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This chapter argues against the view that Derrida's emphasis on change makes him complicit in the neoliberal requirement of flexibility that results both in precarity and in the dominance of English. To the contrary, the essay argues that Derrida's idea of 'différance' includes the view that openness both involves loss and is always partial (since incision involves excision), that the singular is precious, and that deconstruction is justice since it is alert to what is excluded even by efforts at inclusiveness. Examples of the preciousness and loss of the singular are circumcision (where incision is excision), hospitality (in which unconditional hospitality has material limitations and conditions), subjectivity (which is never based on full presence), language (which both is my own and comes from an other), and neighbourhoods (since they continue only by incorporating new people). Deconstruction, the essay concludes, need not be complicit in neoliberal dominance but, properly understood, makes us aware of the power dynamics by which the openness of plurilingualism can lead to the dominance of English.
Bruno Besana's article 'Badiou's Pasolini: The Problem of Subtractive Universalism' also deals with Pasolini's script about Saint Paul, but from the perspective of Alain Badiou's theoretical essay "Saint Paul and the Foundation of Universalism" and of Badiou's different thoughts on Pasolini, on the logic of emergence of novelty, and on its thwarted relation with universalism. Two main points appear in Besana's comparative reading. First, the idea that radical novelty or change can only be built in a 'subtractive manner', i.e. via the appearance of something that, by its sole presence, erodes the consistency upon which the present is structured. This is developed through Pasolini's ideas of 'inactuality' and 'forza del passato' and by Badiou's concept of 'event'. Second, a fundamental paradox inherent to the logic of change: change is only possible if it is organized in a set of coherent consequences, but the organized mode (for instance, the party) of such consequences inevitably reduces change to a constant compromise with the present.
KippCity
(2014)
On 28 April 2011, on the Rathausplatz of Neukölln, Christine Hentschel's puzzlement vis-à-vis Neukölln's liberation met the neighbourhood's flickering urbanity, which she seeks to capture in a project called KippCity. KippCity is an experiment in tracing urban change while it happens. If space is the 'event of place', as Doreen Massey holds, the space of KippCity is the transformation of Neukölln. This chapter explores the potentials of multistable figures (Kippbilder) for conceptualizing urban change. This potential, Hentschel argues, lies in the flip-moment itself, in the space-time of urban transformation. In Berlin-Neukölln, a neighbourhood long branded as poor and failing, multiple and partly conflicting flip-scenarios have begun to inspire and haunt the neighbourhood and its self-reflective talk. KippCity Neukölln is thus a flickering figure. But unlike an artefact Kippbild, which flickers between duck and rabbit, for example, KippCity Neukölln does not simply tip into a new pre-fabricated form, but rather wavers between different future scenarios. Neukölln's flickering urbanity is thus nervous, full of uncertainty, frustration and enthusiasm. The article shows how the neighbourhood seeks escape from the dystopia of two dominant flip scenarios of ghettoization and gentrification by digging its claws into its 'Now'.
Mein Beitrag geht dem russischen Interesse an Vitalität und Transformation im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts nach. Dabei rücken insbesondere kulturspezifische Unterschiede zu vergleichbaren Phantasmen und Phänomenen in Westeuropa ins Blickfeld, die sich aus der Berücksichtigung der ostkirchlichen Tradition, insbesondere der orthodoxen Anthropologie, ergeben. Das Auferweckungsparadigma der russischen Moderne zeichnete sich zum einen durch seine Doppelreferenz auf Religion und Wissenschaft aus und manifestierte sich zum anderen durch die Synthese von Glauben und Technik, Kunst und Leben. Wie es zunehmend den russischen und sowjetischen Alltag durchdrang, wird anhand folgender Faktoren nachvollzogen: der Begründung der genuin russischen religionsphilosophischen Strömung des "Kosmismus", der aufkommenden performanzorientierten Konzepte des Lebendigen in Sprach- und Literaturtheorie und schließlich der Versuchsanordnungen zur Vitalisierung und Immortalisierung in Wissenschaft, kultureller Praxis und Literatur.