Roberto Esposito: The Third Person: Politics of Life and Philosophy of the Impersonal (2007/2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · animal, anthropology, biology, biopolitics, life, nazism, personhood, philosophy, politics, subjectivity
All discourses aimed at asserting the value of human life as such–whether philosophical, ethical, or political–assume the notion of personhood as their indispensable point of departure. This is all the more true today. In bioethics, for example, Catholic and secular thinkers may disagree on what constitutes a person and its genesis, but they certainly agree on its decisive importance: human life is considered to be untouchable only when based on personhood. In the legal sphere as well the enjoyment of subjective rights continues to be increasingly linked to the qualification of personhood, which appears to be the only one capable of bridging the gap between human being and citizen, right and life, and soul and body opened up at the very origins of Western civilization.
The radical and alarming thesis put forward in this book is that the notion of person is unable to bridge this gap because it is precisely what creates this breach. Its primary effect is to create a separation in both the human race and the individual between a rational, voluntary part endowed with particular value and another, purely biological part that is thrust by the first into the inferior dimension of the animal or the thing. In opposition to the performative power of the person, whose dual origins can be traced back to ancient Rome and Christianity, Esposito pursues his strikingly original and innovative philosophical inquiry by inviting reflection on the category of the impersonal: the third person, in removing itself from the exclusionary mechanism of the person, points toward the orginary unity of the living being.
First published in Italian as Terza Persona, Giulio Einaudi, 2007
Translated by Zakiya Hanafi
Publisher Polity, 2012
ISBN 0745643981, 9780745643984
200 pages
Andreas Broeckmann, Knowbotic Research (eds.): Opaque Presence: Manual of Latent Invisibilities (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · anonymity, art, identity, performance art, subjectivity
In the society of late capitalism – whether we understand it as a society of consumption, of control, or as a cybernetic society -, visibility and transparency are no longer signs of democratic openness, but rather of administrative availability. Spaces of agency and spaces of social friction are absorbed into the surfaces of technical processes. Even when the games of visibility, of attention, and of the mechanisms of subjectivation, may not always be a matter of bare survival, they are still a matter of maintaining and appropriating heterotopic zones in which resistance, if not freedom, can be postulated.
This book deals with questions of public visibility and strategic camouflage. It hinges on the public performance project ›macghillie – just a void‹ by the artist group knowbotic research, in which urban sites are visited by a figure, clad in a camouflage suit. The so-called ›Ghillie Suit‹ was originally invented in the 19th century for hunting and has since the First World War been used in military contexts all over the world. When worn in a contemporary public environment, its camouflage effects the anonymisation and the neutralisation of the person wearing it. The figure of the ›MacGhillie‹ oscillates between the hyperpresence of a mask, and visual redundancy. It traverses the modern urban environment in which conspicuity holds ambivalent currency, wavering between cumbersome affirmation and visual arbitrariness. In the project, the suit is made available to members of the public who can thus become macghillie for a while, testing the boundaries of subjectivity and identity.
With texts by Eva Meyer, Matthew Fuller, Andreas Broeckmann, Marcus Steinweg, knowbotic research, Tiqqun
Publisher Diaphanes, 2010
Edition Jardins des Pilotes
ISBN 3037341084, 9783037341087
156 pages
Gary Genosko: Félix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction (2002)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstract machine, anti-psychiatry, biography, deterritorialization, philosophy, psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis, subjectivity, transversality
This is the first detailed assessment of the life and work of Felix Guattari–“Mr. Anti” as the French press labelled him–the friend of and collaborator with Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan and Antonio Negri, and one of the 20th Century’s last great activist-intellectuals. Guattari is widely known for his celebrated writings with Deleuze, but these writings do not represent the true breadth and impact of his thinking, writing and activism. Guattari’s major work as a clinical and theoretical innovator in psychoanalysis was closely linked to his participation in struggles against European right-wing politics. Felix Guattari introduces the reader to the diversity and sheer range of Guattari’s interests, from anti-psychiatry, to Japanese culture, political activism and his theorizing of subjectification.Highlighting why Guattari’s work is of increasing relevance to contemporary political, psychoanalytical and philosophical thought, Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction presents the reader with an adventurous and provocative introduction to this radical thinker.
Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002
Transversals: New Directions in Philosophy series
ISBN 082646033X, 9780826460332
278 pages