Filozofski vestnik

Where Did the Unconscious Go?

Alejandro Cerda-Rueda — 2023-12-27

It has been suggested that due to AI-technology-generated gadgets, a digital unconscious enables the probable annulment of the Freudian unconscious. The purpose of this article is to delve into Freudian topography as a way to demonstrate that this foreclosure of the unconscious was somewhat present in Freud as of 1920. In addition, regardless of solid attempts at the extinction of the unconscious by contemporary demands, I will focus on how the capitalist discourse and AI-generated technology propose a different form of social bond. Finally, the conceptualization of pain (Schmerz) is important for ascribing a different modality to the Freudian unconscious than in recent dissertations, but most importantly, it is a significant element for analytical experience to function properly where it must not be aligned with suffering. An era without an unconscious may foretell a time where enjoyment, as a form of subjectivity, is effaced.

The Dialectic of the Limit

Holden M. Rasmussen — 2023-12-27

In a series of presentations at Sainte-Anne Hospital, published in English under the title Talking to Brick Walls, Lacan offers one of the few explicit references to Bataille in his œuvre. He interposes a stark disagreement between himself and Bataille on the status of possible knowledge regarding ontological questions. Lacan reads Bataille as a mystic who proposes that the pursuit of knowledge is a futile task and that knowledge of being is only possible per viam negativam. In order to advance this reading, Lacan emphasises Bataille’s fixation with “nonknowledge.” At first glance, one can understand why Lacan identifies him as a mystic, and many commentators on Bataille’s writings offer similar reading; however, this ignores subtle nuances of Bataille’s arguments regarding what he calls “inner experience.” More crucially, it ignores his explicit rejection of mysticism on the very basis of the knowledge that results from nonknowledge. This comparison frames a problem for fundamental ontology, of which I hope to elaborate only one aspect: The incompleteness of thought implies a non-relation between thought and being, and we can have a knowledge about this non-relation through an analysis of the limit as phantasmatic and structural rather than as real.

Habituated to Denial

Tadej Troha — 2023-12-27

The article discusses the mechanisms of climate change denial. It starts from the observation that habituation to denial is based on a process that is exactly the opposite on the content level: the process of repeated aha-experiences, i.e., sudden insights into reality of the climate crisis. In the first part, the author summarises the developments of recent years, which came to a symbolic end at COP 28 in Dubai, when the President introduced the contradictory idea that the transition to a sustainable paradigm is only possible by simultaneously maintaing the fossil fuel paradigm. In the second part, the article summarises some of the main points of what was probably the first interdisciplinary symposium on climate change, organised in 1975 by Margaret Mead. Referring to the conference’s position paper, the author first develops the basic framework for productive interaction between the social and natural sciences as Mead envisioned it and then presents the social consequences of the fact that the relationship remained institutionally disorganised—and eventually had to organise itself.

Of Times, Religions, and Revolutions

Arsalan Reihanzadeh — 2023-12-27

Starting from the impact of biblical teachings on Islam, the first part of this article attempts to show the divergent paths that Christianity and Islam have taken when confronted with the three dimensions of time (chronos, kairos, krisis). The article aims to elucidate the distinct onto-theologies of the two religious discourses by analysing various examples that illustrate this divergence. Consequently, the onto-theology of Islam can be encapsulated as “One unites in two,” in contrast to the onto-theology of Christianity, which can be formulated as “One divides into two.” In the second part of the article, one of the political implications of the onto-theology of “One united in two” is examined in depth in a socio-political context, showing how the conceptualisation of such a context can only be done adequately if its onto-theological dimension is taken into account.

Haptic Contagion

Mirt Komel — 2023-12-27

During the pandemic there were many ways of handling the contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus, most of them in haptic terms, or in terms of touch: masks, hand disinfection, social distancing, quarantines, (self)isolations. Touch thus became not only the privileged object of the new bio-politics, striving to preserve life at all costs, but also what was lost during the pandemic. To be sure, a loss of something we never had that even the vaccine, which promised a return to normal, but actually paved the way for a “brave new post-pandemic world,” could not rehabilitate. In short, one of the elements that radically changed with and in the (post-)pandemic world is precisely the elusive object of touch, which we propose to conceptually grasp through the coinage of the concept of its “mateReal hapticity.”

The Object as a Series of Its Acts

Snežana Vesnić — 2023-12-27

Our intention is to construct the conditions for a new position that more closely explains the reality of the object (its location, concreteness, possibility of being seen, extension, instantaneousness, etc.), but also the object’s movement, the “situation” in which it is or becomes a potential agent that “works,” influences us and incites us to movement towards us, indeed gives us a turn towards an ideal object and its realization. Using a variety of texts that thematize the object, a few passages from Hegel, we attempt to reveal connections between key architectural (and not only architectural) concepts, form a given epistemological order, and differentiate amongst basic acts and operations that could be ascribed to the object.

Wind on the Beach

Vesna Liponik — 2023-12-27

Review of On Biopolitics: An Inquiry into Nature and Language by Marco Piasentier (New York: Routledge, 2021).