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the bolsheviks, Zizek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure and horror, there was a valuable core of idealism lost beneath the (...) bloodshed. A redemptive vision has been obscured by the soft, decentralized politics of the liberal-democratic consensus. Faced with the coming ecological crisis, Zizekk argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to past ideals is needed despite the risks. In the words of Samuel Beckett: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'. (shrink)

Whenever the membranes of the egg in which the foetus emerges on its way to becoming a new-born are broken, imagine for a moment that something flies off, and that one can do it with an egg as easily as with a man, namely the hommelette, or the lamella. The lamella is something extra-flat, which moves like the amoeba. It is just a little more complicated. But it goes everywhere. And as it is something - I will tell you shortly (...) why - that is related to what the sexed being loses in sexuality, it is, like the amoeba in relation to sexed beings, immortal - because it survives any division, and scissiparous intervention. And it can turn around. Well! This is not very reassuring. But suppose it comes and envelopes your face while you are quietly asleep... I can't see how we would not join battle with a being capable of these properties. But it would not be a very convenient battle. This lamella, this organ, whose characteristic is not to exist, but which is nevertheless an organ - I can give you more details as to its zoological place - is the libido. It is the libido, qua pure life instinct, that is to say, immortal life, irrepressible life, life that has need of no organ, simplified, indestructible life. It is precisely what is subtracted from the living being by virtue of the fact that it is subject to the cycle of sexed reproduction. And it is of this that all the forms of the objet a that can be enumerated are the representatives, the equivalents. Every word has a weight here, in this deceivingly poetic description of the mythic creature called by Lacan "lamella". Lacan imagines lamella as a version of what Freud called "partial object": a weird organ which is magically autonomized, surviving without a body whose organ it should have been, like a hand that wonders around alone in early Surrealist films, or like the smile in Alice in Wonderland that persists alone, even when the Cheshire cat's body is no longer present: "'All right', said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. 'Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin', thought Alice; 'but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!'" The lamella is an entity of pure surface, without the density of a substance, an infinitely plastic object that can not only incessantly change its form, but can even transpose itself from one to another medium: imagine a "something" that is first heard as a shrilling sound, and then pops up as a monstrously distorted body. A lamella is indivisible, indestructible, and immortal - more precisely, undead in the sense this term has in horror fiction: not the sublime spiritual immortality, but the obscene immortality of the "living dead" which, after every annihilation, re-composes themselves and clumsily goes on. As Lacan puts it in his terms, lamella does not exist, it insists: it is unreal, an entity of pure semblance, a multiplicity of appearances which seem to envelop a central void - its status is purely fantasmatic. This blind indestructible insistence of the libido is what Freud called "death drive," and one should bear in mind that "death drive" is, paradoxically, the Freudian name for its very opposite, for the way immortality appears within psychoanalysis: for an uncanny excess of life, for an "undead" urge which persist beyond the cycle of life and death, of generation and corruption. This is why Freud equates death drive with the so-called "compulsion-to-repeat," an uncanny urge to repeat painful past experiences which seems to outgrow the natural limitations of the organism affected by it and to insist even beyond the organism's death - again, like the living dead in a horror film who just go on. This excess inscribes itself into the human body in the guise of a wound which makes the subject "undead," depriving him of the capacity to die : when this wound is healed, the hero can die in peace. (shrink)

With a new introduction by the author In this deliciously polemical work, a giant of cultural theory immerses himself in the ideas of a giant of French thought.

The essays in this volume, focus on this distinction in their consideration of Hegel's political philosophy - his attempted (re)construction of modern ethical ...

Am Ende des 18. Jh., als eines der berühmtesten politischen Dokumente, Die Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte, verabschiedet wurde, war die Antwort auf die Frage nach dem „Was” der Menschenrechte nicht schwer zu finden, obwohl damit Neuland einer grundsätzlich anderen politischen Moral betreten wurde. Auf diese oder andere Weise wurden die Menschenrechte aus der Vernunft abgeleitet, d. h. aus einem Vermögen, welches ein „Evangelium der reinen Vernunft” schreiben sollte. Eineinhalb Jahrhunderte später, im Jahr 1948, war eine solche Antwort nicht nur (...) hindernisreich, sondern es ist in den einigen mageren Jahren des Wirkens der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte klar geworden, dass das Suchen nach dem „Was” der Menschenrechte jeden Tag mehrere und tiefere Unstimmigkeiten zum Vorschein bringt. Deswegen wird eine strategische Verschiebung vorgeschlagen: Erklären wir die Frage nach dem „Was” als überholt und widmen wir uns dem „Wie” der Menschenrechte. Anstatt der positiven Aufgabe, welches Denken auf das „Was” der Menschenrechte antworten kann, schlagen wir eine negative Aufgabe vor: Welches Denken kann dem „Wie” der Menschenrechte schaden? In diesem Beitrag soll gezeigt werden, dass sich durch die Postmoderne das onto-theo-logische Denken eingeschlichen hat, das als eine Linse wirkt, die den Blick auf die Menschenrechte verzerrt und dadurch eine der größten zeitgenössischen Gefahren für die Menschenrechte mit sich bringt. (shrink)

Krajem 18. stoljeća, kad je donesen jedan od najpoznatijih političkih dokumenata, Deklaracija o pravima čovjeka i građanina, nije bilo teško pronaći odgovor na pitanje o onome »što« ljudskih prava, premda se time stupilo na tlo jednog u temelju drugačijega morala. Na ovaj ili onaj način ljudska prava su se izvodila iz uma, što znači iz jedne moći koja bi trebala napisati »Evanđelje čistoga uma«. Stoljeće i pol kasnije, 1948. godine, jedno takvo pitanje ne samo da je bilo manjkavo, nego je (...) u samo nekoliko godina djelovanja Opće deklaracije o ljudskim pravima postalo jasno da traganje za onim »što« ljudskih prava svaki dan iznosi na vidjelo sve brojnije i dublje nesuglasice. Stoga je predložen jedan strateški pomak: proglasimo pitanje o onom »što« prevladanim i posvetimo se onome »kako« ljudskih prava. Umjesto pozitivne zadaće predlažemo negativnu zadaću: Koje mišljenje može naštetiti onome »kako« ljudskih prava? U ovom se prilogu treba pokazati kako se kroz postmodernu uvuklo onto-teološko mišljenje koje djeluje kao leća koja iskrivljuje pogled na ljudska prava i time predstavlja jednu od najvećih suvremenih prijetnji za ljudska prava. (shrink)

By the end of 18th century, when one of the well-known political documents, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, was enacted, it hasn’t been that difficult to find the answer to the question about “what” of the human rights, though then we acceded to the grounds of a basically different morals. One way or another, human rights were derived from reason, meaning from the ability which should be able to write “The Pure Reason Gospel”. A (...) century and a half later, in 1948, such question not only had certain shortcomings, but in just a few years of practicing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it became clear that searching for “what” of human rights opens numerous and profound dissidences every day. Therefore a strategic shift was suggested: to proclaim the question about “what” to be prevalent and commit ourselves to the “how” of human rights. Instead of positive assignment , we suggest a negative assignment: What kind of thinking can negatively affect the “how” of human rights? In this enclosure, we need to show how postmodernism brought onto-theological thinking which acts like lenses that give us wrong perspective on human rights and therefore represents one of the biggest contemporary threats for human rights. (shrink)

U ovom članku predstavlja se vrlo raširena škola filozofije prava: pravni pozitivizam. Najpopularnije tumačenje pravnog pozitivizma temelji se na razdvajanju prava i morala. U vrijeme velike skrbi za ljudska prava, ovo razdvajanje razumljiv je uzrok averzije spram pravnog pozitivizma. Pravo, koje je u svojoj posljednjoj instanci uvijek poduprto prisilom, toliko je osjetljiv instrument za posezanje u međuljudske odnose, da ne može biti u potpunosti odvojen od diskursa legitimacije i limitacije državne vlasti.S druge strane, pravni je pozitivizam učenje koje unatoč brojnim (...) usponima u povijesti mu antagonističkog jusnaturalizma, uvijek iznova osigurava svoju vrijednost i valjanost, tako da neki govore čak i o »vječnom vraćanju pozitivizma«. Činjenica je da su razlozi izdvajanja morala od pravnog diskursa vrlo složeni i da nadilaze predodžbu o a-moralnosti ili čak bezbrižnosti pravnika. Razlozi tog izdvajanja kriju se u ontološkoj utemeljenosti novovjekovnog mišljenja. Ovdje se ukazuje na međusobno prožimanje i svojevrsnu upregnutost pozitivizma u ontološke strukture.In diesem Aufsatz wird die weit verbreitete Schule der Rechtsphilosophie, nämlich das Rechtspositivismus dargestellt. In der populärsten Auslegung des Rechtspositivismus wird die Auseinanderscheidung des Rechts und der Moral unterstrichen. Diese Auseinanderscheidung fungiert in der Epoche der großen Besorgtheit für die Menschenrechte verständlicherweise als die Quelle der Abneigung gegen das Rechtspositivismus. Das Recht, das in letzter Instanz immer mit dem Zwang unterstützt ist, ist ein derartig delikates Instrument für die Eingriffe in den menschlichen Beziehungen, das es nicht von dem Diskurs über die Legitimation und Limitation der Staatgewalt absolut abgesondert sein kann. Anderseits ist aber der Rechtspositivismus die Lehre, die auch angesichts vieler Aufstiege ihren historischen Antagonisten, des Jusnaturalismus, immer wieder zur Geltung kam. Einige sprechen deswegen bereits über den »ewigen Wiederkehr des Positivismus». Die Gründe für die Ausschließung der Moral aus dem rechtlichen Diskurs sind sehr komplex in reichen weit jenseits der Vorstellung über das A moralismus oder Ignoranz der Juristen. Die Gründe liegen im ontologischen Grund des neuzeitlichen Denkens. In diesem Aufsatz wird die Eingeflochtenheit des Positivismus in die ontologische Strukturen dargestellt. (shrink)

À la fin du XVIIIe siècle, à l’époque où fut voté l’un des documents politiques les plus célèbresla Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, il n’était pas difficile de répondre à la question du « quoi » des droits de l’homme, même si cela revenait à entrer dans une sphère morale fondamentalement différente. D’une manière ou d’une autre, les droits de l’homme avaient leur origine dans la raison, c’est-à-dire dans un pouvoir qui devrait écrire l’ « Evangile de (...) la raison pure ». Un siècle et demi plus tard, en 1948, une telle question non seulement ne suffisait plus, mais il était devenu clair, déjà à peine quelques années après l’entrée en vigueur de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme, que ce « quoi » des droits de l’homme mettait chaque jour en lumière des divergences de plus en plus profondes. C’est pourquoi nous proposons une avancée stratégique : décidons que la question du « quoi » est dépassée et consacrons-nous à la question du « comment » des droits de l’homme. À la place du problème positif – Quelle pensée peut répondre à la question du « quoi » des droits de l’homme ? -, nous proposons un problème négatif : Quelle pensée peut nuire au « comment » des droits de l’homme ? Cette contribution doit démontrer qu’une pensée onto-théologique s’est introduite dans le post-modernisme, agissant comme une lentille qui déforme le regard porté sur les droits de l’homme et qui représente pour ceux-ci l’une des plus importantes menaces contemporaines. (shrink)

As a slew of recent work in epistemology has brought out, there is a range of cases where there's a strong temptation to say that prudential and (especially) moral considerations affect what we ought to believe. There are two distinct models of how this can happen. On the first, “reasons pragmatist” model, the relevant prudential and moral considerations constitute distinctively practical reasons for (or against) belief. On the second, “pragmatic encroachment” model, the relevant prudential and moral considerations affect what one (...) is epistemically justified in believing. The pragmatic encroachment model appears to have several advantages over reasons pragmatism, and this has led many recent philosophers to endorse the former. However, in this paper we argue that a version of reasons pragmatism can be (at least largely) saved from these purported disadvantages once paired with an independently plausible permissivism about epistemically justified outright belief. This hybrid view—“permissivist pragmatism”—holds that when there is more than one epistemically permitted doxastic attitude, practical (including moral) considerations can determine which epistemically permitted doxastic attitude one all-things-considered ought to have. This view avoids both the problems faced by simple versions of reasons pragmatism, and those that distinctively attend pragmatic encroachment, while preserving the advantages of each view. (shrink)

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)