Rok Benčin
Melancholy, or the Metaphysics of Fictional Sadness
Key words: melancholy, metaphysics, lost object, possible world, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou
In relation to Badiou's "metaphysics of real happiness", the essay explores psychoanalytical (Freud) and philosophical (Benjamin) accounts of melancholy with a view to developing a complementary metaphysics of sadness. It argues that melancholy is not restricted to the suffering of an individual confined to his or her finitude, but is itself, like Badiou's real happiness, related to infinity, subjectivity, and truth. The essay shows this by demonstrating how the principle characteristic of the melancholic object is not its status as being lost, but rather its indeterminacy and its monadic structure. Melancholy generates such objects, which seem, on the one hand, alien to reality, and yet, on the other, which enable the subjective and fictitious development of other possible worlds.
Rok Benčin
Melanholija ali metafizika fiktivne žalosti
Ključne besede: melanholija, metafizika, izgubljeni objekt, možni svet, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou
Na sledi Badioujeve »metafizike realne sreče« razprava raziskuje psihoanalitične (Freud) in filozofske (Benjamin) razlage melanholije, z namenom razviti komplementarno metafiziko žalosti. Trdimo namreč, da melanholije ne moremo zvesti na trpljenje posameznika, obsojenega na svojo končnost, temveč je tudi sama, podobno kot Badioujeva realna sreča, povezana z neskončnostjo, subjektivnostjo in resnico. Do te teze pridemo tako, da pokažemo, kako osrednja značilnost melanholičnega objekta ni njegova izgubljenost, temveč njegova nedoločenost in monadična struktura. Melanholija proizvaja takšne objekte, ki se po eni strani zdijo realnosti tuji, po drugi pa omogočajo subjektivno in fikcijsko razvitje drugih možnih svetov.
Marcus Coelen
Prolegomena to the Writing of Affect
Key words: affects, psychoanalysis, politics, Freud, identification "Hilfslosigkeit", writing
The article is a critical discussion of the concepts of "affect" in some of those positions of contemporary political theory that are based in (a critique of) psychoanalysis. Freud's definition of "identification" - the key notion in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego - as both a psychic mechanism and an affect - helps to elucidate the aporetic status of affects (and mechanisms) in psychoanalysis and thus in psychoanalytically informed
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political theory. Instead of providing a link or shuttle between psychoanalysis and political thought and practice, affect, understood as the fundamental "Hilsfslosigkeit", and as the enigma of identification, severs psychoanalysis from the political. This cleavage is a place of incalculable invention: writing might be a name for it.
Marcus Coelen
Prolegomena k pisanju afekta
Ključne besede: afekti, psihoanaliza, politika, Freud, identifikacija "Hilfslosigkeit", pisanje
Pričujoči članek je kritična razprava o pojmu afekta, kot nastopa v tistih stališčih sodobne politične terorije, ki se opirajo na psihoanalizo oziroma jo kritizirajo. Freudova definicija "identifikacije" - ključnega pojma v njegovi Množični psihologiji in analizi jaza -kot psihičnega mehanizma in hkrati afekta - nam omogoča pojasniti aporetični status afektov (in mehanizmov) v psihoanalizi in, posledično, v politični teoriji, kolikor se opira na psihoanalizo. Namesto da bi vzpostavil vez med psihoanalizo in politično mislijo ter prakso, afekt, dojet kot izvorna "Hilsfslosigkeit", in kot zagonetka identifikacije, odreže psihoanalizo od politike. Ta razcep je obenem kraj za nepredvidljivo invencijo: pisanje bi lahko bilo ime za tako invencijo.
Mojca Puncer
The Politics of Aesthetics of Contemporary Art in Slovenia and its Avant-Garde Sources
Key words: avant-garde art, participation, contemporary art in Slovenia, politics of aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere
In addressing contemporary participatory, community-based art practices in Slovenia, this paper is inspired by Jacques Ranciere's rehabilitation of aesthetics as a new philos-226 ophy of aisthesis. This new philosophy of sensation and perception is radically different from the aesthetics and philosophy of art that primarily concern the aesthetics of a work of art. Ranciere prefers to talk about the aesthetic regime of art that addresses the complex and contradictory relationship between the autonomy of art and the overcoming of the boundaries separating art and life. Such an overcoming is in the foundation of both avant-garde art as well as contemporary art practices, which are the focus of our discussion. The efforts of emerging participatory art in the 1990s to achieve social change follow the avant-garde movements of the 20th century. The paper aims to contribute to the analysis of community-oriented art from aesthetic and political perspectives and to evaluate the significance of the avant-garde heritage with respect to continuity in the articulation of common/community in art.