CultureLab • Masterclass
X-Centric Futures – Masterclass
Philippe Lynes – Extinction and Nothingness: Deconstruction and the Kyoto School
On December 13th, Philippe Lynes (Durham University) will give a masterclass on “Extinction and Nothingness: Deconstruction and the Kyoto School” at Colégio Almada Negreiros (room 217). The masterclass will take place within the scope of the activities of the research seminar X-Centric Futures, coordinated by Giovanbattista Tusa, and of the activities of the research group Forms of Life and Practices of Philosophy, coordinated by Bartholomew Ryan.
In his 1994 seminar Le Témoignage, Jacques Derrida invites us to reflect on the question ‘comment s’habituer à rien?’: how to get used, or habituate oneself to nothing. With this query, however, Derrida means neither exclusively getting used to something, to nothing as some thing or res, to the nothing, to being nothing or being dead, nor to having nothing, but to nothingness as the thing’s irreversible annihilation; “my death there will have been, the end of the world for me there shall be, end of the earth and humanity there shall be, after the exhaustion of the sun, etc. and yet, against this or even because of this, from this absolute despair, I still hope to bear witness. It’s of this nothing, this being nothing, this thing of the nothing that I would like to speak in asking ‘comment s’habituer à rien?‘” Derrida thus importantly anticipates several gestures at work in Speculative Realism’s interrogations of extinction, the nihilistic implications of which are best captured in Ray Brassier’s question: “how does thought think a world without thought? Or more urgently: How does thought think the death of thinking?” If Parmenides’ ‘correlationism’ between being and thinking foreclosed an adequate response to these questions since the inception of Western philosophy, might the Eastern philosophy of nothingness [mu, 無], as presented by the Kyoto School philosophers Nishida Kitarō and Nishitani Keiji, offer an alternative manner by which to think through the extinction of thought? In this talk, I propose a comparative analysis of notions such as Derrida’s khōra and Nishida’s place [basho, 場所], Brassier’s non-being and being-nothing with Nishitani’s nihility [kyomu, 虚無] and emptiness [ku,空], in order to expand on the latter’s understanding of the fundamental task of philosophy: “the overcoming of nihilism through nihilism”.
More info
The X-Centric Futures research seminar, coordinated by Giovanbattista Tusa, aims to extend critical thought in the humanities and social sciences and to develop rigorous critical practices that move beyond academic interdisciplinarity. The mission of the program is to deepen different perspectives that concur in the redefinition of critical thinking in a planetary age, and to explore art practices that challenge well-established assumptions of research and the methodologies used for analysis by privileging critical approaches to thinking that have generally not yet entered into academic discussions.
We believe that there is a philosophical vacuum on the subject of futurity other than that imagined as a data visualisation leading to decision-making by corporate, administrative or political bodies. To some extent, it is as if philosophy has abdicated its function and delegated to corporate global think tanks the responsibility for formulating viable paths for the transformation of our present. To explore X-centric, divergent futures means for us to experiment with time, space, and politics. It means to complicate our time with invisible, insurgent, multiple temporalities that fissure the material layers of our history, to reframe global historical narratives that incorporate decolonising processes and climate justice, nurturing ourselves as a community, creating wishful images inhabited by unseen, dissident realities that are coming into being.
Research and dissemination activities have included The X-Centric Futures Monthly Debates Program, a series of public seminars organized by Giovanbattista Tusa and Bartholomew Ryan which took place in 2022 at the Cultural Centre Carpintarias de São Lázaro, featuring the art collective Claire Fontaine on Magical Materialism; the musical performance Green Mass: The Ecological Theology of St. Hildegard of Bingen by Michael Marder, Peter Schuback, and Márcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback; the presentation of Uriel Orlow’s Imbizo Ka Mafavuke; and the screening and discussion of Bahar Noorizadeh’s After Scarcity and The Red City of the Planet Capitalism.
In 2023 the ADVANCED PROGRAMME IN X-CENTRIC FUTURE STUDIES will combine the research seminar with workshops (in presential and remote format)and a student-led reading group in Lisbon to promote the growth of research and artistic projects on emerging social movements, future political constellations, and x-centric communities.
We believe that there is a philosophical vacuum on the subject of futurity other than that imagined as a data visualisation leading to decision-making by corporate, administrative or political bodies. To some extent, it is as if philosophy has abdicated its function and delegated to corporate global think tanks the responsibility for formulating viable paths for the transformation of our present. To explore X-centric, divergent futures means for us to experiment with time, space, and politics. It means to complicate our time with invisible, insurgent, multiple temporalities that fissure the material layers of our history, to reframe global historical narratives that incorporate decolonising processes and climate justice, nurturing ourselves as a community, creating wishful images inhabited by unseen, dissident realities that are coming into being.
Research and dissemination activities have included The X-Centric Futures Monthly Debates Program, a series of public seminars organized by Giovanbattista Tusa and Bartholomew Ryan which took place in 2022 at the Cultural Centre Carpintarias de São Lázaro, featuring the art collective Claire Fontaine on Magical Materialism; the musical performance Green Mass: The Ecological Theology of St. Hildegard of Bingen by Michael Marder, Peter Schuback, and Márcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback; the presentation of Uriel Orlow’s Imbizo Ka Mafavuke; and the screening and discussion of Bahar Noorizadeh’s After Scarcity and The Red City of the Planet Capitalism.
In 2023 the ADVANCED PROGRAMME IN X-CENTRIC FUTURE STUDIES will combine the research seminar with workshops (in presential and remote format)and a student-led reading group in Lisbon to promote the growth of research and artistic projects on emerging social movements, future political constellations, and x-centric communities.
X-Centric Futures
Date
13/12/2022
Time
11:00
Research Groups
Place
Colégio Almada Negreiros – Room 217