Late Lecturer Research Articles

'A Joycean Smutmonger': Echoes of Joyce in Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Rural Modernism

Since its publication, critics of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Irish-language masterpiece Cré na Cille (1949; Graveyard Clay) have consistently namechecked James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), usually for the sole purpose of conveying its perceived difficulty and/or vulgarity. Indeed, Cré na Cille was first refused publication because, in Ó Cadhain’s words, it was too long and too ‘Joycean’. Ó Cadhain himself evidently saw his work as existing in dialogue with his renowned progenitor and during a late lecture revelled in retelling an overheard conversation in which he was described as nothing more than a ‘Joycean smutmonger’. This article goes beyond such surface-level comparisons to unpick how Ó Cadhain proffers a radical portrayal of rural Irish modernity to compare with Joyce’s predominantly urban equivalent. It argues that Ó Cadhain’s characters, like those found in Joyce’s oeuvre, are consistently forced to navigate the forces of tradition and modernity, which existed at the heart of rural Irish society in the mid-twentieth century. This essay will first compare how Ó Cadhain and Joyce treat the predicaments of a young woman preparing for emigration in their respective short stories ‘An Bhliain 1912’ and ‘Eveline’, before moving on to treat Ó Cadhain’s experiments in form and language in Cré na Cille. In particular, it will examine such experimentation in the context of his lasting obsession with Finnegans Wake (1939), as evidenced by his stated belief that he ‘could write a work like Finnegans Wake’. Informed by recent developments in ‘alternative modernities’, this essay attempts to offer a nascent definition of what might be signified by ‘rural modernism’ in an Irish context.

Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on Husserl’s Origin of Geometry

Abstract: A number of claims made by Derrida concerning Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl will be carefully considered and evaluated here. First, Derrida’s claim that Merleau-Ponty’s mis-interprets Husserl’s letter to Lévy-Bruhl will be challenged. Secondly, Derrida’s claim that his criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology can be applied just as well to Merleau-Ponty’s will be challenged. Thirdly, it is a careful consideration of textual evidence that will be used to support these challenges. Finally, Merleau-Ponty’s late lectures will take us back to the Lévy-Bruhl letter and finally to Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenology of language, one that integrates perception and language and yet that still privileges not eidetic essences or linguistic expression but perception as its primary term.

God, Religion and History: The Significance of Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion for Determining the Concept of Religion

This article discusses Schelling’s contribution to the definition of the concept of religion in post-Kantian philosophy. In three lines of argument, it is shown that Schelling’s late lectures on the philosophy of mythology and revelation place religion in a history of development in which religion is successively understood as religion. Schelling assumes that religion is independent of reason and is based on a real relationship with God that is connected to the nature of man. This makes the philosophy of religion an independent academic discipline. Schelling links the historical development of religion and the history of God in his concept of monotheism. This is the content of Schelling’s formula that God is the Lord of being.

Foucault and Dumézil on Antiquity.

The biographical links between Michel Foucault and the comparative mythologist and philologist Georges Dumézil have received more attention than their intellectual connections. This article contributes by surveying Foucault's engagements, from a 1957 radio lecture to his late lectures at the Collège de France. Particular focus is on lectures on structuralism and history in 1970, some references between 1970 and 1981, and the use of Dumézil's work in each of Foucault's two final courses at the Collège de France. In each, Foucault takes up Dumézil's analyses of mythology in developing his own projects concerning history and antiquity.

Chronotype, Daytime Sleepiness, and Related Factors Effects on Skipping Classroom among Medical Students in Tabuk

Background: Lecture attendance is very critical in medical practice. Good sleep hygiene is crucial for academic performance. Therefore, this research aimed to assess the relationship between daytime sleepiness and the chronotype, and skipping the classroom.
 Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical Students in Tabuk from April 2022 to July 2022. Three hundred and thirty-four medical students were randomly selected. A standardized questionnaire based on the daytime sleepiness scale, morningness–eveningness questionnaire, and risk for skipping classrooms was used. The students detailed their sleeping habits for two weeks and then responded to the questionnaire distributed directly by the researchers who attended to solve any difficulties.
 Results: Out of the 334 students,74.7% skipped the classroom last month. The most common reason for absence was the lecturer directly reading from the slide show (72.8%), followed by late lectures (67.8%), lecturers’ presentation skills (65.6%), and lack of interest (57.9%). Daytime sleepiness was evident in 40.1% of the students and was associated with skipping lectures (Wald, 3.86, P-value, 0.049, and 95% CI, 0.19–0.91). The majority were intermediate chronotypes (66.4%), followed by evening chronotypes (24.2%) with no association with skipping classrooms.
 Conclusion: Skipping lectures is common among medical students in Tabuk City, Saudi Arabia; the causes were lecture timing, daytime sleepiness, and lecturers’ presentation skills. Most students were an intermediate chronotype that was not associated with classroom absence. Further larger multi-center studies are needed.

Luther's Outlaw God by Steven D. Paulson

Luther's Outlaw God by Steven D. Paulson Matthew Becker Luther's Outlaw God. Vol 1: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination. Vol. 2: Hidden in the Cross. Vol. 3: Sacraments and God's Attack on the Promise. By Steven D. Paulson. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018–2021. 1117 pp. Steven Paulson's trilogy offers an extended and erudite argument for sharply distinguishing between "God unpreached" ("God naked," God silent) and "God preached" ("God clothed" in his word). Several related distinctions made by the mature Luther—but which have been distorted, minimized, or outright rejected by important Western philosophers from Plato to Derrida and by influential theologians from Origen to Jüngel—are also analyzed and given a fresh articulation. These corollary contrasts include the sharp differentiations between law and gospel, divine wrath and divine mercy, and the opposing ways in which God hides and reveals himself. Readers who are familiar with the theology of Gerhard Forde, who was Paulson's teacher and preacher, will hear his voice in nearly every chapter. But the primary speaker is the great Reformer himself, who is frequently quoted from his principal works: De servo arbitrio, the Large Catechism, the 1531/1535 Galatians commentary, and the late lectures on Genesis. Along the way, Paulson also draws upon other writings, such as Luther's lectures on Deuteronomy, Jonah, and Hebrews, and his reflections on Job. One would be mistaken, however, to conclude that this opus magnum is merely another study of Luther's theology. Rather, the author brings the Wittenberger into lengthy and intricate debates with a whole host of thinkers, ancient, medieval, and modern. Paulson thus uses Luther to identify and criticize neurasthenic or otherwise diseased theological positions and to [End Page 84] set forth the purely preached gospel as the only truly proper way to deal with our deepest problem as human sinners coram deo. The first volume introduces the three basic ways in which God hides himself in relation to divine predestination ("the great offense of life" [1.142]) and human evil: God the Father, hidden in the things of creation as masks; God the Son, who is hated by sinners for electing the wrong individuals with the wrong means (a death on a cross) and with the wrong promise ("apart from law"); and God the Holy Spirit, who hides in gospel preaching and sacraments. Crucial for Paulson is Luther's conclusion that God is "an outlaw God," "who gives the law, but is not the law" (1.xxxiv). There is no such thing as an "eternal divine law." The initial volume provides a close analysis of Luther's relentless critique of Erasmus' humanistic, moralistic defense of free choice in relation to divine foreknowledge and election. Here the author effectively demonstrates that for Luther God is hidden in ways that philosophers and theologians consistently misunderstand and minimize. Luther came to think of God outside of the box of the law. Indeed, God is so concealed that the difference between fate and chance, predestination and damnation, joy and despair, death and life depends entirely upon a preacher. God could not be more completely hidden than that, because it means that God is not the law that everyone assumes and hopes for, and God's freedom comes to a creature through a creature in the simplest form of a word that promises forgiveness. God is an outlaw, and so both dangerous and surprisingly free (1.xii.). In this light, an individual will either have God preached for the sake of faith alone, or God unpreached, which leaves the sinner thrown back upon various errant and uncertain ways of speculating about sin, evil, and predestination, usually by rationalizing about the relationship between God's law and morality. Typical answers to the neuralgic questions of modern theology regarding "God and evil" "not only fail to save," but they "actually destroy faith" (1.104). True theology thus serves proclamation, not human reasoning in its vain search for a convincing theological understanding of theodicy. The first volume unpacks several biblical passages (such as the call and mission of Moses relative to Pharaoh, the preaching of Isaiah, [End Page 85] the case of Judas, and Paul's teaching in Romans, especially 9–11...

Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates

Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates

Merleau-Ponty’s Lectures on Heidegger

Abstract Merleau-Ponty’s late lecture course on Heidegger is primarily concerned with probing the possibility of a phenomenological ontology. Merleau-Ponty’s lectures provide a rather straightforward presentation of Heidegger’s later thought, without elaborate commentary or criticism. However, Merleau-Ponty does favor Heidegger’s later move toward an indirect expression of Being but does not think that he consistently maintains this view. By the time that we reach the end of Merleau-Ponty’s lecture course, we begin to see a number of differences between the two philosophers come into play, with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy solving more problems than that of his German counterpart.

From Biomimicry to Biosophia

Biomimicry promises great progress in ecological design. Advocates, hinging on the work of Janine Benyus, argue that biomimicry enhances sustainable technologies. This essay suggests conceptual and ethical improvements to biomimicry: first by considering Michael Fisch’s concept of bioinspiration through studying Neri Oxman’s Silkworm Pavilion and second, through the articulation of a new concept of biosophia, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s late Institution and Nature lectures. His investigation of seemingly impossible proto-mimicry prior to perception discloses a deeper comportment toward biomimicry, revealing its conditions of possibility in intercorporeal expressivity. Biosophia grounds a deeper ethic of collaboration with other lifeforms.

Adorno on Schenker: Reconstructing the Formation of a Critique

ABSTRACTSince the publication in 1982 of Theodor Adorno's late lecture ‘On the Problem of Musical Analysis’, it has been well established that Adorno had an ambivalent attitude towards Heinrich Schenker's analytical method, to the extent that the two men are usually thought of as antagonists while sharing the same concern for a work‐immanent understanding of the content of music. Yet beyond this lecture, surprisingly little is known about Adorno's actual engagement with Schenker's writings. The aim of this article is twofold. First, drawing on hitherto unexamined sources held at the Theodor W. Adorno Archiv in Frankfurt am Main, this essay reconstructs and examines Adorno's engagement with Schenker's ideas and the work of two of the theorist's most influential advocates, Felix Salzer and Oswald Jonas. Based on this, secondly, the article places Adorno's ambivalent attitude towards Schenker's method within the broader scholarly and political debates of his time. In particular, it will be argued that Adorno's reception of Schenker can be understood in relation to three discursive concerns: (1) advocating the importance of Schoenberg's music‐theoretical thought, (2) questioning the methodological reorientation of postwar Austro‐German musicology and (3) reinforcing his opposition to positivism in the domain of musical analysis. In this way, this article aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to reconstruct and understand more fully the history of Schenker reception.

How Parrhesia Works through Art The Elusive Role of the Imagination in Truth-Telling

In his late lectures at the Collège de France, Foucault underpins the pre-eminence of art as the modern site of parrhesia. He omits, however, the aesthetic question: how does parrhesia work through art? A compelling question, firstly, because “truth-telling” seems to be at odds with art as an imaginative process. Secondly, because parrhesia implies a transformation in the listener, while Foucault’s limited notion of discourse precludes transformation beyond discourse. This essay hypothesizes that parrhesiastic art effects a transformation in the imagination, without dismissing this transformation as unreal. As Foucault’s utterances about the imagination are restricted to his earliest publications, this essay features a combined reading of Foucault’s early and late discussions of art. To further analyze the elusive role of the imagination in the late discussions, the essay employs the Deleuzian notion of “dramatization”, an epistemological method that draws on the imagination to escape representational thought. The essay thus aims to demonstrate that parrhesia mirrors the artwork in its intuitive and dynamic relation to truth. Subsequently, it argues that Foucault and Deleuze, respectively proceeding from a limited and an unlimited mode of thinking, come infinitely close in their thinking of art.

Recorded Lectures as a Source of Cognitive Off-loading

Objective. To assess and elucidate the impact of student pharmacists' knowledge of future access to recorded lectures on their ability to remember information presented during lecture. Methods. Pharmacy students viewed 50 minutes of videotaped lecture in a simulated class period. For the early lecture material, participants were instructed as to whether or not they would have future access to the recorded lectures for restudy prior to their test one week later. For the late lecture material, participants were instructed they would not have future access to lecture material. Participants were tested immediately following the lectures and again one week later. The primary outcome was the participants' performance on the examination administered immediately following presentation of the late lecture material. If participants had preserved cognitive resources (eg, memory, attention) because of knowledge they would have future access to recorded lectures, performance was expected to be higher on the late lecture material. Results. Overall performance on the examinations did not differ between participants who knew they would have access to the lecture material for later restudy and those who did not. There was, however, loss of knowledge over time. Participants with knowledge of future access to recorded lectures wrote more notes, which correlated with better performance on the examination. Conclusion. These findings suggest knowledge of future access to recorded lectures did not enhance the ability of participants to remember other information and therefore, may not free-up cognitive resources that could be used for other tasks within the classroom.

“Torture is Putting it Too Strongly, Boredom is Putting it Too Mildly”: The Courage to Tell the Truth in the Late Lectures of Michel Foucault

The name of Michel Foucault is most commonly associated with words such as power, knowledge, discourse, archaeology, and genealogy. However, in his final public lectures delivered prior to his death in June 1984 at the College de France from 1981 to 1984 and at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983, Foucault turned his focus to another word, parrhesia, a Greek term ordinarily translated into English by “candor, frankness; outspokenness or boldness of speech” (“Parrhesia” in Oxford English Dictionary, 2017. http://www.oed.com ). The parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., the one who speaks the truth. This paper is about Foucault’s choice of parrhesia as the topic of his final lectures and what the articulation of these lectures tells us about truth telling in a specific academic context. It will consider Foucault’s treatment of parrhesia with respect to the specific practice of Foucault’s articulation of this work in the specific formal settings in which it occurred at the College de France and the University of California at Berkeley. The objective here is to consider Foucault’s lectures as potential examples of parrhesia and address the question of whether or not is possible to “speak the truth,” in the Greek sense of the term, within the institutional constraints of academic discourse.

Barthes’s Return to Michelet and the Question of New Life

In this essay I investigate the role played by the nineteenth-century French historian Jules Michelet in the late lectures of Roland Barthes. While it is well known that one of Barthes’s first books was devoted to Michelet (1954), the presence of Michelet in the late works of Barthes has yet to receive due attention. This neglect is especially surprising, since Michelet is explicitly evoked repeatedly as a key model for Barthes’s elusive novelistic project, his so-called Vita Nova. Firstly, I undertake a reading of Barthes’s claims about Michelet’s vita n[u]ova in his late lectures and seminars. Secondly, I look at Michelet’s own use of the term vita n[u]ova, and propose that there is often a gap between Barthes’s Michelet and Michelet par lui-même. Thirdly, I reflect more broadly on the implications of these inconsistencies and discrepancies for the question of conversion which is at the heart of the concept of “new life”.

Bilden als transzendentales Prinzip nach der Wissenschaftslehre

In my contribution i would like to consider a thesis of Reinhard Lauth, according to which Fichte’s Doctrine of Science must be properly characterized as theory of the Bilden (formation), as “Bildenslehre”. In his late Berlin lectures Fichte understands Wissen (knowledge), in its actuality, as “Bild” (image). Knowledge is image and identifies itself as an image. The image as such shows a reflective and relational structure. The image presents an essential self-reflexivity and does not exist in isolation, but is a relationship to something else which Fichte designates as being, life, light, one, God. The basic idea of Fichte is that we have access to reality (to being) only through the image and in it, within a transcendental unity of being and thinking that must be conceived not as a fact (Tatsache), but as an act (Tathandlung). The term and concept Bilden (formation) expresses well the dynamic and active nature characteristic of the image. i try to explain this on the basis of certain passages of the Doctrine of Science of 1804 (second exposition).

NEOLIBERAL EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE TRUTH IN FAKE NEWS (SELF-WRITING/SELF-ENTERPRISE/SELF-CONTROL)

Taking cues from Michel Foucault’s late work on ancient cultures of self-care, this article argues that the success of neoliberalism is bound up with an epistemological critique of modernity forged by the movement’s founding theorists. This critique takes aim at three distinct intellectual currents – the socialist, the rationalist, and the pastoral – and thus marks a tripartite break from modern techniques of power and subjectivation. I contend that a Hellenistic model of self-cultivation – exemplified especially in Epicurean, Cynic, and Stoic discourses and scrutinized meticulously by Foucault in his late lectures – becomes reactivated in late twentieth-century American economic and social thought. The second half of the article considers modes of digital writing as “technologies of the self.” Taking the case of “fake news” as my central reference point, I argue that common practices of social media “sharing” constitute an emerging practice of curatorial self-writing that makes one an especially favorable target for neoliberal strategies of social control.

Neoliberalism and the rhetorical invention of counterpublic attunement

This article demonstrates the many seamless ways that multiple and diverse publics align their automatic, instinctual behaviors within the broad agenda of neoliberalism. Rather than surreptitiously crafting discourse to appeal to unconscious public dispositions, as neoliberalism does, it suggests that counterpublics consciously apply this technology to themselves. Specifically, it advocates that they forge a productive friction between rational critical thought and bodily habituation so as to reconstitute public orientations and open unexpected occasions for oppositional communication. This requires that scholars engage both traditional neoliberal critics and new materialist critics to tease out the embodied aspects of publics theory and infuse new materialism with an oppositional edge. Michel Foucault’s late lectures provide a theoretical and practical scaffolding for this practice of differently capacitating bodies. The article concludes by gesturing at how this public formation might further pull from underutilized rhetorical resources to expand the communicative possibilities of counterpublic production.

Babel, Tyranny and Totality: Reading Genesis 11 with Luther

In this article, I consider Martin Luther’s treatment of the tower of Babel narrative in his late Lectures on Genesis in order to display the continuing fruitfulness of a close reading of his exposition of Scripture for the task of contemporary political theology. Luther addresses the themes of politics, tyranny, totality, and language with a theological attunement instructive to those of us formed within the societies and politics of late-modernity. In addition to attending to Luther’s reading of Genesis 11 for its critical usefulness in interrogating our understandings of the mechanisms of political formation, I also look to his reading of the Eucharist in light of the Christological doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, and his exegesis of the account of the Syrophenician woman in the Gospels, to indicate constructive ways in which the idolatrous politics of Babel might be resisted and the politics of Pentecost embraced.

MLA 2018—New York: Political Philosophy in Melville

MLA 2018—New YorkPolitical Philosophy in Melville Chair: Munia Bhaumik, Emory University Click for larger view View full resolution Meredith Farmer, Nathan Wolff, Ana Schwartz, and Colin Dewey. Photo courtesy of John Bryant. Just as Ishmael faced the icy and "stubborn storm" on his way to the chapel in chapter 7 of Moby-Dick, many of the scheduled panelists "fought their way" through the bomb-cyclone to attend the MLA Convention in New York City. Unfortunately, numerous flight cancellations prevented some of the panelists, including me, from flying into the city. Meredith Farmer and Colin Dewey valiantly assumed the helm and steered the panel. [End Page 130] Because inclement weather prevented many panelists from traveling, I have included all the accepted paper abstracts. This panel explores the intersection between Herman Melville's writing and political philosophy, including reflections on democratic theory, formal experimentation, affect, the role of citation, the inclusion of political treatises, headlines and events, and references in Melville's work to political thinkers (Thomas Paine, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, the Cynics, and Aristotle, among others). Our panelists show how Melville draws specifically upon political philosophy, referencing texts such as Hobbes's Leviathan, Paine's Rights of Man, and the Declaration of Independence. The panel responds to a number of recent provocations to think about Melville in political terms: Maurice S. Lee's tracing of a "subversive political philosophy," Jason Frank's argument on the centrality of Melville to American political thought, Jennifer Greiman's work on democracy, and the recent collections Melville's Philosophies, edited by Branka Arsić and K.L. Evans, and Melville among the Philosophers, edited by Corey McCall and Tom Nurmi, which also excavate the conceptual relevance of his writings to materialism, (post) humanism, and environmental studies. "Diogenes in Disguise": Cynicism and Politics in The Confidence-Man Michael Jonik University of Sussex In a time when misanthropes and conmen have co-opted the political scene and the truth is seemingly fleeing like a scared doe, Melville's The Confidence-Man offers an especially relevant diagnosis of the dynamics of power, political speech, and modes of dissembling throughout our contemporary situation. To this end, this paper examines the modality of Melville's political philosophical lineage, namely his relation to the ancient Cynics. Whereas Melville's misanthropes might suggest a Machiavellian statecraft or Hobbesian wolfish war of all against all, his frequent references to Cynicism reveal a deeper classical precedent to his political thought. In this novel, as part of the masquerade of characters, Melville introduces a "Diogenes in disguise," recalling not only Diogenes himself but also the classical satires of Lucian, or later Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, in which the anti-foundational figure of the Cynical philosopher takes center stage. For Melville, Cynicism opens a multifaceted and dynamic position from which his characters can instantiate The Confidence-Man's critique of antebellum culture, thought, and capitalism. What is more, Melville's Diogenes eschews the complicity among thought, capitalism, and power. Diogenes's Cynic life-philosophy, animated as the bios kunikos, marks a becoming-animal of politics in which the "multiform pilgrim species, man" might merge into other, [End Page 131] ungenial collectivities. I draw on Foucault's late lecture, "The Courage of Truth," to explore how Melville's notoriously dialogic and dissembling characters, and especially his Diogenes figure, might nonetheless reveal some of the difficulties of "fearless speaking" (parrhesia) for both Melville's time and our own. Melville and Democratic Portraiture: Moby-Dick as American Laocoön Paulo M. Loonin Washington University in St. Louis This paper addresses Melville's engagement with fundamental questions of democratic theory, both political and aesthetic. Is the democratic portrait possible? Can one represent and enact distinction and recognition (requirements of the democratic citizen) without stratification and inequality (traditional entailments of the portrait genre)? These questions are enacted in Melville's Moby-Dick and are particularly evident in descriptions (portraits) of Captain Ahab and of his ship as a microcosm of the globalizing-American state. The status of Ahab as dictator and of the Pequod as democracy are old questions, but they take on new valances in the context of portraiture. The investigation of political equality becomes...

Zerstreuung, Verschliessung, Hingabe. Zur Figur des Transzendierens bei Jan Patočka

AbstractTo get distracted, to enclose and to give oneself. The Gesture of Transcendence in Jan Patočka The problem of transcendence can be traced throughout the whole work of Jan Patočka. The appeal to transcend our bonds to mere objectivity is a constant issue of his thought. It finds a new substantiation in the 1960s in his studies focusing on the meaning of the other as human being. The relation to the other person offers a special "occasion" or "place" of transcendence and poses the challenge to transcend one's own particular setting.While in the mid-1960s Patočka maintains his earlier dramatic vocabulary to describe the process of transcendence, in the late 1960s his idiom becomes less vehement. Yet, it is precisely within this more "sober" framework that he symbolizes the process of transcendence with an emphatic turn to a "myth of the divine man" and its key metaphor of resurrection. To transcend means, for Patočka, always to liberate oneself from a state of self-distraction between things. However, in his late lectures, he briefly refers to a deeper layer, suggesting that this self-distraction has its "roots" in a self-enclosure or self-isolation, in the exclusive concentration on our own interests and in the illusion of our self-sufficiency. Transcendence, then, means to overcome this self-enclosure by means of a self-forgetting love. Are these rarely mentioned "roots" perhaps implicitly present in all Patočka's accounts of transcendence?