Christine Reeh-Peters

Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg

Film and the Critique on Philosophical Anthropocentrism

23 November 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)* | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The lecture is based on the onto-epistemological hypothesis of regarding film as a form of artificial intelligence, core of my current research project. Such a hypothesis draws upon the philosophy of art of Gilles Deleuze, who famously evinces in his books on cinema that “the essence of cinema” would have “thought as its higher purpose”. However, understanding film as the thinking ability of a technical apparatus was first formulated by pioneer filmmaker and thinker Jean Epstein at a time when the cinematograph was both a recording and a projection machine and thus plausibly compared to a “robot brain”. By this token, I am focusing on questions that have been present since the very origins of film-philosophy, and shed new light on them through the speculative-materialist turn in contemporary philosophy and its critique on philosophical anthropocentrism. I will particularly enquire into the nature of the posthuman, the non-human, and the concomitant questioning of human supremacy referring to philosophers like Karen Barad or Rosi Braidotti. Surprisingly enough, the theories of Epstein not only confirm these recent nondualist principles of thought but also show how they can be extended through an idea of film thinking beyond the human frame.

* The event will also be available via Zoom for those unable to attend in person. Pre-registration required at: praxis.cful [at] gmail.com until a day before the event. Those registered will receive the Zoom link by e-mail the same day of the Seminar.

Scientific Fictional Properties and Their Explanatory Power
Vera Matarese (University of Bern)

19 November 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: According to what I call the “orthodox view”, we should grant the existence of scientific properties like mass, charge, spin, because they have explanatory power. Without them, indeed, we would be unable to explain particle trajectories. In this talk, I will articulate a “fictionalist view” that regards these properties to be mere scientific fictions. Fictionalists have two options. The first is to deny, like Super-Humeans, that scientific properties have explanatory power. The second is to admit that they have explanatory power, but deny that, in virtue of this, we should grant them existence. I will take this second route. The challenge will then be to clarify how fictional properties can be explanatorily powerful without being part of our ontology.

The room has a limited number of seats. Pre-registration is required at <c.filosofia@letras.ulisboa.pt> until a day before the event. Note that this is an in-person event and everyone should wear a mask.

Ricardo Mendoza-Canales

Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon

Contours of Absence: Between Materiality and Imagination

16 November 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)* | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Among the multiple points of coincidence shared by the domains of Aesthetics and Politics, there are at least three central notions that are common to both. I refer to the notions of representation, authenticity, and visibility. The ontological foundation that underlies all of them consists in the primordial character of Presence, against which the Absence occupies a subordinate role. This primordiality of Presence lies in the evidence as adequacy between essence and existence: what is given in presence is evident as Truth. Under this view, Absence was conceived either as Nothing, emptiness, or as the reverse of Presence: a negative, a lack or the suppression of something “no-longer-present”. In my paper, I will address the question regarding the reality of Absence by focusing mainly on examining the three notions mentioned above. My contention is that what is absent is not the diminished force or the exhausted power of a being-present nor a being-there. If one can claim that an absent somehow manifests, then it is licit to argue that Absence should have its own modalities of appearing: i) in relation to representation, as presentification; ii) with respect to authenticity, as original; and iii) vis-à-vis visibility, as chiasm: a halfway between materiality and imagination. Thus, my conclusion will be twofold: on the one hand, that Absence is actual; on the other, that what is absent endures.

* The event will also be available via Zoom for those unable to attend in person. Pre-registration required at: praxis.cful [at] gmail.com until a day before the event. Those registered will receive the Zoom link by e-mail the same day of the Seminar.

Harmful habits: Responsibility for implicitly biased behaviour
Josefa Toribio (Logos, ICREA, University of Barcelona)

12 November 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: This talk has a two-fold goal. First, I defend the view that the prejudicial behaviour that results from implicit biases is best understood as a type of habitual action — as a harmful, yet deeply entrenched, passively acquired, socially relevant type of habit. Second, I explore how characterizing such implicitly biased behaviour as a habit aids our understanding of the responsibility we bear for it. As habits are ultimately susceptible of being controlled, agents ought to be held responsible for their implicit biased actions. Yet, the blaming response should target agents only insofar as they have failed (while being able) to develop a particular kind of ability: the ability to spot the kind of situations that require the exercise of the relevant intellectual, moral, social, and prudential obligations. Being thus responsible, however, is consistent with the agent’s not being blameworthy. For the automaticity of the blamed agent’s implicitly biased behaviour makes it unintentional relative to intellectual, moral, social, and prudential values that she already cares about.

The room has a limited number of seats. Pre-registration is required at <centrofilosofialisboa@gmail.com> until a day before the event. Note that this is an in-person event and everyone should wear a mask.

Federico De Matteis

University of L’Aquila

Inhabiting the earthquake. Corporeal resonances and spatial practices

9 November 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)* | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Earthquakes, as other natural disasters, are commonly considered destructive events that instantaneously affect a certain portion of physical space, clearly dividing historical time in a “before” and an “after”. As such, the practical efforts undertaken in the aftermath aim to revert the effects of the disaster, as if attempting to “undo” the event’s dramatic consequences by reversing the flow of time. Nevertheless, we could argue that earthquakes are more than just singular, clearly circumscribable temporal events: they indeed engender a peculiar, lingering spatial phenomenon which becomes embedded in the expressivity of bodies, objects and landscapes, and in the corporeal sensation of all those encounter this space. Observing this condition is crucial to understand all that may be lost as the reconstruction efforts blindly strive to “overwrite” the traces of destruction. To help bring this lived space to light, we can describe two tightly related dynamics: the bodily resonance human subjects experience with this landscape of destruction, and the spatial strategies that the affected communities implement to counter and resist the menacing atmosphere often afforded by the earthquake-space.

* The event will also be available via Zoom for those unable to attend in person. Pre-registration required at: praxis.cful [at] gmail.com until a day before the event. Those registered will receive the Zoom link by e-mail the same day of the Seminar.

Linguistic Intentions
Indrek Reiland (University of Vienna)

05 November 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: What is the proper role of intention in a theory of linguistic meaning? On individualist views (Davidson, Bilgrami), meaning intentions have a direct role in imbuing uses of words with particular meanings. In this talk, I will approach the question from the contrasting public language perspective (Austin, Dummett, Kaplan, Lewis etc.) with the aim of explaining why we still have to appeal to something like linguistic intentions. Intentions play a very different role on this view: they activate the meaning that words already have in a particular language and thereby make it the case that the speaker’s use is a use with a particular meaning in that language. These sorts of linguistic intentions also play a role in disambiguation. However, contrary to widespread recent opinion, I will argue that they do not play a role in determining the reference of context-sensitive expressions. That is not settled by intention at all.

The room has a limited number of seats. Pre-registration is required at <c.filosofia@letras.ulisboa.pt> until a day before the event. Note that this is an in-person event and everyone should wear a mask.

Mariana Teixeira

Free University of Berlin

Dilaceração e interesse emancipatório: O sujeito revolucionário em Lukács e na epistemologia feminista

2 November 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)* | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

A teoria de reificação de Georg Lukács teve uma influência incrivelmente fértil na filosofia social do século XX, incluindo a Teoria Crítica da Escola de Frankfurt na Alemanha, o Grupo Praxis na Iugoslávia, a Escola de Budapeste na Hungria e a Internacional Situacionista na França. Uma descendência menos estudada do pensamento de Lukács situa-se, porém, no campo da epistemologia feminista; a ideia de que o proletariado pode atingir um ponto e vista que lhe permitiria (ou mesmo o impeliria a) apreender a sociedade capitalista em sua totalidade encontra paralelo na proposição de que também as mulheres têm a possibilidade de alcançar uma perspectiva privilegiada a respeito das dinâmicas das sociedades patriarcais. Mas ainda que se costume aludir à ascendência marxista e lukácsiana da teoria do ponto de vista feminista (Feminist Standpoint Theory), tal relação é usualmente tomada como dada em lugar de ser explorada mais a fundo. Nesta apresentação, abordo duas proeminentes versões da teoria do ponto de vista feminista com vistas a jogar luz tanto sobre os pontos de contato quanto sobre os contrastes com a teoria de Lukács no que diz respeito à experiência do “sujeito revolucionário” (o proletariado, as mulheres) e sugerir que a teoria de lukácsiana da reificação fornece um quadro teórico frutífero para os debates contemporâneos do feminismo – e do pensamento crítico em geral – na medida em que esmiúça a conexão entre dilaceração e interesse emancipatório.

* The event will also be available via Zoom for those unable to attend in person. Pre-registration required at: praxis.cful [at] gmail.com until a day before the event. Those registered will received the Zoom link by e-mail the same day of the Seminar.

29 October 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: We ordinarily track whether something is real or imagined. To explain this, philosophers and cognitive scientists posit a subjective sense of reality which ‘tags’ certain representations as real or not. In this talk, I argue that this sense of reality is insufficient to account for what I call ‘extraordinary perceptions’, that is experiences occurring in virtual reality, derealisation, or under various forms of stimulants which can be confusing yet continue to tell us that we perceive something which is real and independent of us.

Reading Group as part of Praxis-CFUL activities

Working language: English

Organizers: Dr. Ricardo Mendoza-Canales (rcanales [at] letras.ulisboa.pt) & Anna de Martino (demartino.anna01 [at] gmail.com)

Where: Sala Pedro Hispano (Departamento de Filosofia) – School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

When: Wednesdays (and a Monday), from 15h00 to 17h00 (according to the calendar below)

Open activity. To participate, please send an e-mail to the organizers expressing your interest in taking part in the RG.

Description

The ever-increasing centrality of images within modern media culture, increasingly characterised by the massive digitalisation of society and their free and indiscriminate profusion, allowsus to speak — to use Mitchell’s words — of a veritable pictorial turn, which has invested every field of knowledge. In this sense, one could speak of a real crisis in the classic systems of information and communication and of the paradigms of knowledge, a crisis that also leads to the disintegration of modern democratic systems. The link between image and politics, and therefore also between image and desire, has been the subject of profound reflection in many philosophers of the last century (see, for example, the thinking developed within the Frankfurt School): in the age of mass culture, the world is characterised by the capitalisation of the image and the constant spectacularization of society, as well as by the progressive emergence of new forms of social control, assisted by the introduction of new dispositifs (Foucault, Deleuze, Agamben), which capture and incessantly regulate the circulation of desire. If we think of the web as a gigantic body without organs on which desire acts, it seems not so difficult to highlight the profound affinity between visual culture and dispositifs, an affinity that prompts us to reflect on the role, use and ethics of visibility and vision within today’s systems of advanced capitalism. This brings us to reconsider the role that sensitivity, art and desire play in the individual and collective education of the human being, and to rethink new ways to re-educate ourselves against the invisible, massive repression produced by our relationship with images. Along this reading group, we would like to address and reflect upon the following questions: What is an image and what is a device? And how are they interrelated? In the digital age, can the free proliferation of images only serve as a means of coercion and repression, ordo other paths and strategies exist?Can the image still be an act of resistance today? And if so, how can we educate ourselves to make it possible?

Programme

Session 1 | 27 October 2021

Image and Desire

Mitchell, W.J. T. (2005). “What do pictures want?,” in: What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 28-56. [download here]

Session 2 | 10 November 2021

Desire and Dispositifs

Agamben, G. (2009). “What is an apparatus?”. translated by David Kishik and Stafan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 1-24.

Deleuze, G. (2006). “What is a dispositif?,” in: Two regimes of madness. Texts and Interviews 1975-1995. Los Angeles, Semiotext(e): 338-348.

Session 3 | 17 November 2021

What is a creative act?

Deleuze, G. (2006). “What is the creative act?,” in: Two regimes of madness. Texts and Interviews 1975-1995. Los Angeles, Semiotext(e): 312-324.

Session 4 | 24 November 2021

Creation, repression and resistance

Ferreira da Silva, D. (2020) “The future of two presents”. Social Text Online (Journal). Special Issue: “Control Societies @30: Technopolitical Forces and Ontologies of Difference”. Access here.

Bradley, R.; Ferreira da Silva, D. (2021) “Four Theses on Aesthetics”. E-flux Journal # 120 (September). Access here.

Session 5 | 29 November 2021

Art, dispositifs and counter-information

Somaini, A. (2019). “«Unlearning to see like humans»: Trevor Paglenon Machine Vision,Moving Pictures, Living Machines,” in: G. Plaitano, S. Venturini and Paolo Villa (eds.). Automation, Animation and the Imitation of Life in Cinema and Media. Milan: Mimesis, 63-68.

Somaini, A. (2020). “Qu’est-ce qu’un écran à l’époque de la machine-vision ?” in: J. Bodini, M. Carbone, G. Lingua & G. Serrano (eds.). L’Avenir des ècrans. Milan: Mimesis, 61-78.

Paglen, T. (2016). “Invisible Images (Your pictures are looking at you),” in: The New Inquiry (December 8). Access here.

Dirk Michael Hennrich

Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon

Da ‘metafísica vegetal’ às ‘metafísicas canibais’: Considerações sobre o pensamento selvagem

October 26 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

(Online streaming via Zoom only by request at praxis.cful [at] gmail.com)

Abstract

Perante a iminência da decadência de um certo pensamento domesticado ou civilizado, que ordena quase todas as noções e acções da cultura ocidental, se manifesta cada vez mais a importância de (re-)considerar outras formas de pensar. Estes pensamentos, distintos da atual concepção hegemónica da realidade (ocidental-europeia), sofreram uma marginalização e extinção sem precedentes no percurso da modernidade. Assim, pode-se falar, quase sem dúvida alguma, de uma tentativa multisecular da cultura ocidental-europeia de subjugar e destruir sistematicamente todos os outros possíveis saberes. Durante muito tempo, estes pensamentos, embora sempre fizeram parte da própria cultura racional e científica do Ocidente, foram sujeitos de um “epistemicido” deliberado e considerados como indomesticados, ou noutras palavras, “o Outro da Razão” (Böhme G./H. Böhme, Das Andere der Vernunft, 1985). A este fim, será preciso relembrar que, em paralelo com a destruição e subjugação de pensamentos alheios, o pensamento ocidental sofreu, desde a época do Esclarecimento, de uma profunda domesticação, marginalizando e aniquilando a própria multiplicidade de modos de ver e interpretar o mundo. Todavia, no contexto da atual crise ecológica e civilizatória, ressurge o pensamento indomesticado, supostamente irracional e mítico, por via da interpretação do pensamento selvagem, oriundo sobretudo dos saberes e das culturas autóctones ameríndias. A conferência aqui anunciada, retoma esta discussão com uma leitura dos livros La seducción de la barbarie: análisis herético de un continente mestizo (1953) de Rodolfo Kusch, Le pensée sauvage (1962) de Claude Levi-Strauss e Metafísicas canibais: Elementos para uma antropologia pós-estrutural (2009/2015) de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. O objetivo é re-traçar o pensamento selvagem no contexto da subjugação e extinção do Outro da Razão e, a sua vez, a partir da consideração de uma certa metafísica vegetal (Kusch) e das assim chamadas metafísicas canibais (Viveiros de Castro).