This book approaches the problems and circumstances confronting blacks in the context of black values, the black community, and the role of government. ^BContents:: The Black Community's Values as a Basis for Action; The Community as Agent of Change; and The Government's Role in Meeting New Challenges.

This paper proposes that engineers in public service are confronted with unavoidable complexity in their ethical considerations. The complexity begins with interactions among venues of ethical choices. Engineers must make ethical choices simultaneously at the individual, professional, organizational and societal levels. These ethical domains often conflict. The complexity also stems from situations in which physical properties may remain stable, but important social, economic, institutional and political conditions can change substantially. The paper proposes that the reflective learning approach of pragmatism can (...) help with these challenging situations. This approach depends upon employing Dewey’s five stage process of inquiry to engage the ethical complexity inherent in the practice of engineering in the public service. (shrink)

The Parallax View is Slavoj Zizek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Zizek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Zizek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Zizek (...) begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism.Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Zizek, with his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in today's brain sciences ; and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Zizek offers interludes that deal with more specific topics--including an ethical act in a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism.The Parallax View not only expands Zizek's Lacanian-Hegelian approach to new domains but also provides the systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work. Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes. (shrink)

The Parallax View is Slavoj Zizek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Zizek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Zizek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Zizek (...) begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism.Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Zizek, with his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in today's brain sciences ; and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Zizek offers interludes that deal with more specific topics--including an ethical act in a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism.The Parallax View not only expands Zizek's Lacanian-Hegelian approach to new domains but also provides the systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work. Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes. (shrink)

In his formidable Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, Kojin Karatani endeavors to assert the critical potential of an in-between stance which he calls the “parallaxview”: when confronted with an antinomic stance, in the precise Kantian sense of the term, one should renounce all attempts to reduce one aspect to the other. One should, on the contrary, assert antinomy as irreducible, and conceive the point of radical critique not as a certain determinate position as opposed to another position, but as the (...) irreducible gap between the positions themselves, the purely structural interstice between them. Kant’s stance is thus “to see things neither from his own viewpoint, nor from the viewpoint of others, but to face the reality that is exposed through difference .” What Kant does is to change the very terms of the debate; his solution—the transcendental turn—is unique in that it first rejects any ontological closure: it recognizes a certain fundamental and irreducible limitation of the human condition, which is why the two poles, rational and sensual, active and passive, cannot ever be fully mediated—reconciled. And, according to Karatani, Marx, in his “critique of political economy,” when faced with the opposition of the “classical” political economy and the neo-classic reduction of value to a purely relational entity without substance, accomplished exactly the same breakthrough toward the “parallax” view: he treatedthis opposition as a Kantian antinomy, i.e., value has to originate outside circulation, in production, and in circulation. (shrink)

In his formidable Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, Kojin Karatani endeavors to assert the critical potential of an in-between stance which he calls the “parallaxview”: when confronted with an antinomic stance, in the precise Kantian sense of the term, one should renounce all attempts to reduce one aspect to the other. One should, on the contrary, assert antinomy as irreducible, and conceive the point of radical critique not as a certain determinate position as opposed to another position, but as the (...) irreducible gap between the positions themselves, the purely structural interstice between them. Kant’s stance is thus “to see things neither from his own viewpoint, nor from the viewpoint of others, but to face the reality that is exposed through difference (parallax).” What Kant does is to change the very terms of the debate; his solution—the transcendental turn—is unique in that it first rejects any ontological closure: it recognizes a certain fundamental and irreducible limitation (“finitude”) of the human condition, which is why the two poles, rational and sensual, active and passive, cannot ever be fully mediated—reconciled. And, according to Karatani, Marx, in his “critique of political economy,” when faced with the opposition of the “classical” political economy and the neo-classic reduction of value to a purely relational entity without substance, accomplished exactly the same breakthrough toward the “parallax” view: he treatedthis opposition as a Kantian antinomy, i.e., value has to originate outside circulation, in production, and in circulation. (shrink)

In his formidable Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, Kojin Karatani endeavors to assert the critical potential of an in-between stance which he calls the “parallaxview”: when confronted with an antinomic stance, in the precise Kantian sense of the term, one should renounce all attempts to reduce one aspect to the other. One should, on the contrary, assert antinomy as irreducible, and conceive the point of radical critique not as a certain determinate position as opposed to another position, but as the (...) irreducible gap between the positions themselves, the purely structural interstice between them. Kant’s stance is thus “to see things neither from his own viewpoint, nor from the viewpoint of others, but to face the reality that is exposed through difference (parallax).” What Kant does is to change the very terms of the debate; his solution—the transcendental turn—is unique in that it first rejects any ontological closure: it recognizes a certain fundamental and irreducible limitation (“finitude”) of the human condition, which is why the two poles, rational and sensual, active and passive, cannot ever be fully mediated—reconciled. And, according to Karatani, Marx, in his “critique of political economy,” when faced with the opposition of the “classical” political economy and the neo-classic reduction of value to a purely relational entity without substance, accomplished exactly the same breakthrough toward the “parallax” view: he treatedthis opposition as a Kantian antinomy, i.e., value has to originate outside circulation, in production, and in circulation. (shrink)

_Parallax_ is an international, peer-reviewed journal that aims towards a critical engagement with the production of culture and knowledge. The journal explores a wide range of cultural practices, reconfiguring the production and understanding of culture as well as the relation between theory and practice itself. This text brings together scholars from a number of different theoretical backgrounds to consider the ethical and political processes involved in witnessing, and the possible limits of theory in some situations. Contributors include J.M. Bernstein, Kelly (...) Oliver, Griselda Pollock, Laurence Rickels, Avital Ronell and Hayden White. (shrink)

Contemporary capitalism is caught in a dual crisis of economy and ecology. Central to both dimensions of this crisis is the issue of growth. On the one hand, capitalist economies must exhibit perpetual growth in order to function properly. On the other hand, the expansion of capitalist production and consumption ultimately interferes with the processes of natural growth that we find within the domain of ecology. Parallax of Growth explores the ideas of economy and ecology and the factors that (...) have put them on a collision course. Among other things, the book aims to explain why our current mode of economic organization seems to be inherently committed to perpetual growth. A key answer, argues Bjerg, is that contemporary capitalism is characterized by an inherent ′debt drive′, whereby the creation of money through the issuance of commercial bank credit has locked our economy in a vicious circle of forced growth and increasing debt. Parallax of Growth is not a catalogue of solutions to the ecological or the economic crisis. The book aims to shift the inquiry from ‘what shall we do?’ to ‘why have we not already done it?’ In order to address the challenges of our contemporary times of crisis, it is not enough to point out all the different reasons why perpetual economic growth is impossible and unsustainable. We need to understand how the idea of growth is deeply ingrained in the ideology as well as the organization of our society. The book aims to open the space for philosophical thinking about this important issue. (shrink)

Parallax, or the change in the position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and more precisely, the assumption that this adjustment is not only due to a change of focus, but a change in that object's ontological status has been a key philosophical concept throughout history. Building upon Slavoj Žižek's The Parallax View, this volume shows how parallax is used as a figure of thought that proves how the incompatibility between the physical and (...) the theoretical touches not only upon the ontological, but also politics and aesthetics. With articles written by internationally renowned philosophers such as Frank Ruda, Graham Harman, Paul Livingston and Zizek himself, this book shows how modes of parallax remain in numerous modern theoretical disciplines, such as the Marxian parallax in the critique of political economy and politics; and the Hegelian parallax in the concept of the work of art, while also being important to debates surrounding speculative realism and dialectical materialism. Spanning philosophy, parallax is then a rich and fruitful concept that can illuminate the studies of those working in epistemology, ontology, German Idealism, political philosophy and critical theory. (shrink)

Since Narcissus sees himself seeing himself, i.e., comes to self‑ consciousness and plunges into self‑destruction under the gaze, thinkers have problematized the Delphic maxim of “knowing thyself” from a visual perspective. In this trend, psychoanalysis joins the self‑criticism of phenomenology in subverting the “myth” of the self‑reflective consciousness. Whereas Lacan relegates the mirror stage to the Imaginary and interprets the gaze as objet a to account for the split in the subject, Merleau‑Ponty overcomes the narcissistic enclosure of the tacit cogito (...) by appealing to the self’s abandonment to the gaze of the other in an open‑circuit of the reversible flesh. Through the lens of the topological concept of parallax, this study illuminates the fundamental distinctions between these two perspectives and proposes a promising future of psychoanalytic phenomenology. (shrink)

My knowledge of architecture is constrained to a coupler of idiosyncratic data: my love for Ayn Rand and her architecture-novel The Fountainhead; my admiration of the Stalinist “wedding-cake” baroque kitsch; my dream of a house composed only of secondary spaces and places of passage – stairs, corridors, toilets, store-rooms, kitchen – with no living room or bedroom. The danger that I am courting is thus that what I will say will oscillate between the two extremes of unfounded speculations and what (...) most is already known for a long time. I would like to begin with the notion of parallax which I took from Kojin Karatani. The common definition of parallax is: the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight. The philosophical twist to be added, of course, is that the observed difference is not simply “subjective,” due to the fact that the same object which exists “out there” is seen from two different stations, or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently “mediated,” so that an “epistemological” shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an “ontological” shift in the object itself. When confronted with such a parallax gap, one should renounce all attempts to reduce one aspect to the other ; the task is, on the contrary, to conceive all possible positions as responses to a certain underlying deadlock or antagonism, as so many attempts to resolve this deadlock… and this already brings us to so-called postmodern architecture which, sometimes, seems to enact the notion of parallax in a directly-palpable way. Think about Liebeskind or Gehry: their work often appears as a desperate attempt to combine two incompatible structuring principles within the same building, as if two principles are locked in a struggle for hegemony. (shrink)

Comparative modeling is necessary for semiotic inquiry. To better theorize such pursuits, a reflexive turn is in order: comparative modeling needs comparative modeling. In search of experientially grounded analogies better suited for understanding, validating, scrutinizing, and accounting for the situation of the semiotic inquirer, this paper applies insights from Peircean process semiotics and Göran Sonesson’s extended theory of cultural semiotics toward two ends: one theoretical, the other applied. First, I undertake a critical review of recent scholarly and creative works that (...) attempt to adapt concepts of “parallax” as a source domain for comparative modeling activities. I do this in order to continue laying groundwork for a more complex, systematic theory of reflexive semiotic modeling in human inquiry, building on my earlier work. Second, I explore a specific case study of comparative intercultural modeling: namely, nationalist ethnic classification strategies in China and Vietnam. While many researchers have considered the onomastic and geopolitical dimensions of state-sanctioned ethnic categorization programs in these two countries, little has been done to unpack the powerful visual and narratological strategies employed by both; and little has been done to compare the intercultural categories these strategies serve to legitimize. The Vietnamese classification program is clearly modeled on its Chinese counterpart historically, but important categorical mismatches emerge between the two that indicate the presence of hidden diversity. Comparing the two systems also leads to a number of discoveries with implications for further developing the theory of cultural semiotics. Ultimately, the function or purpose of parallax modeling is shown to both comprehend and point beyond nascent intercultural and intracultural models toward more complex blends, by holding all such relations in a comparative frame, not as irreconcilable positions but as a more developed composite sign indicating the presence of yet more deeply buried dynamic objects to be searched out through further collateral experience. (shrink)

La parallaxe est le déplacement apparent d'un objet que provoque un changement du point d'observation. Le philosophe ajoutera que la différence observée n'est pas simplement subjective. Dans la terminologie hégélienne, on dira plutôt que le sujet et l'objet sont en fait intrinsèquement " médiatisés " si bien qu'un changement épistémologique dans le point de vue du sujet traduit toujours un changement ontologique dans l'objet lui-même. On connaît aujourd'hui toute une série de parallaxes, dans des domaines très différents. Dans la physique (...) quantique ; dans la neurobiologie ; la parallaxe de la différence ontologique la discordance entre l'ontique et l'ontologique ; la parallaxe du Réel la parallaxe de l'inconscient, qui commande l'absence de mesure commune entre les deux aspects de l'édifice théorique de Freud l'interprétation des formations de l'inconscient et la théorie des pulsions ; et enfin la parallaxe politique, dont le vieux nom est " lutte des classes ". Finalement, ce livre tente de renouveler le matérialisme dialectique, tout en restant fidèle au projet communiste. (shrink)

The title of this piece is meant to evoke at least three sources. The first – and perhaps the only obvious one – concerns the ability of holograms to display parallax, a shifting of visual viewpoint that allows a three-dimensional image to reveal background objects behind those in the foreground. This parallax view is a unique feature of holograms as visual media. A second allusion is to the American film The Parallax View (1974, director A. J. Pakula), (...) a rather paranoid thriller focusing on conspiracy theories concerning government and corporations. To a casual observer, the bare details of the military origins of holography suggest just such cynical and centrally-directed development, although I hope to dispel such simplistic ideas here. And a third passing reference is to the book The Parallax View (2006) by Slavoj Zizek, a wide-ranging and deep exploration of duality in political views, ontological interpretations and scientific methods, among other topics. Zizek’s theme, as well as Pakula’s, is relevant to my approach, which focuses on a parallax of both practice and intent. During the first successful decade of holography, conflicting viewpoints developed between distinct communities: the militarily-guided engineers who invented practical holography, and the later imaging scientists and artisans who stressed three-dimensionality and other attributes instead of the original goal of optical image processing. I argue that distinct groups of users had different perceptions of what holography is and what it is for. (shrink)

_Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories_ Edited by Janet Bergstrom Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 ISBN 0-520-20747-5 (hbk); 0-520-20748-3 (pbk) 307 pp.

This article explores the concept of individuation in the early Schelling and Simondon by bringing them into dialogue, thereby highlighting affinities and differences in their philosophical projects in light of their epistemological and historical backgrounds. Individuation stands out as a major component of both Schelling’s Naturphilosophie and Simondon’s theory of genesis. But its role within both authors’ thinking is quite different: while for Schelling individuation constitutes a major problem that the philosophy of nature ventures to solve, namely the constitution of (...) finite products from the absolute productivity of nature, individuation as a process is the fulcrum of Simondon’s philosophy as a whole, both a driving force and a name for being as such. These divergent approaches are related by a common quest for an immanent genesis of being and the necessity of the third, elaborated in close dialogue with the scientific discoveries of their respective times and the re-appropriation of metaphysics. This article approaches Schelling’s and Simondon’s theories of individuation respectively from the concept of force and the concept of information, and suggests how these two seemingly parallel enquiries can be read as complementing each other in parallax, in order to contribute to the contemporary understanding of nature and individuation. (shrink)

Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroy’s assertion that the everyday banality of living with difference is now an ordinary part of British life, this article considers how Olusoga’s historicization of the Black British experience reflects a convivial rendering of UK multiculture. In particular, when used alongside Žižek’s notion of parallax, it is argued that understandings of convivial culture can be supported (...) by a historical importance that deliberately ‘shocks’, and subsequently dislodges, popular interpretations of the UK’s ‘white past’. Notably, it is parallax which puts antagonism, strangeness and ambivalence at the heart of contemporary depictions of convivial Britain, with the UK’s cultural differences located in the ‘gaps’ and tensions which characterize both its past and present. These differences should not be feared but, as a characteristic part of our convivial culture, should be supplemented with historical analyses that highlight but, also, undermine, the significance of cultural differences in the present. Consequently, it is suggested that if the spontaneity of conviviality is to encourage openness, then understandings of multiculturalism need to go beyond reification in order to challenge our understandings of the past. Here, examples of ‘alterity’ are neither ‘new’ nor ‘contemporary’, but instead, constitute a fundamental part of the nation’s history: of the ‘gap’ made visible in transiting past and present. (shrink)

This book brings together emerging perspectives from organization theory and management, environmental sociology, international regime studies, and the social studies of science and technology to provide a starting point for discipline-based studies of environmental policy and corporate environmental behavior. Reflecting the book’s theoretical and empirical focus, the audience is two-fold: organizational scholars working within the institutional tradition, and environmental scholars interested in management and policy. Together this mix forms a creative synthesis for both sets of readers, analyzing how (...) environmental policy and organizational practices are shaped, spread and contested. (shrink)

This paper discusses an augmented reality installation presented at the 2014 International Žižek Studies Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. The installation highlighted and expanded the conception of ‘headspace’ within the virtuality of contemporary subjectivity. By displacing our familiar view of reality onto a subjective engagement with cultural artefacts from many different symbolic spaces, remediated through an engagement with digital technology, the work frames the emergence of the contemporary subject as an ontological cyborg. The paper elucidates the theoretical underpinning of the project (...) and offering critical thoughts on its implications. This discussion of mediation expands on Žižek’s own position by applying the concept of parallax to the subjective shift between physical and digital spaces. There then follows documentation of the installation, including photos of the work in the physical exhibition space, the digital images from the augmented reality trackers, and the images and multimedia content depicting the digital objects themselves. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek’s methodological reliance on analogy, tautology, and examples - and particularly on crude, humorous, or popular ones - is an oft-discussed and controversial feature of his work. My aim throughout this paper is to examine certain philosophical concerns - and namely universality - in Žižek’s work. As I will propose, tautology and analogy - particularly when understood vis-a-vis desire - offer us a rhetorical means of exploring these concerns; insofar as we accept tautology and analogy as strategic/pedagogic devices, they (...) are therefore subject to investigations that exceed their immediately apparent use-value of clarifying an unknown concept. Through an examination of the strategic place of tautology and analogy in Žižek's work, this paper seeks to subject such methods to analysis in the context of broader philosophical concerns which appear across Žižek's oeuvre - namely universality, parallax, minimal difference, and the 'location' of the objet a in this comprehension of difference. (shrink)

Trois sujets de philosophie naturelle, fort controversés à l’époque où Descartes élabore sa physique sont particulièrement présents dans les Principes de la philosophie de Descartes, le principe de relativité des mouvements des corps matériels, la nature que l’on nommera plus tard vectorielle de la grandeur, qui caractérise l’état de mouvement d’un corps et que Descartes contribue à constituer par la notion de determinatio et l’objection parallactique contre l’héliocentrisme. On examine ici comment l’actualité du débat scientifique permet de comprendre l’argumentation cartésienne (...) et on insiste sur le caractère polémique de ce traité. On peut notamment relever que les théories galiléennes pèsent d’un grand poids dans la modification des conceptions cartésiennes du mouvement et que les arguments, alors les plus récents, avancés en astronomie soutiennent la mise au point du système du monde cartésien. Il s’agit de mettre l’histoire des sciences au service d’une meilleure intelligence de la somme philosophique cartésienne.Three very controversial points in natural philosophy playan important role in the cartesian Principes de la philosophie in which Descartes is working his Physic .There are the Relativity principle for the moving bodies, the nature of magnitude which later shall be named vectorial and the parallactic objection against heliocentric system. In this paper, it is discussed of how the scientific actuality is important for one interested in understanding the cartesian natural philosophy. It is insisted on the controversial nature of the cartesian treatise : the galilean theories have a strong influence on the modifications operated by Descartes about bodies’ movement ; the most performing results in astronomy in this period strenght the cartesian way to imagine a new an coherent system of the world. The main point of this paper consists in using the history of sciences in order to better understand the philosophic summa of Descartes. (shrink)

Over the last decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and, second, as a process by which companies manage their relationship␣with stakeholders (European Commission, 2001. Nowadays, CSR has become a priority issue on governments’ agendas. This has changed governments’ capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies, but has also affected the framework in which CSR (...) public policies are designed: governments are incorporating multi-stakeholder strategies. This article analyzes the CSR public policies in European advanced democracies, and more specifically the EU-15 countries, and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood, designed and implemented their CSR public policies. The analysis has entailed the classification of CSR public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments’ policies were addressed. This approach to the analysis of CSR public policies in the EU-15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed, which has enabled us to propose a ‹four ideal’ typology model for governmental action on CSR in Europe: Partnership, Business in the Community, Sustainability, and Citizenship, and Agora. The main contribution of this article is to propose an analytical framework to analyze CSR public policies, which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments, businesses, and civil society stakeholders, and enable us to incorporate the analysis of CSR public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance. (shrink)

Cube Living 221A is the most recent iteration of the Cube Living project, initiated in 2008. It appropriates the language, media and social practices of real estate development campaigns to engage in speculation about spatial ontologies, examining how social, legal and financial conventions determine the creation of space in our cities.This paper describes the staging and production process by which Cube Living 221A performs the creation of a spatial commodity. Drawing on the concepts presented in Žižek’s 2009 talk “Architectural (...) class='Hi'>Parallax: Spandrels and Other Phenomena of Class Struggle”, it goes on to speculate that urban real estate development results in an architectural parallax: real estate property must function simultaneously as a financial asset and also as a residence. Similarly, the property owner must play simultaneous but irreconcilable roles as both investor and citizen. The Cube object can be regarded as a spandrel at the hinge of this parallax. (shrink)

Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness” alongside Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view”. In doing so, the article introduces a “past-present parallax” in order to contest that, while conceptions of the past are marked by “lack”, equally, our conceptions of and relations to Nature remain grounded in an ontological incompleteness, marked by contingency. This novel approach (...) presents an ecological awareness that remains temporally attuned to the impasses and inconsistencies which frame our relations in/with Nature. (shrink)