André Santos Campos

IFILNOVA, NOVA University Lisbon

Multitemporal Democracy and the Long Term*

8 February 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

Abstract 

Democracy is typically considered government pro tempore. Self-limitation and renovation in time are standard features of democratic governance. Recent phenomena such as climate change, for instance, have put this view under serious pressure, however. Contemporary democracies’ power to affect the future is so high that it may impact on communities and unborn persons to the point of carrying existential risk. The challenge democracies face is enormous: they rely on time-sensitive criteria of legitimacy (e.g., elections) that offer strong incentives for short-term governance while also facing what I call ‘the urgency of the long-term view’. Are they up to the challenge, or is short-termism so embedded in them that favouring the long term puts them at risk? In this talk, I intend to show that the commonplace view of liberal democracies as inherently ill-suited to deal with the long term is based on a misconception about the nature of political time in a democracy. While it is true that democratic frameworks facilitate, privilege, and reinforce short-term thinking, contemporary democracies incorporate a variety of principles and institutions that have extended time horizons. Understanding democratic time in terms of multitemporality will provide the conceptual backdrop against which to set the balance, in contemporary democracies, between short-term and long-term decision-making, thereby leaving room for an argument from democracy that promotes the long term. The conclusion reinforces the view that multitemporality in normative and practical terms is a necessary feature of liberal democracies that affects the way they are hard-wired to deal with long-term problems.

* Presentation in English, discussion in both Portuguese and English

André Barata

University of Beira Interior

A revolução relacional com a matéria

1 February 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

Abstract

Na peugada do novo materialismo, procura-se neste texto iluminar o vínculo profundo entre matéria e alteridade como forma de instruir uma razão prática ecológica que supere o antropocentrismo. Este novo materialismo, apesar de nele ressoar um velhíssimo materialismo — o mais velho de todos, o dos pensadores pré-socráticos da φύσις —, opõe-se a boa parte da tradição filosófica, que, reivindique-se ou não do materialismo, tendeu a desvitalizar a matéria, conformando-a a uma passividade inerte, incapaz de relação. Assim se impôs a cesura fundamental entre matéria e alteridade, entre matéria e a sua própria compreensão, na verdade uma orfandade recíproca, pois, na persistência do vínculo latente mas recalcado entre materialidade e alteridade, esta concepção passiva da materialidade também condenou à pobreza as concepções da alteridade. A mesma cesura percorre a história do pensamento no que respeita ao outro, sempre posto de esguelha, pensado por analogia àquele que o apreende, conformando a alteridade à mesmidade, tolerado na medida de uma qualquer semelhança que se ache. O vínculo entre matéria e alteridade surpreende-se na aproximação entre o ἄπειρον de Anaximandro e o infinito de Lévinas, ambos inalcançáveis pelos programas da totalidade. E também na aproximação entre átomo e indivíduo, ambos impenetravelmente indivisíveis, igualmente além das pretensões do conhecimento. Este regime de opressão da matéria surpreende-se no quotidiano dos objectos com que nos rodeamos e das objectivações que nos impomos. Uma crítica da concepção de matéria capaz de libertar a sua potência relacional traria amplas consequências para a compreensão e para o quotidiano de uma coexistência ecológica.

Reading Group as part of the Praxis-CFUL activities

Working language: English

Organizer: Dr. Ricardo Mendoza-Canales (rcanales@letras.ulisboa.pt)

Wednesdays, from 16h00 to 18h00 at Sala Pedro Hispano (Department of Philosophy), according to the calendar below.

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

Spring Semester 2022: “Forms & Strategies of Critique”

This semester, the reading group on Topics of Social Philosophy and Critical Theory will focus on the notion of “Critique”, which will be addressed systematically rather than historically. In other words, instead of proposing an initial definition of the term and then following its possible continuities or deviations, the objective is to revisit and track down the operative forms and strategies rendered by critical social theory (immanent- and ideology critique, metacritique, genealogy, critique of power) in order to address their different objects of critique. In other words, by analyzing the limits and contours of their targets (ideology, power, etc.), the aim is to reconstruct and bring into light both the nuances and the reach of their methodological procedures.

Programme

Session 1 | 16 February 2022

de Boer, K. (2012). “Hegel’s Conception of Immanent Critique: Its Sources, Extent and Limit,” in: K. de Boer & R. Sonderegger (eds.). Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. New York-London: Palgrave Macmillan, 83-100. [download here]

Session 2 | 23 March 2022

Horkheimer, M. (1982). “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in: Critical Theory. Selected Essays. New York: Continuum, 188-210. [download here]

Session 3 | 6 April 2022

Horkheimer, M. (1982). “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in: Critical Theory. Selected Essays. New York: Continuum, 210-243. [download here]

Session 4 | 27 April 2022

Horkheimer, M. (1982). “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in: Critical Theory. Selected Essays. New York: Continuum, 210-243. [download here]

Session 5 | 11 May 2022

Stahl, T. (2013). “What is Immanent Critique?”, SSRN Working Papers <doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2357957> [download here]

Session 6 | 25 May 2022

Saar, M. (2010). “Power and Critique,” in: Journal of Power, 3 (1): 7-20. [download here]

Grupo de Leitura enquadrado no programa de atividades do Praxis-CFUL

Organizador: Rui Filipe (rui.filipe [at] campus.ul.pt)

Quartas-Feiras das 16:00 às 18:00, na Sala Pedro Hispano (Departamento de Filosofia) [ver programa]

Pede-se a todos os interessados em participar o envio de um email ao organizador.

Descrição:

Célebre nos estudos à volta de Marx, o conceito de alienação (Entfremdung) tem norteado muitas meditações inspiradas no pensador de Trier. Porém, se olharmos para os textos de maturidade deste autor, rapidamente notamos não só a inexistência deste conceito, como até reparamos um certo cuidado para que ele não seja referenciado de modo explícito. Em vez de tal, vemos como os temas antes abordados com base nessa clave da alienação parecem surgir mais tarde sobre o estandarte do feiticismo da mercadoria (Warenfetischismus).

Com base neste horizonte o presente grupo de leitura propõe um acompanhamento dos momentos cruciais onde é possível surpreender esta mudança de rumo teórica na obra de Marx. Um períplo desta envergadura terá necessariamente de começar por aquelas paragens jovem-hegelianas onde Marx comungava em juventude.  Foi nestas, ainda altamente influenciado por um ideário feurbachiano, que ele nos diz que “a crítica do céu transforma-se em crítica da terra”. Por outras palavras, cabe ao crítico não apenas criticar as expressões teológicas da vida real, mas também criticar essa mesma vida real no seu cerne para perceber como ela se sublima na esfera teológica.

Será deste germe que compreendemos a conhecida quarta tese sobre Feuerbach onde se expressa que “o facto de esta base mundana se destacar a si própria e se fixar, um reino autónomo, nas nuvens, só se pode explicar precisamente pela autodivisão e pelo contradizer-se a si mesma desta base mundana”. Será, por sua vez, desta plataforma que Marx começa a perceber a necessidade de abdicar da alienação como conceito central das suas análises. Se este se pautava, numa senda jovem-hegeliana, por uma carga excessivamente idealista e subjectivista, para se distanciar de tal era preciso recentrar o seu pensar numa ontologia materialista onde a práxis é compreendida objectivamente.

Assim, como último passo do nosso percurso, veremos como este distanciamento surge na sua forma mais completa nos textos de cariz económico de Marx. No fundo, estes serão a expressão crítica, e esclarecida, daquela “autodivisão” antes apenas projectada como objecto a ser pensado por excelência. Serão igualmente a concretização de uma análise que, se antes via na alienação um processo onde se salienta o lado subjectivo da construção de um mundo reificado, agora encontra no feiticismo da mercadoria um mundo objectivamente produzido por aqueles que são oprimidos nele.

Programa

1ª Sessão | 23 de Fevereiro 2022

Para a Crítica da Filosofa do Direito de Hegel – Introdução (Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung) 1843 [disponível no link]

2ª Sessão | 16 de Março 2022

Para a Questão Judaica (Zur Judenfrage) 1843 p.7-20/31-39 [disponível no link]

3ªSessão | 30 de Março 2022

Manuscritos Económico-Filosóficos de 1844 (Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte) 1844 (excertos selecionados) [1º excerto] [2º excerto]

4ª Sessão | 20 de Abril 2022

Teses sobre Feuerbach (Thesen über Feuerbach) 1845 [disponível no link]

A Ideologia Alemão (Die Deutsche Ideologie) 1845 (excertos selecionados) [1ºexcerto] [2ºexcerto] [3ºexcerto] [4ºexcerto] [5ºexcerto]

5ª Sessão | 4 de Maio

Introdução à Contribuição à Crítica da Economia Política 1858 [disponível do link]

6ª Sessão | 18 de Maio

O Capital – O Carácter de Feitiço da Mercadoria e o seu Segredo (Das Kapital – Der Fetischcharakter der Ware und sein Geheimnis) 1867 [disponível no link]

Tamara Caraus

Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon

Husserl, Foucault, and the ‘functionaries of humanity’

7 December 2021, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

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

Abstract

In The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl declares philosophers the ‘functionaries of the mankind’, asking ‘How can we avoid it?.’ In The Courage of the Truth,  Foucault declares the Ancient Cynic ‘a functionary of humanity in general’. This paper examines how and why these two different philosophers make similar declarations despite the general mistrust in functionary. The similarities between Husserl’s and Foucault’s arguments point to a double resistance which is part of the process of becoming a ‘functionary of humanity’: resistance against the very stance of a functionary, with its hierarchy and constitutive vicariousness, and resistance against the current meanings of humanity. This resistance makes possible a ‘life in truth’ and opens the potential imprisoned in the current understandings of humanity. Thus, Husserl’s and Foucault’s use of expression ‘functionary of humanity’ allows mapping a ‘function’ that could justify the invocation of this peculiar functionary: to keep humanity open, which enters into a challenging dialogue with the recent accounts on post-humanism.

* 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.

Falko Schmieder

Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research – Berlin

Questions and Theses on the Historicity and Actuality of Ideology Critique

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

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

Abstract

The concept of ideology, and with it the approach of ideology critique, seem to be out of date; other guiding concepts such as discourse, narrative, or hegemony have relegated them to sideshows. At the same time, basic assumptions such as the end of history or the post-ideological age, both powerful factors in the depotency and delegitimization of ideology critique, have lost their plausibility today and have themselves become recognizable as ideologems. New forms of authoritarian populism and religious fundamentalism, as well as the intensification of the contradictions of neoliberalized capitalist society, therefore in recent times have led to new attempts to reappropriate and refound the critique of ideology. The lecture pleads for not limiting oneself to systematic reconstructions of a supposed core of ideology critique or the presentation of different types of ideology (critique). Rather, the reappropriation of ideology critique must also address the reasons for its historical decline, as well as the new phenomena that lead to tensions with classical approaches to ideology critique and by which the historicity of the object of ideology critique can be grasped. In a second step, reflections, theses and questions on the concept of ideology under the conditions of ‘reflexive’ modernity will be presented. They refer both to new manifestations and to theories related to them, such as that of the formation of cynicism as a form of enlightened false consciousness or that of the ironic self and the commodification of irony. The lecture demonstrates the indispensability of ideology critique for a critical theory and at the same time points to the necessity of reflecting on the limits of ideology-critical enlightenment.

* 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.

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, allows us 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 Paglen on Machine Vision, Moving Pictures, Living Machines,” in: G. Plaitano, S. Venturini and P. 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.

Christine Reeh-Peters

Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg | Praxis-CFUL

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.

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 its essence and its 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.

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.