Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

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    (英語學系, 2015-05-??) William Franke
    My contention is that apophatic or negative theology is a classic tradition of interpretation of what Agamben is (not) talking about but of what is silently manifest in the phenomena he analyzes. Negative theology happens to be lucidly revealing of the logic of exception that the political-juridical history reconstructed by Agamben also reveals. I advocate negative theology as a model for understanding Agamben’s logic of exception because it has a certain precedence historically and serves as matrix for later, more secularized forms of thinking. It is itself a decisive first step on the path of secularization. It remains conversant with both theology and its negations—and precisely negation is foundational for so many distinctively modern approaches to reality. Yet apophatic postures of thinking are most natural to Asian philosophical and religious traditions. Deeply probing apophatic insight has been developed from earliest times in Asian currents of culture such as Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, and Mahayana Buddhism. The not very well acknowledged apophatic thrust of Agamben’s thinking is thus one axis aligning it with the Asian traditions that are generally excluded from his otherwise exceptionally wide-ranging interests and allusions. I maintain that exposing apophatic thinking as the underlying (a)logic and driving inspiration of Agamben’s thinking shows him to be in unexpected proximity with millennial tendencies of thought running deep in Asian philosophy and culture. Fittingly, the deep and far-reaching significance of Agamben’s own work is thereby revealed by what it ostensibly excludes—or at least leaves largely out of account.
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    The Crime of Indistinction?
    (英語學系, 2012-03-??) Han-yu Huang
    The undead is a crime against the religious and the sacred; it always troubles our received topologies and distinctions between body and soul, life and death, culture and nature, the human and the nonhuman, animate and inanimate,organic and inorganic, etc. It has always been preoccupying, or haunting, writers and thinkers in the fields of philosophy, ethics, theology, and literature. Especially in contemporary biopolitical discourse, where the conditions andessence of life are fervently debated, problematized, and rethought, the undeadcomes to the fore and calls for our critical attention. This paper begins with abrief critical review of Hannah Arendt’s contribution to biopolitical discourse.By way of some psychoanalytic perspectives, I explicate how the “strangelogic of the undead” works in such signature Agambenian categories as the“threshold” and “zone of indistinction,” and in the context of the saturation oflife in the political field. Then, I turn to the homo sacer and the Muselmannwho, as figures of the undead, inhabit the threshold of political life and barelife, and embody the zero degree of humanity as beings that have beendeprived of human communitarian and identitarian registers, while opening asite where new ethical material might appear. The last part of this papercarries the logic of the undead a step further in order to address Agamben’sintervention in contemporary theological theories, and his contribution to thepolitics of emancipation and redemption through his revitalization of Paul andmessianic thinking.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Untitled
    (英語學系, 2015-05-??) William Franke
    My contention is that apophatic or negative theology is a classic tradition of interpretation of what Agamben is (not) talking about but of what is silently manifest in the phenomena he analyzes. Negative theology happens to be lucidly revealing of the logic of exception that the political-juridical history reconstructed by Agamben also reveals. I advocate negative theology as a model for understanding Agamben’s logic of exception because it has a certain precedence historically and serves as matrix for later, more secularized forms of thinking. It is itself a decisive first step on the path of secularization. It remains conversant with both theology and its negations—and precisely negation is foundational for so many distinctively modern approaches to reality. Yet apophatic postures of thinking are most natural to Asian philosophical and religious traditions. Deeply probing apophatic insight has been developed from earliest times in Asian currents of culture such as Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, and Mahayana Buddhism. The not very well acknowledged apophatic thrust of Agamben’s thinking is thus one axis aligning it with the Asian traditions that are generally excluded from his otherwise exceptionally wide-ranging interests and allusions. I maintain that exposing apophatic thinking as the underlying (a)logic and driving inspiration of Agamben’s thinking shows him to be in unexpected proximity with millennial tendencies of thought running deep in Asian philosophy and culture. Fittingly, the deep and far-reaching significance of Agamben’s own work is thereby revealed by what it ostensibly excludes—or at least leaves largely out of account.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Crime of Indistinction?
    (英語學系, 2012-03-??) Han-yu Huang
    The undead is a crime against the religious and the sacred; it always troubles our received topologies and distinctions between body and soul, life and death, culture and nature, the human and the nonhuman, animate and inanimate,organic and inorganic, etc. It has always been preoccupying, or haunting, writers and thinkers in the fields of philosophy, ethics, theology, and literature. Especially in contemporary biopolitical discourse, where the conditions andessence of life are fervently debated, problematized, and rethought, the undeadcomes to the fore and calls for our critical attention. This paper begins with abrief critical review of Hannah Arendt’s contribution to biopolitical discourse.By way of some psychoanalytic perspectives, I explicate how the “strangelogic of the undead” works in such signature Agambenian categories as the“threshold” and “zone of indistinction,” and in the context of the saturation oflife in the political field. Then, I turn to the homo sacer and the Muselmannwho, as figures of the undead, inhabit the threshold of political life and barelife, and embody the zero degree of humanity as beings that have beendeprived of human communitarian and identitarian registers, while opening asite where new ethical material might appear. The last part of this papercarries the logic of the undead a step further in order to address Agamben’sintervention in contemporary theological theories, and his contribution to thepolitics of emancipation and redemption through his revitalization of Paul andmessianic thinking.