Notes on the productivity of nostalgia is a treatise on otherness and memory, framed as entries into the notebook of a no-longer-young man who decides to visit places that have a nostalgic connection to him - places where he grew up, and places where he fell in love -and who is trying to overhaul the notion that you can't look back and move forward at the same time. / [I examensarbetet ingår utställningen "Little father, glorious stump":] The exam work consisted of a three-room installation of sculptural objects, activated by a live sound performance, as well as a 3D animation projected unto one wall of the gallery. / <p>Examensarbetet består av en skriftlig del och en gestaltande del. Alternativ titel anger namnet förden gestaltande delen. </p><p>The master work includes a written essay and a forming part. The alternative title is the name of the forming part.</p>

This paper examines how Gilles Deleuze critically transforms the theory of thought from representation to production, by way of finding thought’s genetic conditions, in his synthesis of time and ideal synthesis in Différence et répétition. I focus on Deleuze’s critique of subject, time, and identity, and on how he tries to establish a purely positive synthesis capable of producing the absolutely new. Lastly, I discuss Deleuze’s own image of thought that rises from his critique, as simulacrum.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate an aesthetic position in the late writings of Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), hence exploring the aesthetic dimensions of the authorship that seem to have remained unnoticed. By focusing on the fragmentary work Le Pas au-delà (1973) I attempt to trace an aesthetics of worklessness (désœuvrement) through the figurations of movement, space, and relation within the book. This attempt is realized through a hermeneutic reading that emphasizes the affective, rhetorical, and aesthetic expressions which appear in the literary practice of Blanchot as well as further illustrating the definition of worklessness as the absence of work. Although there is a tendency to treat the late writing of Blanchot as corresponding to his notion of the neutral rather than worklessness, I argue that the literary language of Le Pas au-delà still can be comprehended as a linguistics of worklessness which cannot be conformed into positive knowledge. Thus, the commonly deployed ontological interpretations of Blanchots’ writing are deemed to be problematic, as the notion of worklessness indicates an absence of work that cannot be conceptualized. My study shows that the absolute alterity which Le Pas au-delà appears to thematize – through its’ uncategorisable fragments, that moves between the non-places of fiction and theory, gaze and hearing, the self and the other – can be maintained through the thought of an aesthetics of worklessness. According to my reading, such a notion implies the understanding of aesthetics as a subversive practice where the sensuous is presented in its’ unpresentability.

Cette thèse est une enquête épistémologique qui s’interroge sur la persistance de « l’éther » dans le champ de la technologie. De façon générale, le mot « éther » évoque un modèle conceptuel de la physique pré-einsteinienne, celui d’un milieu invisible permettant la propagation de la lumière et des ondes électromagnétiques. Or, ce n’est là qu’une des figures de l’éther. Dans plusieurs mythologies et cosmogonies anciennes, le nom « éther » désignait le feu originel contenu dans les plus hautes régions célestes. Aristote nommait « éther », par exemple, le « cinquième être », ou « cinquième élément ». La chimie a aussi sa propre figure de l’éther où il donne son nom à un composé chimique, le C4H10O, qui a été utilisé comme premier anesthésiant général à la fin du XIXe siècle. L’apparition soutenue dans l’histoire de ces figures disparates de l’éther, qui a priori ne semblent pas entretenir de relation entre elles, est pour nous la marque de la persistance de l’éther. Nous défendons ici l’argument selon lequel cette persistance ne se résume pas à la constance de l’attribution d’un mot ou d’un nom à différents phénomènes dans l’histoire, mais à l’actualisation d’une même signature, éthérogène. À l’invitation d’Agamben et en nous inspirant des travaux de Nietzsche et Foucault sur l’histoire-généalogie et ceux de Derrida sur la déconstruction, notre thèse amorce une enquête historique motivée par un approfondissement d’une telle théorisation de la signature. Pour y parvenir, nous proposons de placer l’éther, ou plutôt la signature-éther, au cœur de différentes enquêtes historiques préoccupées par le problème de la technologie. En abordant sous cet angle des enjeux disparates – la légitimation des savoirs narratifs, la suspension des sens, la pseudoscience et la magie, les révolutions de l’information, l’obsession pour le sans-fil, l’économie du corps, la virtualisation de la communication, etc. –, nous proposons dans cette thèse autant d’amorces pour une histoire autre, une contre-histoire. / This dissertation stands as an epistemological inquiry into the persistence of the notion of ether within technology’s discursive field. Most often, the word “ether” is understood as a conceptual model in pre-einsteinian physics which designates the medium responsible for the propagation of electromagnetic waves and light. However, this proves to be only one of the many figures of ether. In multiple mythologies and cosmogonies, ether was also the name employed to refer to a sublime and pure fire filling the highest spaces of the universe. Aristotle, for example, named “ether” what he considered to be the “fifth being,” or the “fifth element.” Chemistry also makes use of ether, where the name denominates the compound C4H10O, used as the first general anaesthetic agent at the end of the nineteenth century. From our point of view, the sustained occurrences of ether in these different figures, so disparate indeed that they appear unrelated, marks the manifestation of its persistence. We argue that this persistence should not be narrowed down to a constant attribution of a “word” or a “name” to several historical phenomenons, but rather should be viewed as the actualization of a same etherogeneous “signature.” Responding to an invitation by Italian philosopher Agamben, and building on Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s history-genealogy as well as on Derrida’s deconstruction, our dissertation proposes an historical program oriented towards a theorization of the signature. To do so, we suggest locating the ether, or rather the ether-signature, at the heart of several historical inquiries concerned with the contemporary problem with technology. Approaching some of theses issues –the legitimating of narrative knowledge, the suspension of the senses, pseudoscience and mysticism, information and industrial revolutions, wireless obsessions, body and corporeality, virtualization of communication, etc. –, our dissertation aims at locating and articulating as many baits towards an-other history, a counter-history.

The first part of this thesis makes the task to illuminate Nietzsche 's basic concepts, as is "The Will of Power", "Superman" and The Eternal Return" to be understood as the most directly substance of his basic filosophic views. This understanding is a necessary assumption for the second part. Its intention is refer the connection of Nietzsche with this age. It opens question for ethos. The author talks about ontologic diference and its connection in relation to a man of today in the third part. The ethos at thinker do not find it finally, and so it forges to fourth part to only possible relevant step forward. Though it is finding etics in source of every man as background from postmodern 's nihilism. The aim of the thesis is to show not only that Niezzsche destroyed ethical values. These values were inculcated by institutions of power for a long time. By this destroying, he created the bridge to finding himself. It is task and postmodern still does not mature to it, but environment has already been ready here.

Dans sa provenance platonicienne, l’idéal de l’incarnation de l’Idée doit à la fois affronter des individualités (pré)déterminées et qualitativement différentes (le pluralisme) – qui sont répétitions et répétées elles-mêmes. Il doit devenir le vouloir-dire de la personne qui s’efforce de mettre en œuvre ce dernier et qui cherche à franchir les limites ontologiques de la représentation. Cependant, l’irréalisabilité de la pure répétition du vouloir-dire – ou de n’importe quel « sujet » – atteste de la présence absente du même dans le processus de sa mise en œuvre ; la répétition est toujours déjà répétition différenciatrice, son acte même toujours susceptible d’être perçu comme mimétique en pratique. Lorsque nous « créons », nous cherchons une différence absolue (singularisation) tout en visant l’universalité du vouloir-dire, l’Univocité. Autrement dit, c’est l’inévitabilité de la répétition différenciatrice (« nouveauté ») qui se répète et tend vers un dernier résultat censé être absolument univoque et intersubjectivement compris et jugé. Cette inévitabilité signifie-t-elle une (ou la dernière) impasse théorique – une « fin » – insurmontable ? Comment les artistes, les historiens d’art et les philosophes s’y prennent-ils ? Entre l’origine et le futur de l’art, quelle puissance de la répétition devrait-on y chercher pour ne plus répéter « une répétition pour toute » ? / From its Platonic source, the ideal of embodiment of Idea must face individualities which are (pre)determined and qualitatively different – and are themselves repetitions repeated. It must become “what-is-wanted-to-be-said” or “meaning” (“vouloir-dire”) of the person who endeavors to realize it and to attempt to exceed the ontological limits of representation. Meanwhile, the unrealizability of pure repetition of the “vouloir-dire” – like any other “subject matter” – testifies to the absent presence of the same in the process of its realization; each and every repetition is always already a differential repetition, and its act itself always susceptible to be taken as mimetic in practice. When we “create”, we search for the absolute difference (singularization) while aiming at a universality of the “vouloir-dire”, Univocity. Put another way, it is the inevitability of the differential repetition (“newness”) that repeats itself and moves towards the last outcome that is meant to be unique in itself and intersubjectively understood and judged. Does this inevitability point towards a (or the last) insurmountable theoretical stalemate – “an end”? How do artists, art-historians, and philosophers deal with this problem? Between the origin and the future of art, what sort of force of repetition do we have to look for in order to finally no longer repeat “one repetition for all”?

Cette thèse est une enquête épistémologique qui s’interroge sur la persistance de « l’éther » dans le champ de la technologie. De façon générale, le mot « éther » évoque un modèle conceptuel de la physique pré-einsteinienne, celui d’un milieu invisible permettant la propagation de la lumière et des ondes électromagnétiques. Or, ce n’est là qu’une des figures de l’éther. Dans plusieurs mythologies et cosmogonies anciennes, le nom « éther » désignait le feu originel contenu dans les plus hautes régions célestes. Aristote nommait « éther », par exemple, le « cinquième être », ou « cinquième élément ». La chimie a aussi sa propre figure de l’éther où il donne son nom à un composé chimique, le C4H10O, qui a été utilisé comme premier anesthésiant général à la fin du XIXe siècle. L’apparition soutenue dans l’histoire de ces figures disparates de l’éther, qui a priori ne semblent pas entretenir de relation entre elles, est pour nous la marque de la persistance de l’éther. Nous défendons ici l’argument selon lequel cette persistance ne se résume pas à la constance de l’attribution d’un mot ou d’un nom à différents phénomènes dans l’histoire, mais à l’actualisation d’une même signature, éthérogène. À l’invitation d’Agamben et en nous inspirant des travaux de Nietzsche et Foucault sur l’histoire-généalogie et ceux de Derrida sur la déconstruction, notre thèse amorce une enquête historique motivée par un approfondissement d’une telle théorisation de la signature. Pour y parvenir, nous proposons de placer l’éther, ou plutôt la signature-éther, au cœur de différentes enquêtes historiques préoccupées par le problème de la technologie. En abordant sous cet angle des enjeux disparates – la légitimation des savoirs narratifs, la suspension des sens, la pseudoscience et la magie, les révolutions de l’information, l’obsession pour le sans-fil, l’économie du corps, la virtualisation de la communication, etc. –, nous proposons dans cette thèse autant d’amorces pour une histoire autre, une contre-histoire. / This dissertation stands as an epistemological inquiry into the persistence of the notion of ether within technology’s discursive field. Most often, the word “ether” is understood as a conceptual model in pre-einsteinian physics which designates the medium responsible for the propagation of electromagnetic waves and light. However, this proves to be only one of the many figures of ether. In multiple mythologies and cosmogonies, ether was also the name employed to refer to a sublime and pure fire filling the highest spaces of the universe. Aristotle, for example, named “ether” what he considered to be the “fifth being,” or the “fifth element.” Chemistry also makes use of ether, where the name denominates the compound C4H10O, used as the first general anaesthetic agent at the end of the nineteenth century. From our point of view, the sustained occurrences of ether in these different figures, so disparate indeed that they appear unrelated, marks the manifestation of its persistence. We argue that this persistence should not be narrowed down to a constant attribution of a “word” or a “name” to several historical phenomenons, but rather should be viewed as the actualization of a same etherogeneous “signature.” Responding to an invitation by Italian philosopher Agamben, and building on Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s history-genealogy as well as on Derrida’s deconstruction, our dissertation proposes an historical program oriented towards a theorization of the signature. To do so, we suggest locating the ether, or rather the ether-signature, at the heart of several historical inquiries concerned with the contemporary problem with technology. Approaching some of theses issues –the legitimating of narrative knowledge, the suspension of the senses, pseudoscience and mysticism, information and industrial revolutions, wireless obsessions, body and corporeality, virtualization of communication, etc. –, our dissertation aims at locating and articulating as many baits towards an-other history, a counter-history.

Czech Literary Anarchism in the Context of Socialism and the Women's Movement (1890-1914) Abstract The thesis focuses on Czech pre-WWI anarchism. It analyses it as a modernist movement comprising various activities spanning political propaganda, proposals of social organisation and thinking about moral values as well views on the arts and literary production. The aim is to present literary texts written by anarchists against a backdrop of other types of expression. At the same time, the thesis assesses anarchism in the historical context of other political, social, artistic and philosophical movements. We study the interweaving of ideological and aesthetic schemes of Czech anarchism, especially with socialism and feminism, but also concerning decadence, Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy and writings of the German Friedrichshagen poets' and anarchists' circle. The thesis focuses on how anarchism understands human beings and their relationship to the world and society. Given the anarchists' focus on the free individual, we present strategies of emancipation from traditional conventions and institutions such as marriage, family and the state. We also concentrate on reforms concerning morals and similarities with the feminist turn to one's own bodily and psychical experiences as starting points for setting...

L’étude que nous avons consacrée à la Antología poética 1923-1977 permet de mettre en lumière l’art poétique de Jorge Luis Borges ainsi que d’observer attentivement la dimension spéculaire et la portée universelle de sa poésie. Elle condense, reflète, et nous fait appréhender l’essence du monde dans toute la gamme de ses infinies richesses ainsi que de ses insondables mystères qui hantent la réflexion métaphysique de l’humanité depuis des temps immémoriaux. Nous dégageons, tout particulièrement, nombre de convergences des plus frappantes entre les principaux thèmes borgésiens et les thèses majeures du philosophe Arthur Schopenhauer. Borges emploie, à l’évidence, tout son génie, tout son art de la perplexité et de l’ironie, à façonner subtilement un miroir poétique de la pensée de ce grand maître qu’il vénère tant. Nous constatons, en effet, que la poésie borgésienne, non seulement nous fait prendre conscience de notre perpétuelle et irrémédiable condamnation aux illusions et aux représentations, mais encore tente de relever le défi du dépassement des illusions, d’un accès à un au-delà de la représentation. Sous de multiples aspects kaléidoscopiques de l’Autre (un sablier, un jardin, une bibliothèque, un château, un rêve, la pensée humaine, l’individu, l’écriture, le temps…), c’est en réalité toujours le mythe de l’Eternel Retour du Labyrinthe qui revient sous sa plume. Comment ce mythe ― à la fois personnel et impersonnel ― que Borges a patiemment forgé, tout au long de sa vie, a-t-il pu connaître une remarquable diffusion planétaire et le conduire à être couronné par la gloire de son vivant ? Telle est l’ultime question à laquelle nous tâchons de répondre au terme de notre réflexion. / The study that we dedicated to the Antología Poética 1923-1977 allows to bring out the poetical art of Jorge Luis Borges as well as to observe in a careful way the speculiar dimension and the universal scope of his poetry. It condenses, reflects and enables us to apprehend the essence of the world in the whole range of infinite riches, as well as the unfathomable mysteries which have haunted the metaphysical reflexion of humanity from time immemorial. We bring out, in particular, a fair number of the most striking convergences between the main themes of Borges the poet and the major thesis of Arthur Schopenhauer the philosopher. It is obvious that Borges uses all his genius, all his art of perplexity and irony to shape, in a subtle way, a poetical mirror of the thinking of this great master that he venerates so much. Not only do we notice that the poetry of Borges enables us to be aware of our perpetual and irreparable condemnation to illusions and representations, but it also tries to take up the challenge of surpassing the illusions, of an access to the beyond of representation. Under numerous kaleidoscopic aspects of the Other (a sandglass, a garden, a library, a castle, a dream, the human thought, the individual, writing, time…), in fact it is always the myth of the Eternal Return of the Labyrinth which comes back under his pen. How can this myth – both personal and impersonal – (patiently forged by Borges all along his life) have met such a remarkable worldwide diffusion and have led him to be crowned by glory in his lifetime? This is the final question we will try to carry through.

nÃo hà / Nesta dissertaÃÃo objetiva-se analisar a realizaÃÃo humana segundo a perspectiva do filÃsofo Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Considera-se, para tanto, o processo vital circunscrito pelo subtÃtulo dado à autobiografia: âcomo alguÃm se torna o que Ãâ. Privilegiando os temas tratados em Ecce Homo, intermedeiam-se as discussÃes com o cotejamento daqueles assuntos abordados por outras obras do FilÃsofo. Tornar-se o que se à constitui nÃo apenas um cume perseguido, mas igualmente uma sobredeterminaÃÃo inapelÃvel para a filosofia de Nietzsche. Nesse caminho, ele valorizou, contra a tradiÃÃo filosÃfica e religiosa, o cultivo de si e o amor de si como propiciadores do grande e fecundo egoÃsmo. Apontou para a superaÃÃo de tudo aquilo que amesquinha e enfraquece o homem, elogiando o que fortalece e plenifica a vida compreendida por ele como vontade de poder em expansÃo. O cultivo da grande individualidade surge como contraposiÃÃo, nessa filosofia, à massificaÃÃo do homem pelas forÃas gregÃrias que arrebanham os âseres supÃrfluosâ em igrejas, povos e estados. Percorrem-se, entÃo, as ponderaÃÃes de Nietzsche sobre o que ele nomeou de âcasuÃstica do egoÃsmoâ, sua pretensa extemporaneidade, bem como se delimita aquilo designado pelo FilÃsofo como die Wohlgeratenheit, âa vida que vingouâ. SÃo trabalhadas, a seguir, as relaÃÃes dessa vida bem lograda com as teses de Nietzsche sobre a razÃo, a subjetividade, o cultivo de si mediante a disciplina do guerreiro â ele prÃprio entendia-se como um filÃsofo guerreiro. Por fim, apresenta-se sua compreensÃo acerca do que à a mÃxima auto-realizaÃÃo depois que o Ãltimo homem se configurou no niilismo caracterÃstico da contemporaneidade: a figura de Zaratustra como super-homem, mestre do eterno retorno e amante do destino.