This study sets out to establish an hegemony of light and examine its relationship to the lens in photography. Through a series of sequenced photographs presented as an exhibition 'The Light Ages' in May 2017. The photographs were 841mm x 1189 mm Giclee prints mounted on aluminum which explore the way in which difference sources of light contribute to the identity of different spaces by fracturing and separating the light and duration of the image. The thesis explores how light permeates the English language and is inscribed in terms used to define photography. As a source of energy, light provides the very essence of visibility and defines the perception of objectivity and its limits. The geometric relationship between the light axes and the lens axis is what forms the basis of my development of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Since all photographs rely on some kind of light it was important to identify one that was developed specifically for photographic use and controlled almost exclusively by the agents of photographic representation. It also appears to mark the ontology of the image, however, as this study examines it is only one of the temporal registers. The practice seeks to tear apart these temporal registers to show the dualism and hegemony of light, how it attempts to pin down one interpretation at the expense of another. One of the greatest challenges for researchers, is to consider new photographic discourses that attempt to understand how advances in technology affect the relationship between the aesthetic and the signified. Through practice, the study tests and explores the relationship between flash light and the lens axis. It questions whether our perception of the centrality of photographic representation is the defining characteristic of photography as a stable form of representation in contemporary culture.

This research project participates in the genre of Performance art. It explores performativity in relation to Emmanuel Levinas' formulation of two interlacing modes of language, the ethical saying and the ontological, political said. The saying is of my originary, ethical relation to the other person that constitutes me, whereas the said is the mode of 'content', knowledge, and ontology. The project suggests that at least two registers of performativity pertain to the saying. One is in Simon Critchley's description of the saying as performative, prior to any decision to perform. In regard to another meaning of performativity, I propose that a political signification of art may be what Levinas calls a "reduction" of the said that 'performs' a showing of the saying. To perform a showing of the saying, would, in a Levinasian engagement, be to make apparent the ultimate interruption by ethics of ontology and politics, thus pointing to a constitutive non-closure of the political like that theorized by Jacques Derrida and by Critchley. Such a non-closure of the political is tentatively linked with critiques of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics such as Claire Bishop's which draw on Jacques Lacan's notion of the subject. Performances explore the notion of the "reduction" of ontology resourced by Derrida's formulation of Levinas' later writing style as involving a sériature; serial and heterogeneous interruptions of the said1. The project has unfolded in a series of performance pieces, and will conclude with a final performance in March 2007. This exegesis articulates the major provocations for the project, contextualises the project with regard to selected art practices, and documents and discusses the major performance pieces.

Les sciences des religions acceptèrent l’universalité de la religion comme une prémisse indéniable dès sa fondation. Néanmoins, certaines réserves peuvent être émises. Cette thèse poursuit la problématisation de l’universalité de la religion, entamée par un groupe d’auteurs de la critical religion, et oriente la réflexion sur les conditions d’intelligibilité de cette croyance par l’entremise d’une analyse discursive déconstructiviste contextualisant l’universalité de la religion dans son épistémè. Plus précisément, cette thèse propose que la croyance en l’universalité de la religion soit supportée par des réseaux de croyances métaphysiques et ontologiques. La déconstruction des conditions d’intelligibilité du concept de l’universalité, juxtaposée à celle de la réification de la religion, expose des jeux de langage délimités et circonscrits par une ontologie moderne. Ces jeux de langage ontologiques sont déployés par des démarcations radicales où des séries dichotomiques, le sujet et l’objet par exemple, circonscrivent les discours dans une clôture métaphysique. Bref, cette thèse déconstruit le signifié transcendantal « religion » et expose les conditions d’intelligibilité de l’universalité de la religion, c’est-à-dire les jeux de langage ontologiques modernes étroitement tissés et calqués sur l’ontologie classique où les discours auxquels la grande majorité des approches en sciences des religions adhèrent puisent leur intelligibilité.

This essay is concerned with the workings of hospitality towards the other in J.M. Coetzee’s novel Slow Man. The reading proposed here is that the bicycle accident which befalls protagonist Paul Rayment on the novel’s first page, costing him his leg and a large portion of his previous vitality, renders him momentarily “unstrung,” understood here as a state of passive openness to the unknown, of absolute  responsiveness or hospitality towards the other. The other is here defined as that which is—more or less—ungraspable in the self, in another being or in an unexpected event. A key argument put forward is that the accident also accentuates Paul Rayment’s enduring sense of unhomedness, his alienation in relation to body, language and self. The desire for home or belonging with other people brings about deliberate acts of hospitality on his part, as he tries to find a home for himself by inviting others in. The essay examines how these two strands of ideas—being unhomed and being unstrung—intersect in moments of hospitality in Slow Man, and reflects on how hospitality can and cannot succeed in creating a home for the subject. Theories of hospitality by Jacques Derrida, Derek Attridge and Mike Marais are discussed and serve as inspiration to the reading.

The thesis begins with the book History of Madness in the Classical Age of the noteworthy debate revolving around the two thinkers, Foucault and Derrida, and then embarks on the inquiry of Foucault¡¦s archeological methodology from two aspects. First, Cartesian Meditations presents the individual differences between the two thinkers¡¦ methodologies on the one hand, and it raises different viewpoints concerning the privileges of dream and madness on the other. Second, the debate in this sense is made to employ Derrida¡¦s comment as an angle of rereading Foucault, which serves to offer an attempt to renew Foucault¡¦s textual reading and conduct a methodological inquiry. Both dream and madness are the main thread of the thesis. Along with the two threads and Foucault¡¦s textual exposition, we are allowed to discover that the Classical Age offers a discursive practice between the visibility and the enunciability. Due to the discourse and language in reason and subjectivity embedded in the philosophical thought, which then obtains their priority, I aim to further strengthen the argument that Foucault¡¦s archeological work does not merely rely on the dimensions of discourse and language. Instead, it suggests de facto the transferring of moving toward the image and figure.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät--Tübingen--Eberhard-Karls-Universität, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 327-344.

Diss.--Berlin--Freie Universität, 1998. / Bibliogr. p. 383-399.

Texte remanié de: Ph. D. thesis--Bristol--University of the West of England, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 227-236. Index.

Texte remanié de: Habilitationsschrift--Theologische Fakultät--Eichstätt-Ingolstadt--Katholische Universität, 2007. / Bibliogr. p. 464-495.

München, Diss., 2006. / Bibliogr. p. 205-216.