Kevin Kennedy

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) may be read as an extended meditation on the universal desire to return – to a putative golden age or lost paradise – and the eerie effects that are produced when this desire is realized. More specifically, the show explores the prevalent desire amongst TV audiences to continually “return” to beloved fictional spaces and characters. Drawing on psychoanalytic and philosophical theories of the uncanny, as well as film and media studies, the article explores the theme of returning within the show’s fictional and meta-fictional cosmos (the characters’ and viewers’ dream of going back) in relation to Lynch’s highly critical portrayal of the medium of television. In Lynch’s cinematic aesthetics of the uncanny, television (associated with consumerism, the nuclear family, and mindless repetition) is portrayed as a malign influence, providing faux nostalgia devoid of meaning or experiential value. Given that most of the returns in Twin Peaks: The Return always turn out to be unhomely, I suggest that Lynch’s take on TV culture may be read as a general commentary on the social and political nightmares created by a fetishization of the (real or fictional) past.

This essay explores to what extent Wilde’s novel can be considered a proto-modernist text in its adherence to an “aesthetics of obscenity” and its rejection of Kantian disinterestedness. I argue that Dorian Gray, while not explicitly describing taboo acts like modernist works such as Ulysses, is nevertheless modernist in its attempt to introduce the un-sublimated body into the realm of high art. My discussion will focus on Wilde’s exploration of the tension between the body and aesthetic representation, which in the novel are symbolized by the two main characters, Dorian and Lord Henry, and literalized through the painting that records Dorian’s “obscene” acts. I suggest that the text’s metacommentary on the relation between obscenity and the aesthetic, between corruption and morality, makes Wilde’s novel a paradigmatic modernist text. My reading of Wilde’s work also analyses the nature of the obscene, which, as I argue, is not essentially the explicit representation of bodily functions or sexual acts, but the “thing” that ultimately resists representation, remaining “offstage,” frustrating any attempt at appropriation and thus disrupting the basic parameters of social and subjective existence.

Juxtaposing several strands of European modernism, this article shows how psychoanalysis lays the ground for a transgressive model of literature, which problematizes the widespread early 20th-century conception of literature as either a civilizing force (articulated in the writings of I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis) or a tool for freedom of expression (advocated by, amongst others, Ezra Pound). Following a brief analysis of Freud’s ideas on transgression in Civilization and Its Discontents, I discuss the work of French Surrealist Georges Bataille, who in the 1930s and 40s developed one of the most wide-ranging accounts of the transgressive potential of literature. Bataille’s ideas serve to complement recent accounts of transgressive modernism (notably Rachel Potter’s Obscene Modernism), which tend to focus on transgressive literature as a form of liberation from repressive social, moral and legal constraints. Bataille’s Freud-inspired theory, by contrast, points towards a more problematic and ambiguous dimension in the relation between transgression and law, always caught between denial and complicity, and unable to be accommodated within the progressive discourse of legal reform and/or educational progress. I conclude that transgressive literature, in Bataille’s sense, functions as an inevitable dialectical counterpoint to any positive conception the socio- ideological function of modern literature.

Like all discourses on the 'other', Bataille's heterology is faced with the problem of conceptualizing the heterogeneous (the other of thought, reason and language), while preserving its alterity, its fundamental resistance to conceptual thought. This paper interrogates the potential parallels between this aspect of Bataille's notion and some of the prevalent concerns of contemporary and traditional aesthetics. The argument is based on the idea that theories of the aesthetic, akin to Bataille's heterology, are always inevitably confronted with the paradoxical task of conceptually framing an experience that, per definition, resists philosophical or political appropriation. In relation to this my paper traces a development in Bataille's thinking from an initial rejection of art and the aesthetic to their later reconfiguration as manifestations of sovereignty. Here I show how Bataille's notion of sovereign art presents an implicit attempt to overcome some of the aporias to have surfaced in his earlier account of heterology. This development in Bataille's thought is analysed in the context of his changing relationship with Surrealism.

In recent years, the relation between contingency and systematic claims to the absolute has again come to play an important role in Continental philosophy. This essay takes a closer look at how this relation is developed in the works of French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux. It argues that a specific demand for systematic knowledge underlies not only Meillassoux's ontology, but also his ethics, which come into conflict with his own systematic aspirations in certain key areas, most notably in his attempt to derive an ethico-political model of subjectivity from his theory of contingency. The essay furthermore explores whether Meillassoux's monism of chance, by systematizing contingency and declaring it a universal principle, does not in fact deprive the contingent of its contingent character, introducing a reductive stability that condemns the subject to a passive waiting ultimately lacking in ethical significance.

Modernity is based on a specific configuration of the relation between life and thought. Propelled by the Enlightenment conception of reason and the ascent of science, modern thought strictly separates the subjectivity of lived experience from the objectivity of rational thought, myth from fact, passion from truth. Yet, the history of modern philosophy is equally characterised by the constant calling into question of this separation: Nietzsche’s notion that objectivity is always conditioned by an underlying value choice,  Freud’s insistence on the mind’s constitutive misrecognition of reality,  and Heidegger’s analysis of the metaphysical foundations of science  are but a few examples for this radical questioning of “the myth of the neutral justificatory framework.”  For several contemporary philosophers, our self-understanding as a culture freed from the illusions of myth is merely another myth: “the mythological conditioning of our experience hides itself behind the mythology of de-mythologization.”
Acéphale is arguably one of the most radical, albeit problematic manifestations of the wider attempt within modern literature and philosophy to overcome the separation between life (experience, sensuality, passion) and thought (reason, rationality, order), and to thereby attain what Georges Bataille described as the “totality of being.”  Taking its cue from Nietzsche’s attack on science and rationalism, Acéphale wanted to reach this totality by creating a new myth for society, based on sacrifice, secrecy, and silence. This chapter will discuss Acéphale’s aesthetico-critical attack on what it considers to be modernity’s overreliance on instrumental reason at the expense of lived experience, and its concurrent attempt to re-mythologise a seemingly disenchanted world. Using Bataille’s later reflections on the relationship between existence and reason, myth and science, the chapter will further draw out the inherent problems (and dangers) of the desire to furnish society with a new myth, beyond the limits separating life from thought. In conclusion, I briefly outline how Bataille’s work on myth has been taken up and developed by the contemporary German philosopher Markus Gabriel, indicating Acéphale’s ongoing relevance for thinking the relationship between myth and science in the contemporary world.

The chapter explores the unusual influence poststructuralism had on American intellectual life and culture, particularly the extent to which it might have planted the seeds for contemporary notions of post-truth. I discuss the epistemological assumptions underpinning the writings of some of the main thinkers associated with poststructuralism – most notably Foucault and Derrida—to establish whether it is even possible to speak of a unified poststructuralist epistemology, or whether the latter only emerged as a result of the reception and transformation of poststructuralism by its American acolytes. My aim is to determine, firstly, if and to what extent this particular brand of ‘American poststructuralism’ misappropriated the ideas of its French forerunners and, secondly, how this misappropriation may have helped to undermine the notion of truth in US intellectual discourse. More generally, the chapter tries to establish the usefulness of a poststructuralist notion of truth—understood to be historically contingent, determined by the vicissitudes of language, and non-representational—for contemporary epistemological debates and public discourse in general.

The notion of the stain is central to the works of both Georges Bataille and Slavoj Žižek, especially in their respective conceptions of material reality and the subject’s place within it. Bataille’s anti-idealist conception of matter (which he calls base materialism) construes it as something essentially exterior to language and human thought, as an exteriority, which shatters the subject’s presumed mastery or knowledge of the world. For Žižek, following Lacan, the stain or blind spot indicates an empty space in the fabric of reality, the so-called Real, which, like Bataille’s base matter, resists conceptualization. For both Žižek and Bataille, theses aporetic stains, however, are necessary for the subject and knowledge to come into being in the first place. Those familiar with the two thinkers will be surprised by how rarely Žižek mentions Bataille, despite a significant overlap in their intellectual outlook and objects of study. Not only did Bataille directly influence Žižek’s “mentor”, Lacan, but his writings also resonate with many of the basic concerns of Žižek’s own work. On the rare occasions that Žižek does mention Bataille, he brands him ‘irrelevant’ and ‘pre-modern’, and refuses to engage seriously with his work. This essay will draw some parallels between Žižek and Bataille’s respective conceptions of aporetic materialism – the notion that our knowledge of matter is always structured around a central impossibility, or void –, in order to examine whether this easy dismissal and general neglect is, in fact, a symptom of the unavowed presence of Bataille’s thought as a blind spot, a stain, at the centre of Žižek’s work.

Contemporary Western societies are characterized by an increasing regulation and homogenization of public life in the name of security and common sense. This process of rationalization is intimately tied to the marginalization of practices and ideas that do not conform to the sobriety and efficiency of an enlightened rationality, a process Max Weber famously described as the ‘disenchantment of the world’. This essay attempts to show that, despite its ambiguous if not downright questionable political heritage, the disappearance of this auratic, magical, sacred dimension from the public sphere is synonymous with the retreat of a crucial dimension of sociality itself. Drawing on Bataille’s reading of Durkheim’s famous distinction between the sacred and the profane, I argue that sovereign practices in modern societies, such as art, can only survive as long as they are given their own ‘sacred space’, distinct from the profane realm of political and social utility, and whose justification or evaluation by way of the latter, a prevalent concern of many contemporary aesthetic theories, not only seems misguided but fundamentally negates the sovereign dimension of life itself. I attempt to show how the ubiquitous process of rationalization makes contemporary capitalist societies increasingly unable to appreciate the ambiguity and uselessness of sovereign practices and their essentially collective dimension. To this end, I discuss Bataille’s historical account of sovereignty to show how it survives in several contemporary practices, most notably in the world of art, but also in minor practices, such as smoking and elegance.

The history of modernity is based on a specific configuration of the relation between truth and illusion. Propelled by the Enlightenment conception of reason and the ascent of science, modern thought strictly separates the fantastic/imaginary from the objectivity of rational thought, relegating it to the newly emerging, autonomous sphere of art. The sphere of science, conversely, is now liberated from the clutches of myth and fantasy.  Yet, the history of modernity is equally characterized by the constant calling into question of this separation: Nietzsche’s idea that objectivity is always conditioned by an underlying value choice, Freud’s insistence on the mind’s constitutive misrecognition of reality and Heidegger’s analysis of the metaphysical foundations of science are but a few examples for this radical questioning of “the myth of the neutral justificatory framework” (Festenstein, 2001). For several contemporary philosophers, our self-understanding as a culture freed from the illusions of myth is merely another myth: “the mythological conditioning of our experience hides itself behind the mythology of de-mythologization” (Gabriel, 2009). Following these contentious claims, my paper intends to explore to what extent the modern division between science and art is itself determined by values that this split cannot account for. Tracing this division in several modern and contemporary philosophical accounts (Bataille, Gabriel, Žižek), I intend to address the following questions:  Is the separation between art and science itself mythological? What is the status of science (truth) and art (illusion) in contemporary society? Is the division between reality and illusion merely a cultural convention that can change over time? To what extent can and should art be a reflection of reality? Is science premised on illusory foundations?

Concurrent with the recent reemergence of religion as significant cultural force, contemporary philosophy has seen a resurgent interest in questions of theology. Arguably on of the the most original, if problematic contemporary accounts of god, faith and redemption is to be found in the work of French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, who attempts to combine an atheistic outlook with a unique theology. Like his mentor A. Badiou, Meillassoux sets out to re-claim the absolute from its co-optation by religious dogmatism, arguing that only absolute available to rational thought is what he calls the “necessity of contingency”. Turning Hume’s epistemological dilemma (“there is no way to account for the necessity of natural laws”) into a positive ontological feature, Meillassoux asserts that the contingent is a virtual power that may create and destroy every law, rule or world at any moment, without an underlying reason or apparent cause. This in turn means that everything that is conceivable is virtually possible, from which Meillassoux infers that although god does not presently exist, he might come into existence at some point in the future. Meillassoux calls this idea of a contingent god “divine inexistence” and connects it to very specific conception of redemption and justice. The advantage, according to Meillassoux, of positing a potential future god resides in the fact that the latter would resolve the problems of the theodicy. In other words, unlike the god of Christian faith, this god could potentially bring justice to the dead and redeem the horrors of history, without bearing responsibility for any of these atrocities, as he did not yet exist when they occurred. According to Meillassoux, this idea of “divine inexistence” would generate a new form of subjectivity, an eschatological, “vectorial” subject, “one magnetically attracted by the emancipation of the World to come”.

My paper explores what such an eschatological subject could potentially look like, especially in its relevance for contemporary questions of ethics and politics. To do this I  contrast it with one of the most powerful critiques of teleological-eschatological thought: Nietzsche’s much-debated doctrine of the eternal return. Like divine inexistence, the eternal return is also designed to generate a new form of subjectivity, yet one freed from final goals, future hopes or an ultimate redemption. Nietzsche’s radically immanentist theory posits that redemption is only possible in this life, through a fundamental affirmation of one’s existence, symbolized by the return: “We deny God, we deny the responsibility in God: only thereby do we redeem the world”. In my paper, I explore to what extent Nietzsche’s notion might be helpful in demonstrating that any form of eschatology necessarily devalues life in the here and now, and even entails a form of political quietism and acceptance in the face of a future redemptive event, beyond one’s control. On the other hand, I want interrogate whether the absence of any form of eschatological hope, might not give rise to a profound despair in the recognition that justice is fundamentally unachievable, with equally disastrous effects on the subject’s relation to its world.

Using Georges Bataille's and Maurice Blanchot's postwar writings on Surrealism as a reference point, this paper analyses what I think is a more or less implicit, and seemingly contradictory, dualism within the surrealist conception of freedom and which sheds some light on (and maybe even justifies) Breton's de facto equation of political resistance with the freedom of artistic expression.

For most of the 20th century, the French writer Georges Bataille (1897-1962) remained on the margins of the philosophical and literary mainstream. The recent decades, however—especially in Britain and the United States—have seen a growing interest in Bataille’s work, not least inspired by his position as a preeminent precursor of poststructuralism. This talk will provide an introduction to some of Bataille's most influential ideas, such as sovereignty, general economy, and transgression, with a particular focus on his theory of art and literature.

Cet article etudie les aspects du Portrait de Dorian Gray qui font du recit de Wilde une possible prefiguration de l’esthetique de l’obscene dans une acception moderniste ; en effet, comme nombre d’œuvres modernistes, l’ecriture de Wilde subvertit deja, a sa maniere, le principe de contemplation desinteressee qui est caracteristique de l’esthetique kantienne. L’article tente de montrer que ce n’est pas dans la representation d’actions ou de gestes tabous que reside le jeu de l’ecriture wildienne avec l’obscenite, mais dans sa tentative de faire entrer une corporeite non sublimee dans la sphere de l’art et de la culture noble.