Khora, as it figures in Plato’s Timaeus, as read by Jacques Derrida, poses a singular translation problem, not only for having more than one meaning, but also for having less than one. This might be thought of in terms of Derrida’s distinction between ‘polysemy’ and ‘dissemination’, in so far as any concept of translation will ‘re-mark’ a translation or reception of something like khora, the ‘all-receiving’. This means both that khora is untranslatable and that its translation into every language is (...) inevitable, which has implications for the question of a ‘politics of khora’, as becomes particularly apparent in Derrida’s unpublished seminar from 1985–86. (shrink)

This paper traces the seminal notion of khora back to its birthplace text of Plato's Timaeus. At the same time, it develops a critique of Jacques Derrida's reading of khora in the context of apophatism, or negative theology. John Caputo's reading as well as Richard Kearney's criticism of the latter are presented and discussed in this text. Finally, the article suggests that the image of khora could provide continental philosophy with an example of wliat the author calls "Hermeneutics of Hyphenation", (...) where an attempt to overcome the binary structure of traditional metaphysics, especially in our thinking of God, is accomplished. /// O presente artigo traça a genealogia da noção seminal de khora até ao seu local de nascimento no Timeu de Platão. Para além disso, o autor apresenta uma crítica da leitura que Jacques Derrida faz da noção de khora no contexto do apofatistmo, ou teologia negativa. A leitura que desta noção faz John Caputo bem como a crítica que desta por sua vez faz Ri-chard Kearney são igualmente apresentadas e discutidas no presente texto. Por fim, o autor sugere que a imagem de khora pode dotar a filosofia continental europeia com um exemplo daquilo a que neste texto se designa por "Hermenêutica da hifenização", na qual se procede justamente a uma tentativa de superação da estrutura binária própría da metafísica tradicional, particularmente no que se refere ao nosso pensamento acerca de Deus. (shrink)

Muharrem Hafız, Platon Felsefesinde Khora [Khôra in Plato’s Philosophy], 304 pp.

The purpose of the essay is to contextualize and explain the philosophical project that is under way in Jacques Derrida's Khōraof 1993. Upon a cursory reading, the book will appear to be merely the unpacking of yet another undecidable term that Derrida has located within the history of metaphysics. But, in fact, the stakes of this text are much higher in that Derrida's aim is to continue developing a project that was announced in the late 1960s, namely, to deregionalize ontology. (...) Precisely what Derrida meant by that phrase and the various texts one would have to revisit in order to properly understand how Khōra instrumentalizes deregionalization is what this essay attempts to survey. Lastly, as Husserlian phenomenology is quite central to the concerns of this essay, researchers may consider it as a contribution to the study of Derrida's relation to Husserl's philosophy. Major texts by Derrida that are discussed include The Problem of Genesis in Husserlian Phenomenology, ‘La difference’, Voice and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, ‘Plato's Pharmacy’, ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials’, and Khora. Major topics include: the transcendental ego, regional phenomenology, voice and writing, differance, origin, genesis, woman, negative theology, khora, and Plato. (shrink)

I suggest in this article that there are several aspects of the Lacanian Real that so-called Lacanian literature has not adequately addressed, or barely did so. In this pursuit, I present a deconstructing reading of a number of Lacanian texts. My deconstructive reading suggests that three key features characterize the literature on the Real. First, there always is resistance that is involved in thinking about, and in experiencing the effects of, the Real. Second, the Real is most characteristically thought of (...) in negative terms. Third, the Real is more or less thought of as a limit that cannot be transgressed. A deconstruction of these features leads to two arguments. First, I propose that the deployment of the Real as khôra within a discourse is an originary performativity which speaks of retroactively positing of a have-always-been-there Real. Second, I argue that the Real is the impossible–possible event which is at the heart of ‘saying the Real’. The deconstruction thus leads to a reconfiguration of the Real as a ‘ saying the Real (as khôra)’ qua event (in the sense of Derrida) in the discourse. (shrink)

Since Plato, western philosophy has had an uneasy relationship with the sea. The sea has always acted as the unspoken that threatens to breaks up the laborious definitions attained by philosophical achievements. Of all the thinkers who grapple with the maritime latency of philosophy and the openness inherent to thinking, Nietzsche is perhaps the most outspoken about the force of the sea for the birth of a new philosophy. Throughout his works, Nietzsche has consistently commended: “Aboard the ships, ye philosophers!” (...) Nowhere has Nietzsche pursued the philosophical potency of the maritime so forcefully as in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In this essay, I aim to show how the sea is pivotal to the thinking of eternal recurrence and how Zarathustra comes to embody the maritime and becomes a khoratic site of hospitality and transfiguration – for the birth of new historical values and for the condition of possibility of the value of values. (shrink)

If the word ‘devastated’ feels most appropriate when thinking of the passing of a beloved one, it also undergirds, through the waste of its desert, two essential notions of Western philosophy and literature: chaos and khōra. Looking at our world twenty years after Derrida’s passing, and at how for more than five decades he thought and wrote on the notion of world, this essay examines the radicality of Derrida’s deconstruction for our past and future conceptions of a world, of (...) ourselves, and of each and any threshold between these terms. (shrink)

Ce que nous connaissons de l’exégèse antique du Timée est limité par le fait que le commentaire de Proclus ne continue pas au‑delà de Tim. 17a‑44b. Grâce à d’autres auteurs, nous possédons un seul fragment de Proclus lui‑même sur le réceptacle du Timée, et un seul fragment des commentaires de Jamblique sur l’espace. Je discute ici ces deux passages et ce que nous trouvons sur le réceptacle, la matière, et la chôra dans le corpus de Proclus. La doctrine que la (...) matière est elle‑même dérivée de l’Un‑Bien et qu’elle ne peut devenir la source d’aucun mal est extrêmement importante pour l’intégrité du système. De plus, comme tous les réceptacles disséminés dans l’ensemble de son système métaphysique, la matière est concue comme une mère, et opposée au masculin et aux logoi formels. Quant au texte de Platon, Proclus n’est pas le premier philosophe à y avoir trouvé trois réceptacles, mais, par sa lecture détaillée du Timée, il est parvenu en certains endroits à ces trois phases du Réceptacle platonicien : une première phase privée de toute forme et qualité, une deuxième qui a reçu les formes, et une troisième en mouvement, désorganisée et irrationnelle, qui ne possède que des traces des formes. (shrink)

Marc Richir é, sem dúvida, um dos leitores mais profundos e atentos dos textos de Edmund Husserl. A capacidade deste autor para entrar em diálogo com o filósofo alemão, cujo valor, mas igualmente as limitações soube reconhecer, coloca‑o no centro do discurso filosófico da segunda metade do século XX e até hoje. O vigoroso caminho fenomenológico de Richir começa durante os anos 80, quando as obras do filósofo começam a tomar forma de um discurso denso e articulado em torno dos (...) níveis arquitetónicos que estão atrás e por debaixo da experiência natural e intersubjetiva do mundo. De entre as possíveis objeções a Husserl, devemos reconhecer, segundo Richir, o paradoxo que gera o próprio conceito de fenómeno, ao qual o filósofo belga trata de tentar chegar mediante uma nova e mais radical forma de époché. Desde aí, abre‑se um horizonte de investigação novo, feito de uma fenomenalização considerada no seu aparecer instantâneo e intermitente, em nome do qual o filósofo deve estar disposto a renunciar à presença do eu constituinte enquanto condição da toda a experiência e conhecimento. Entre os temas que compõem o universo richiriano está aquele que se dirige à investigação dos conteúdos mínimos da experiência que se organizam antes da conceptualização. Retomando o conceito merleau‑pontyano de Wesen selvagem durante os anos 90, Richir coloca o espaço no centro do seu discurso e, em particular, a forma na qual este se encontra intimamente misturado com o tempo na constituição do mundo dos fenómenos. O modo como chegamos a introduzir‑nos no mundo como seres que sabem e conhecem não pode entender‑se sem as noções husserlianas de corpo vivido e intersubjetividade. Richir falará, então, da matriz arcaica da chôra, a partir da qual, mediante um certo tipo peculiar de esquematismo, se gerará a primeira fenomenalização do mundo que é reflexo da relação originária entre mãe e filho. A Leiblichkeit será então o pinto de dissensão, o lugar de um espaço transicional, interfático, que subjaz a toda a espacialização. (shrink)

In this article, I compare WANG Bi’s 王弼 rendition of Dao 道 as the nameless, unfathomable root of language and the totality of beings, with Derrida’s analysis of the term khōra. Both cases include a text that presents itself as a commentary on another text, namely the Laozi 老子 for Wang Bi and Plato’s Timaeus for Derrida, whose matter is declared as elusive and ungraspable. I analyze the analogies between these two attempts to convey the unsayable, as well as (...) the philosophical differences in highlighting the “ipseity,” or the “otherness,” of what resides beyond the edge of discourse. On the basis of my analysis, I claim that decisive parallelisms can be found in the homology between text and theme, in the linguistic strategies and common metaphors, whereas the main difference lies in the metaphysical background. Whereas the Dao presumes a harmonious ability for self-ordering, khōra is centered on the concept of absolute otherness, whose unsayability is that of an entity that is constantly removing itself from any determination and which properly consists in dispossessing itself. (shrink)

After beginning by situating the author's (possible) relation to Derrida's expression, ‘democracy to come’, the article proceeds from the position that Derrida's phrase is to be understood as part of a political intervention. Indeed, the inseparability of democracy and deconstruction confirms this. After setting out some of the pertinent features of ‘democracy to come’ – seen, in part, in the General Will – the notion of political community in the thought of Hannah Arendt is brought into question, if not deconstructed. (...) Political community as presented by Arendt is seen to limit the inclusiveness of democracy. In the final section, the article suggests that Agamben's critique of the very structure of the nation-state opens the way for a renewal of the notion of the human in the ‘community to come’. (shrink)

This article enquires into the value of 'concepts' as a framework for the school curriculum by questioning their contribution towards our responsibilities for thinking about the earth. I take Derrida's deconstructive reading of Plato's Timaeus to show how spaces in meaning can be revealed, and more transgressive ways of knowing invited in. Derrida's Kh ra marks the opportunity for something new, productive and unforeseeable to arise as the play of traces unfurls. A deconstructive reading of the geography national curriculum policy (...) exposes the impracticality and impossibility of following the text as a definitive scheme and basis for curriculum planning. The paper ends with a spacing of a real place for the geography curriculum by appropriating four different ways of knowing Whitby, a harbour town in north-east England, outside the conceptual scheme. The paper contrasts an approach that is essentially general, conceptual and at the level of the plan, map or net, with a deconstructive approach that welcomes in other, more ethically responsible and imaginative meanings. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to reconsider the Timaeus’ introduction in order to show that Plato invites the reader to demystify the discourses of the Greek political elite of the fifth century. Dreamy land, in the autochtony myth, or ocean of nightmare, in Atlantis, khôra is the aporia of the story of Critias. Compared with Republic, this khôra is in fact the phobic projection of the aristocracy’s annoyed desires.

This paper investigates the intersection of architecture, philosophy, and sexual difference in Plato’s notion of khōra as it appears in the Timaeus. By engaging first with Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of Plato’s khōra, the paper shows how the interplay between architecture and philosophy not only reflects but also perpetuates patriarchal structures. Khōra, sometimes solely described as a passive receptacle, stages a complex relationship with femininity that challenges traditional notions of space and identity. Drawing on the works of feminist (...) theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Fanny Söderbäck, the paper examines how khōra serves as a foundational moment in the construction of sexual difference within philosophical discourse. Ultimately, this exploration calls for a reimagining of khōra as a site of resistance and transformation—one that, while existing before the architect-demiurge created the universe, nonetheless conditions his work. (shrink)

In this text is carried out a study of the Derrida’s concept «cap» in comparison with the way in which Heidegger sets out the «polis» in his texts developed throughout 1935 and 1943. In this way, through the word «khôra», shared this by Heidegger and Derrida, the topology of human dwelling is tackled as dimension necessarily opened towards the other. Thus, it is realized, through the «hospitality» showed by Heidegger and Derrida, the difference between the two regarding the possibility or (...) impossibility of this aporetic place for human dwelling. (shrink)

Beginning right at the start of the recently published volume II of Donner le temps, at its ‘bord’ or ‘boarding’ upon or out of a calmy oceanic surface, this essay examines the functions and movements of distinct surfaces in between Heidegger and Derrida. Confronting thus the tradition of the ‘Grund’, ‘Abgrund’, ‘Urgrund’, ‘Ungrund’, with the khôra-like surface of archi-writing and dissemination, the essay proposes an investigation of the philosophical and writerly space of Derrida/Heidegger not through their marks and letters, but (...) instead through the different surfaces of inscription and – simultaneous – effacement as the ‘proper places’ of thought and experience, of Destruktion and deconstruction. (shrink)

The debt and responsibility toward what thus withholds itself in any heritage will become clearer once we focus on the irreducible remainder in the double memory of Europe, in particular, within its Greek memory. Indeed, in the context of Derrida elucidation in “Faith and Knowledge” of the notion of the “most barren and desert‐like” abstraction, two names are invoked, the Greek name “khōra,” and the Jewish name of the “messianic”. This chapter reconstructs, at least in a very succinct manner, (...) the arguments that impel the invocation of these two names. Like “the messianic without messianicity” in one part of the double memory of Europe, khōra in its Greek part is an immemorial remainder that withdraws from what it renders possible. According to “Faith and Knowledge,” “this Greek noun [khōra] says in our memory that which is not reappropriable, even by our memory, even by our ‘Greek’ memory. (shrink)

This paper explores the notion of hospitality and faith in Derrida and Kierkegaard. The aim is to trace the topological core of existence in relation to an ongoing debate in contemporary continental philosophy of religion about khôra. The paper shows how khôral traces are at work in Kierkegaard’s thinking in relation to the topological proximity of love. The claim is, that Kierkegaard emphasizes, not a hostility but a vulnerability of what I coin khôral love – the vibrating space between the (...) anonymous and the amorous, call and response. The unknown X of the khôral becomes the topos of existence – the “stepping out”, the “you are here (X)”. A “you” called forth by the commandment of love or the visitation of the stranger. (shrink)

In the context of the recent publication of Donner le tempts II, we question the status of the gift, its singularity, its relationship, beyond the intentional structure of decision and consciousness, with the general problematic of democracy and the archive, of Khora as an enigma that haunts the same Onto-Theo-Cosmological conjugation of metaphysics and logocentrism, to show that the question about the gift is also the question about history and about the very possibility of democracy, beyond the capitalist logic of (...) accumulation and valuation. We end up referring to the strange case of the ‘six pesos’ thematized in Miguel Angel Asturias's novel, Hombres de maiz, as a case of the incalculable. Far from an instrumental account, but also from a providential version of the gift, we try to show it as an event always already inscribed in the abyss of our exchange relations, a possibility contained in its own impossibility. (shrink)

An edition of three essays by the leading French philosopher and theorist Jacques Derrida on the ethical, political and linguistic issues posed by the act of 'naming'. Passions: An Oblique Offering is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding - which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum) considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, raised (...) inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organised around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius. The final essay, Khora, explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word 'khora' in Plato's Timaeus. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, 'khora' opens, dislocates and displaces all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. (shrink)

A far-reaching reinterpretation of Plato’s Timaeus and its engagement with time, eternity, body, and soul that in its original French edition profoundly influenced Derrida The Tomb of the Artisan God provides a radical rereading of Timaeus, Plato’s metaphysical text on time, eternity, and the relationship between soul and body. First published in French in 1995, the original edition of Serge Margel’s book included an extensive introductory essay by Jacques Derrida, who drew on Margel’s insights in developing his own concepts of (...) time, the promise, the world, and khōra. Now available in English with a new preface by Margel, this engagement with Platonic thought proceeds from two questions that span the history of philosophy: What is time? What is the body? Margel’s twinned interrogation centers around Plato’s concept of the demiurge (divine artisan or craftsman): its body, its anthropomorphic attributes, its productive capacities and regulatory functions in the ordering/organization/assembling of the world. He posits that this paradoxical figure is not merely a cosmological metaphor for the living body but also the site of its destruction, dissolution, and disappearance. Torn between the finite and the infinite, being and becoming, the concept of demiurge also poses metaphysical questions about time, time before time, and the end of time. The ontological status of the demiurge’s body, Margel argues, would become increasingly decisive in the history of philosophy, particularly in Christianity and the dogma of incarnation. (shrink)

One of the central questions of Jacques Derrida's later writings concerns the sources of religion. At times he gives explicit priority to the universal dimension of religion. In other places, however, he considers the primacy of faith in its concrete, historical context. This paper will clarify Derrida's relationship to universality and historicity by first comparing his notion of "messianicity without messianism" to that of Walter Benjamin's "weak Messianism." After drawing out these differences, I will focus on Derrida's later writings. I (...) will show that much of the ambiguity of Derrida's thinking on religion can be resolved by turning to his work on khōra, the Greek word for "space" or "matter." The rhetoric of khōra can allow us to think through a twofold logic, one that includes the universal/historical distinction and exceeds its alternatives. (shrink)

In this essay Derrida reflects, for the first time at length, on secularization as a historical process. Whereas his earlier writings on religion focus on Jewish and Christian authors who blur the boundaries of religious belonging, this essay directly questions the categories of religion and secularization. Against this background, Derrida revisits the work of Kant, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and he reflects on his own engagement with messianism, negative theology, and the khôra.

«A excepção Derrida – o “eleito secreto” dos animais» pretende sobretudo evidenciar três questões fundamentais de todo interligadas: 1.) Sem a reificar numa filosofia teórico-sistemática, destacar a Desconstrução de Derrida como um “idioma filosófico” – o da différance ou da alteridade absoluta – dotada de pressupostos “teóricos” específicos (khôra, messiânico); 2.) Destacar e esclarecer o significado da “excepção derridiana” no tocante à questão do animal e da animalidade no contexto da sacrificialista ocidentalidade filosófico-cultural; 3.) Destacar a relevância da questão do (...) animal para repensar, em novos termos, a questão do próprio humano/sujeito – ainda essencialmente estruturado à luz de uma subjetividade metafísica –, sublinhando a inestimável contribuição da Desconstrução para repensar a eventual excepcionalidade do humano entre os viventes e para levar a bom termo a guerra pela compaixão, contribuindo assim para o surgimento de novas Luzes para a promessa do “por-vir” [«à-venir»] de uma outra humanidade e, consequentemente, de uma outra civilização. (shrink)

In his works Chora [Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Khôra. Paris: Galilée] and “Comment ne pas parler? Denegations” Derrida used the metaphor chora from Plato’s Timaeus (49a and following) to continue his struggle with the metaphysics of presence. In 1926 Nishida, the founder of the Japanese Kyōto School, used the same metaphor to create a new foundation of philosophy. Nishitani, a disciple of Nishida, developed the work of Nishida in close connection to Zen Buddhist experiences. Derrida tries to show the limits of (...) language within the game of language, whereas Nishitani starts from an experience beyond language, but tries to make it clear in the game of language. Derrida tries to destroy the limits of Western thinking within the dimension of language, whereas Nishitani tries to open up the Zen Buddhist tradition for philosophy. Both try to open up a new dimension of thinking which is not bound to substantialized truth. (shrink)

Re-thinking via deconstruction qua affirmation -- "Testimonial faith" in/about IR philosophy of science: the possibility condition of a pluralist science of world politics -- Khôra as the condition of possibility of the ontological without ontology -- Rethinking the "agent-structure" problematique: from ontology to parergonality -- Identity/difference and othering: negotiating the impossible politics of aporia -- Autoimmunity of trust without trust -- Rethinking international constitutional order: the autoimmune politics of binding without binding -- The quest for "illogical" logics of action in (...) IR. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Topics of Deconstruction: An Overview The Deconstruction of Structuralism The Deconstruction of Phenomenology Supplementarity in the Deconstruction of Rousseau The Deconstruction of Heidegger Deconstructive Remarks about Hegel The Deconstruction of Khōra Responding to Deconstructions Radical Meaning Holism: Rorty and Derrida Deconstruction and Questions of Ethics: Hospitality, Justice, and Friendship.

This paper orchestrates various moments in which Derrida makes recourse to the notion of anachrony – in analyses of khōra and demiurgic creation in the Timaeus and of the trace in Husserl – in order to describe a structural law according to which philosophy attempts to determine some ‘thing’ with the very categories that it makes possible and that are therefore structurally derivative, both too early and too late, in a word, anachronous.

This paper goes over Derridian thought through a topological study of his work. Thus, we take as a main point the relation between space, understood as spacement, and place as remains in order to describe the movement of Derridian thought. This leads to study the role of khôra in Derrida’s work, finding out thus its similarity with other capital notions as “différance” or “trace”. Thus, Derridian Topology is build up by spectrality and therefore it ends in a topology of the (...) impossible, in a topology of what has no place, that is to say, in a topology of the aporia. (shrink)

The Timaeus is a muthos that attempts to imagine a logos of the cosmos. Like the demiurge, readers are to be mimetic artists, poets, who move constantly between the intelligible essences and their likenesses in the world of appearance, experience, and becoming, occupying a third register that is neither and both. The cosmology of the Timaeus is both a likely story and an allegory of its own failure. It takes place within the nonspace of the khōra, a realm accessible (...) only through bastard reasoning that we can perceive only as if in a dream. The Timaeus is an unfinalizable logos in which each moment of positing is also a moment of irony and interrogation, of simultaneous acceptance and active separation, of choric space. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mother Earth, Mother City:Abjection and the AnthropoceneJanell WatsonIf the term “Anthropocene” designates the global influence of the human species over its terrestrial habitat, then its arrival profoundly changes a number of relations that have long occupied Western philosophy: that between humans and animals; between humans and nature; and between humans and their technologies. The possibility that humans have transformed not only the biology but also the geology of the (...) earth brings to the forefront the physical world, whose corporeal materiality was all but ignored by mid-twentieth-century continental philosophy, focused almost exclusively on language and politics. As Michel Serres put it in 1990, “Our a-cosmic philosophies, for almost half a century now, have been holding forth only on language or politics, writing or logic” (1995b, 29). Technicians and scientists have created a new world, observes Serres, while philosophers act as if they still live in the old one (2001, 4). By the time Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer formally introduced the term “Anthropocene” in 2000 (Crutzen and Steffen, 2003), Serres had developed a philosophy for the new human-dominated techno-scientific world. It is true that the physical world has in the meanwhile reappeared in continental philosophy thanks to object-oriented philosophy and various new materialisms, but Serres was among the first to formulate into a philosophical question the human impact on the physical and biological earth (2014, 63). He may well have been the very first to develop a philosophy of pollution. Serres complains that Plato, one of the few Western philosophers to even mention detritus, excludes residue and waste from metaphysics (2001, 185). Garbage, atmospheric emissions, and toxic waste not [End Page 269] only threaten life, but are also transforming biological and geological features of the earth. The philosophical dimension of pollution will be the topic of my paper.Philosophy has remained silent on this question of waste, with the notable exception of Julia Kristeva, whose theory of abjection brought the body and its discharges back into philosophy at the height of the linguistic turn. Although she presents abjection as a psychic formation, she derives the notion from the physical reaction of repugnance, vomiting, retching, and turning away when confronted with “filth, waste, or dung” and “defilement, sewage, and muck” (1982, 2). Both Serres and Kristeva portray pollution and abjection as remainders left behind by a subject-object dialectic that positions (male) humans as subjects, and everything else (and everyone) as objects to be mastered and appropriated. They both locate this oozing dialectic in Plato’s semiotic khôra, the mother’s womb. Read together, these philosophers of pollution expose the “materialist foundation” of “dialectical logic” by way of the maternal body (Kristeva 1984, 15). Kristeva focuses on the mother in order to demonstrate a corporeal basis for language and subjectivity. Although he shares the view that language comes from the body, Serres celebrates the womb as the first human habitat. He emphasizes the maternal functions of the earth: neonatal incubator, nurturer, habitat.However, waxing poetic about the sea, the riverside, and the wilderness, Serres writes very little about cities, even though they are the preferred human habitat of the new epoch. I therefore extend his reflections on human habitation in the Anthropocene epoch by considering the maternal aspects of the global megalopolis, which simultaneously sustains domestic life and produces deadly pollution. The maternal functions of reproduction, nourishment, and shelter are pushing the limits of the earth’s physical capacities. Maternity thus lies at the heart of the problem of the Anthropocene: the possibility that human domination of the earth will deplete its ability to sustain life.MatrixAlthough he grounds his philosophy in complexity, chaos, narrative, and anthropology, in his 1990 manifesto, The Natural Contract, Serres argues that science and technology have brought about a subject-object reversal between the human species and the earth (1995b). He bases his argument on a dialectical model in order to expose a struggle for domination, the classical confrontation between master and slave. Serres credits Descartes with foreseeing from his vantage point at the dawn of the scientific age that humans would go on to “dominate and appropriate” the natural world according... (shrink)

This paper intends above all to highlight three fundamental interconnected questions: (1) without reifying it in a theoretical-systematic philosophy, to highlight Derrida’s Deconstruction as a “philosophical idiom” – that of différance or of the ab-solute otherness – endowed, therefore, with specific “theoretical” assumptions (khôra, messianic and trace); (2) to highlight and to clarify the meaning of the “Derridian exception” concerning the issue of the animal and animality within the context of the sacrificial philosophical-cultural Westernness; (3) to highlight the relevance of (...) the issue of the animal and animality in order to re-think, in new terms, the question of the human itself – still essentially structured in the light of a metaphysical subjectivity –, underlining the invaluable contribution of Deconstruction to rethink the exceptionality of the human among the living beings and to bring the war for compassion to a successful end, thus contributing to the emergence of new Lights for the promise of the “coming” [“à-venir”] of another humanity and, consequently, of another civilization. (shrink)

This paper takes up Richard Kearney's work The God Who May Be, specifically in the context of postmodern debates concerning epistemological claims regarding the other. Kearney's hermeneutics of religion attempts to forge a middle path between ontotheological philosophies of religion and various quasi-religious manifestations of postmodernism; however, my main concern is to address certain points of disagreement between Kearney and proponents of a deconstructive "religion without religion" principally Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo. The main issue at stake is just (...) how other God is, which is itself a specific case of a broader question concerning otherness per se. Caputo et al. claim that religious assertions about God are fundamentally undecidable, which means that they are "infinitely translatable" and "substitutable," that we can never tell what is a translation of what, but the ultimate point is that it "does not matter" The undecidable nature of religious claims includes the very claim that religion is a discourse about God, which is why deconstructive religion without religion is a messianic hope for "the impossible" devoid of any content. Kearney objects that such radical undecidability leaves us lost in the desert ofkhora with no way to distinguish, even imperfectly and provisionally, between God and Satan, good and evil, the widow and the terrorist. In this paper I claim that Kearney succeeds in finding this via tertia between the Scylla of dogmatism and the Charybdis of complete indeterminacy by thinking God in two important ways: as persona-prosopon (which avoids confusing God with khora or monstrosity) and as posse (which keeps us from dogmatism). /// O presente artigo toma em particular consideração a obra de Richard Kearney The God Who May Be, especificamente no contexto dos debates pós-modernos acerca do estatuto epistemológico da alteridade. A abordagem hermeneutica que Kearney faz da religião procura estabelecer um caminho médio entre as filosofias ontoteológicas da religião e várias manifestações quase-religiosas do pós-modernismo. O autor do artigo, contudo, pretende estabelecer alguns pontos de desacordo entre Kearney e os defensores da "religião sem religião" típica do movimento da desconstrução, tendo em vista, sobretudo, as aportações de Jacques Derrida e de John D. Caputo. Em questão está especificamente a alteridade de Deus, ou seja, um caso específico da questão mais alargada acerca da alteridade em si mesma. Caputo, por exemplo, defende que as asserções religiosas sobre Deus são fundamentalmente indecidíveis, o que significa que elas são "infinitamente traduzíveis "e "substituíveis ", enfim, que nós nunca sabemos o que pwpriamente é tradução de quê, sendo que, no fundo, a questão em si mesma "não importa". O carácter indecidível das propostas religiosas inclui a ideia de que a religião constitui um discurso sobre Deus, razão pela qual a desconstrutora "religião sem religião "constitui uma esperança messiânica pelo "impossível" desprovida de qualquer conteúdo. Kearney objecta que uma tal indecidibilidade radical nos deixa perdidos no meio do deserto da Chora sem capacidade de distinguir, ainda que imperfeita e provisoriamente, entre Deus e Satanás, entre o bem e o mal, entre a viúva e o terrorista. Assim, o autor do artigo defende que Richard Kearney é bem sucedido em sua busca de uma via tertia entre a Cila do dogmatismo e a Caríbdis da completa indeterminação graças ao seu modo de pensar Deus por dois caminhos distintos: como pessoa-prosopon (o que impede confundir Deus com Chora ou monstruosidade) e como posse (o que nos resguarda do dogmantismo). (shrink)

Auschwitz is still the greatest challenge for philosophy and reason, rather than representing their end, as Lyotard most prominently seems to imply. The article shows how the evolution of the question of dialectics from Hegel to postmodernism must be thought in relation to Auschwitz. The critics of reason and Hegel such as Lyotard, Derrida and Foucault are highlighting the break between reason and unspeakable suffering, for which Auschwitz is the most prominent symbol, but reintroduce ‘behind’ the scene much more speculative (...) concepts than Hegel himself (Plasma by Lyotard, khora by Derrida and power as an absolute by Foucault). Adorno for his part thought that only a negative dialectics could address the problem adequately but transferred the unity of opposites just in the realm of utopia. But there is no negative (Adorno) or positive dialectics, only dialectics which mediates and posit the positive and the negative on a higher level. (shrink)

Is it possible to connect with the God‐who‐may‐be without paying attention to the tapping on the wall from the other side? Kearney remains within the orbit and the idiom of so‐called postmodern philosophy while he expresses phenomenologically the relationship with God as ultimate other. If we are to remain within the confines of postmodern philosophy to articulate such presence, access to what Rilke calls “heart‐work” as opposed to “work of sight” might best be glimpsed through excavation of “decisiveness” in the (...) musings of the later Heidegger. (shrink)

Dans la première partie du Théétète, Socrate présente l’opposition entre pluralisme et monisme sous la forme métaphorique de la Guerre de Troie. Cette dramaturgie particulière permet à Platon de faire valoir une question philosophique qui proviendrait de Parménide. La mise en image platonicienne interroge en fait la réalité et le sens de khôra/topos. In the first part of Theaetetus, Socrates shows the opposition between pluralism and monism through the metaphoric form of the Trojan War. This particular dramatization allows Plato to (...) make evident a question inherited from Parmenides. This platonic picture questions the reality and the meaning of khôra/topos. (shrink)

This essay attempts to offer some reflections on what it is that Jacques Derrida found uncomfortable in Martin Heidegger’s thought at the level of fundamental gestures. The region of disagreement is located in Derrida’s self-identification in a marrano register at an autographic level. This paper studies the notions of propriation and expropriation in Heidegger’s late texts and compares them to Derrida’s ‘uncanny propriation’ as a marrano notion. I offer four propositions regarding Derrida’s marranismo, which I align with Derrida’s proposal for (...) desecularization, tentatively described as a ‘messianic engagement with the khora’. I conclude with a proposal for the development of ontic models of marrano action that would antecede the theory/practice divide. (shrink)