Invisible Man, the title of Ralph Ellison’s seminal 1952 novel refers to the lack of opacity of its main protagonist. Rather than reading this book as the exemplary story of a concrete, situated individual – an African-American intellectual before and during the so-called Harlem Renaissance – this article-in-progress will concentrate on the figure of thought that this central character expresses.
Tag Archives: jacques derrida
about medial operations
How do media – old and new – shape and transform knowledge? The research-in-progress website, Medial Operations, focuses on the complex transitions between noise, non-sense, information, and knowledge.
about time tracks
The monograph Time Tracks constructs anachronistic and eclectic constellations of philosophical concepts, biographical narratives and popular music. It stages unexpected encounters between Gilles Deleuze, Prince, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Vilém Flusser, Marvin Gaye, Michel Foucault, Camille and Marshall McLuhan. What brings this wide range of philosophers, media theorists, authors, and artists together is a shared concern; they all struggle with time.
a typology of iterations
The critique of linguistic presence that Jacques Derrida develops in “Signature Event Context” (1971) has become a common place in contemporary philosophy and literary theory. Often forgotten, however – and not in the last place by the French philosopher himself – is the fact that this essay does not just proclaim the ‘death of metaphysics’ but also suggests a path for future philosophical research. “Signature Event Context” initiates a shift from signs and meaning themselves to the acts, procedures, and operations that invoke them.