The aim of this thesis is to conduct a post-relational reading of the programme of relational art and its influence upon current aesthetics. ‘Post’ is not used in the indicative sense here: it does not simply denote the passing of the high water mark of relational art’s critical reception. Rather, it seeks to identify what remains symptomatically unresolved in relational art through a reading of its texts together with its critique. Amongst these unresolved problems certain questions endure. The question of this art’s claim to autonomy and its problematic mode of appearance and materialism remain at large. Ironically it shares the same fate as the avant-garde it sought to distance itself from; the failure to unite art with the everyday. But it has nevertheless redefined the parameters of artistic production: this is its success. I argue that this is because relational art was internally riven from its outset by a contradiction between its micropolitical structures and the need to find a mode of representation that did not transgress its self-imposed taboo upon visual representation. I identify a number of strategies that relational art has used to address this problem: for example its transitive ethics and its separation of ‘the visual’ from formal representations of public space and of a liminal counter-public sphere. Above all, I argue that its principle of the productive mimesis and translation of social relations through art is the guarantor of this art’s autonomy. My thesis is premised upon the notion that one can learn much about new forms of critical art from the precepts and suppositions that informed relational aesthetics and its critical reception. Relational aesthetics, in fact, establishes the terms of engagement that inform new critical art. Above all, this is because the question of the ‘relation of non-relation’ is bigger than relational aesthetics. The ‘relation of non-relation’ does not denote the impossibility of relation between subjects. Rather, it is a category that identifies non-relation as the very source of productive relations. This can be applied to those liminal points of separation that 6 delineate the territory of critical art prior to relational aesthetics. For example, these instances of ‘non-relation’ appear in the separation of art from non-art; of representation from micropolitics and of the anti-relational opposition of the philosophical categories of the general and the particular. Overall, I seek to reclaim Bourriaud as instrumental to the re-thinking of these categories and as essential to a reading of current critical art discourse. I identify a number of misreadings of relational aesthetics that result from a misrecognition or unwillingness to engage with Nicolas Bourriaud’s direct influences: Serge Daney, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze and Louis Althusser are often overlooked in this respect. I argue that Bourriaud’s critics tend to bring their own agendas to bear on his work, often seeking to remediate what is problematic. These critiques introduce existing aesthetic and political paradigms into his work in order to claim him as their own. So for example we encounter antagonistic relational aesthetics as the reinstatement of the avant-garde. Also, relational aesthetics as an immanent critique of the commodity form within a selective reading of Theodor Adorno. Also, we encounter dissensual relational aesthetics as ‘communities of sense’ that adopt site-specific methodologies whose mode of inhabitation of the socius is a reaction to relational aesthetics and is premised upon separatism. This diversification of relational art’s critique does not address, however, its fundamental problems of autonomy and representation. Rather, in different ways, they sidestep these issues and duplicate their non-relationality in the form of an impasse. My reading seeks to read the relational programme as a whole and to reclaim that which is symptomatically post-relational within it. I think that this is important because the critique of Bourriaud is presently unduly weighted towards the analysis of Relational Aesthetics (Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. by S. Pleasance and F. Woods, (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002)), thus important developments within Postproduction (2002) and The Radicant(2009) have gone overlooked. Specifically, Bourriaud’s increased emphasis upon a topology of forms and an Althusserian ‘aleatory materialism’ demand that we ask whether relationality in art is ontological or epistemological in form. It also demands that we re-consider its claims to materialism and critical realism on its own terms. Bourriaud’s later works are important not simply because they set out how relational art might inhabit networks of electronic communication but because they begin to develop a more coherent thinking of new modes of relational representation. Bourriaud begins to address the aporia of micropolitics and representation in his later works. His notion of representation becomes increasingly a matter of spatio-temporal relation and the representational act becomes increasingly identified with the motility of the relational act as a performative presentation. In the light of these developments, I argue that the thinking of relation that has thus far dictated the philosophical analysis of relationality and political aesthetics results in an acute anti-relationality or a ‘relational anarchism’. This is why the philosophy of Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou respectively, are inadequate to the demands of current aesthetics. In fact they hinder its development. On this basis I turn to Rodolphe Gashé’s re-thinking of relation. His thinking grants relation a minimal ontology that in fact excludes it from philosophy, but at the same time, plays a key role in the construction of singularities as new epistemological categories. Gashé suggests a unique epistemological value for relations and recognizes what is evental within them. These singularities find their modes of appearance within various forms of the encounter. Gashé’s thought is helpful in that it identifies the non-relational of relation with its event. Also, I argue that a theory of post-relational representation is necessary to address the ‘weak manifestations of relational art’, although not in a transgressive or messianistic form; also, that this thinking of representation, when combined with aleatory materialism, produces a 8 broad constituency of representational forms with which to construct a more robust critical art. This includes the documentary form. In order to address the objections of micropolitics I therefore advance Philip Auslander’s notion of the performativity of the document as essential to relational aesthetics because it is an art form that in fact requires mediation by the visual. My argument is premised upon the ineliminability of representation from the aesthetic and moreover, that the artwork is constituted within a broad nexus of operations and acts of signification. This fragmentary construction is the source of the objectivity or critical realism of these practices. I argue that ‘visual’ documentation functions as a tool for presencing and connecting relations of exchange but is merely one of the forms of representation available to visual artists.

No description available.

Au regard des débats actuels polarisés autour du concept de « personne », cette recherche se donne comme but d’explorer l’approche du théologien orthodoxe Dumitru Stăniloae relative à la personne dans son versant anthropologique. À cet effet, le présent travail tâche d’une part de repérer et de révéler les éléments qui édifient sa réflexion de la personne, à savoir les composantes de la personnéité humaine, et d’autre part, les sources à la fois théologiques et philosophiques ayant inspiré et influencé de manière déterminante notre auteur. Expression d’une jonction de la théologie patristique orientale (byzantine) et de la pensée moderne, la personne comporte ainsi, chez Staniloae, une structure ontologique-communautaire, dont le pôle ontologique plonge ses racines dans l’héritage des Pères et le pôle relationnel ou communautaire, dans les avancées de la réflexion moderne : associée à l’hypostase des anciens, la personne se définit comme mode de subsistance ou d’existence réelle de l’être, tandis qu’assimilée au sujet et au moi modernes, elle se présente comme facteur conscient et libre en relation d’amour avec autrui. Représentée donc comme subsistance en soi et existence en communion, la personne manifeste, chez notre auteur, l’aboutissement de toute une série de confluences : du passé et du présent, de l’Orient et de l’Occident, de la théologie et de la philosophie, de l’orthodoxie et des deux autres confessions chrétiennes. / Considering the current debates polarized around the concept of "person", this research aims to explore the approach of the orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae relative to the person in its anthropological side. In this purpose, the present work tries on one hand to identify and to reveal the elements which compose his reflection of the person, namely the components of the human personhood, and on the other hand, the theological and philosophical sources having inspired and influenced our author. As a junction of the oriental patristic theology and the modern thought, the person contains, at Staniloae, an ontological-communitarian structure. The ontological pole plunges its roots into the inheritance of the Fathers and the relational or communitarian pole, in the progress of the modern reflection: associated with the hypostasis, the person is defined as mode of subsistence or real existence of the being, whereas likened to the subject and to the modern I, it appears as conscious and free factor in relation of love with others. Thus represented as subsistence in itself and existence in communion, the concept of person is the outcome of a whole series of confluences: of the past and of the present, of the East and of the West, of the theology and of the philosophy, of the orthodoxy and of two other Christian confessions.

La Déclaration christologique commune signée à Rome en 1994 entre l’Église catholique et l’Église assyrienne témoigne d’une volonté réelle de retour à la foi une et commune entre les deux Églises. Elle met un terme à une séparation datant du Ve siècle, lors des querelles christologiques entre les deux patriarches Nestorius et Cyrille d’Alexandrie. L’Église de l’Orient vit, depuis toujours, un double isolement : l’un géographique, politique et culturel car située jadis en dehors des frontières de l’Empire romain, et l’autre dogmatique et ecclésiologique dû à sa défense de maîtres œcuméniques condamnés tels Nestorius et Théodore de Mopsueste. Elle exploite des termes anthropologiques kyana (nature), qnoma et parsopa (personne), de la langue syriaque, à la base des controverses et des incompréhensions sur la personne une du Christ. Dans ce débat, le rôle de Mar Babaï le Grand, au VIIe siècle, est capital, car il donne, dans son livre Liber de Unione, une définition précise de ces termes et systématise la théologie syro-orientale. Il est à l’origine de la confession christologique : deux natures, deux qnomé en une personne. La Déclaration christologique de 1994, révèle au monde ce qui unit les deux Églises : la personne du Christ. Elle est le fruit d’un travail concerté du Conseil pontifical pour la promotion de l’unité des chrétiens et de l’Église de l’Orient. Le désir de Mar Denkha IV, de signer un accord christologique avec Rome a rencontré celui d’André de Halleux, du côté catholique et de Mar Bawai Soro, du côté assyrien. Le Comité mixte assyro-catholique poursuit cette tâche en vue de l’unité, de 1995 à 2004, épaulé par la Fondation « Pro Oriente ». En 2005, le dialogue est suspendu avec le refus de la signature de l’accord sur les sacrements par les Assyriens. L’année 2007, laisse entrevoir une reprise possible du dialogue entre les deux partis. / The Common Christological Declaration signed in Rome in 1994 between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church testifies to a genuine desire for a return to the common faith between the two Churches. It puts an end to a separation dating from the 5th century, due to the Christological quarrels between the two patriarchs Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria.The Church of the East has always had a double isolation: one geographical, political and cultural since it was formerly outside the borders of the Roman Empire, and the other dogmatic and ecclesiological due to its defense of ecumenical masters condemned such as Nestorius and Theodore de Mopsueste. It exploits the anthropological terms kyana (nature), qnoma and parsopa (person), of the Syriac language, at the basis of the controversies and misunderstandings on the one person in Christ. In this debate, the role of Mar Baba the Great in the seventh century is crucial, for in his book Liber de Unione he gives a precise definition of these terms and systematizes Syro-Oriental theology. He is at the origin of the Christological confession: two natures, two qnome in one person. The Christological Declaration of 1994 reveals to the world what unites the two Churches: the person of Christ. It is the result of a concerted effort by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the Unity of Christians and the Church of the East. The desire of Mar Denkha IV to sign achristological agreement with Rome met that of André de Halleux on the Catholic side and Mar Bawai Soro on the Assyrian side. The Assyro-Catholic Joint Committee continued this task with a view to unity, from 1995 to 2004, supported by the "Pro Oriente" Foundation. In 2005, the dialogue was suspended with the refusal of the Assyrians to sign the agreement on the sacraments. The year 2007, aims at resuming the dialogue between the two parties.

This paper explores the importance of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son in Basil of Caesarea's Trinitarian writings. In order to judge the importance of the doctrine for Basil, its impact on all of his exegetical and dogmatic writings on the Trinity were surveyed and evaluated. In his writings, Basil repeatedly addresses his belief that the Father and the Son is the one, eternal God. He considered this possible due to the Son's eternal generation from the substance of the Father. Basil considered the eternal generation of the Son to be both a scripturally warranted and philosophically coherent doctrine that explains how the Father and Son are indelibly same in substance and truly distinct persons. This study concludes that the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is essential to Basil's Trinitarian theology throughout his life. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Systematic Theology)

This paper explores the importance of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son in Basil of Caesarea's Trinitarian writings. In order to judge the importance of the doctrine for Basil, its impact on all of his exegetical and dogmatic writings on the Trinity were surveyed and evaluated. In his writings, Basil repeatedly addresses his belief that the Father and the Son is the one, eternal God. He considered this possible due to the Son's eternal generation from the substance of the Father. Basil considered the eternal generation of the Son to be both a scripturally warranted and philosophically coherent doctrine that explains how the Father and Son are indelibly same in substance and truly distinct persons. This study concludes that the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is essential to Basil's Trinitarian theology throughout his life. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Systematic Theology)