W. Benjamin

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

The claim that the aura of the artwork vanishes in the era of technical reproducibility is the most famous claim in Benjamin’s famous ‘Artwork essay’, yet insufficient attention has been paid to how this echoes an established Constructivist ‘liquidationist’ discourse.  This article demonstrates that many of the claims routinely attributed to Benjamin can be found in the writings of the Czech avant-garde theorist Karel Teige in the early 1920s.  Rather than debunking the Artwork essay, however, this article traces Benjamin’s critical perspective on liquidationist rhetoric, identifying an avant-garde wish-image in the metaphor of the ‘vanishing point’.

A partir de la producción teórica de W. Benjamin, Th. W. Adorno y F. Jameson, esta obra explicita un modo de interpretación del mundo cultural circundante que supera el deficiente carácter crítico del modelo hermenéutico de Heidegger y Gadamer. Se trata de una hermenéutica que toma como objeto los fragmentos de la vida social y cultural, descifrando en ellos elementos relevantes para la comprensión crítica de las transformaciones que definen el presente.

This study focuses on the particular relationship between George Bataille’s (1896- 1962) work and the roman-catholic faith. The aim is to demonstrate how the early spiritual experience in the Roman-Catholic Church has been kept in Bataille’s work as a real philosophical root. Because of that, we will consider the Author’s early works from the first decade of the XX century until the year 1933, when Bataille writes the text Sacrifices, a decisive meditation about the sacred and the significance that he gives to the Christian symbol of the Cross. The reason why we will consider this period of Bataille’s life is that these years are a kind of big factory in which Bataille’s thought begins to take shape and in which we can find the roots of his mature meditations. The big result of Bataille’s research will actually be the atheology theorized from the second half of 1930’s.
The first part is dedicated to reconstruct  the historical and biographical context of the young Bataille. We will take in consideration the testimonies of people who were neat to our Author together with his own private correspondence and some autobiographical passages from his works. We will reconstruct the relationship between George Bataille and the roman-catholicism until the first half of the 1930’s on a historical and biographical level, basing ourselves on the sources. It will be of great importance for us the comprehension of the work titled Notre-Dame de Rheims (1918), a very important text to comprehend Bataille’s roman-catholicism.
In the second part, we will study the influence of particular structures of the latin theological thought on our Author’s philosophical works. We will examine in particular three steps of his early literary production: the novel Histoire de l’oeil (1928), the articles published on the review Documents (1928-1929) and the brief essay Sacrifices (1933).

This special issue contains seven interdisciplinary essays on the human face.

CONTENTS
Jeanette Kohl and Dominic Olariu: Editorial 3

Jean-Claude Schmitt: For a History of the Face: Physiognomy, Pathognomy, Theory of Expression 7

Bernard Andrieu: Appearance-Based Prejudice. Between Fear of the Other and Identity Hybridization 21

Sigrid Weigel: Phantom Images: Face and Feeling in the Age of Brain Imaging 33

Georges Didi-Huberman: Near and Distant: The Face, its Imprint, and its Place of Appearance 54

Claudia Schmölders: Eye Level. The Linear Perspective in Face Perception 70

Jonathan Cole: Facial Function Revealed through Loss. Living with the Difference 83

Jeanette Kohl, Dominic Olariu and Rainer Schmelzeisen: Face Matters. Facial Surgery from the Inside 95

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