Simon Ryle

Associate Professor, Department of English, Filozofski Fakultet, University of Split

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Simon Ryle's research focuses on intersections between literature, cinema and theory, in particular concerning expressions of animal life, bodily materiality and its commodification, ecocriticism, media technology and desire.

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Drugost, negacija i nezamislivo

Ova prezentacija istražuje susret Francuske s Japanom u filmovima Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) Alaina Resnaisa, ​​Sans Soleil (1983) Chrisa Markera i knjizi L'empire des signes (1970) Rolanda Barthesa. Fokus prezentacije je na tome kako francuska kinematografija pristupa japanskoj rekonstrukciji nakon Drugog svjetskog rata, zen budizmu i nuklearnom atomskom razaranju, te kako ovi susreti redefiniraju središnju ulogu koju negacija zauzima u poststrukturalističkoj filozofiji. Šire gledano, Drugost, negacija i nezamislivo nastoji pokazati kako ovaj niz poststrukturalističkih susreta s Japanom, iako povijesno specifičan, ostaje iznimno relevantan, nagovještavajući na vitalan način suvremeno postojanje ilustrirajući mučne poteškoće smislenog življenja u sjenama nezamislive grozote.

 

3 pitanja:

 

- Koja je uloga susreta s alteritetom, negacijom i nezamislivošću u poststrukturalističkoj misli te na koji način bi teorijska istraživanja ovih problema mogla i dalje imati estetski i etički značaj?

 

- Kako i zašto bi umjetnost i teorija mogle neprestano biti usmjerene prema nemogućem ili neizrecivom “nuit ce que dissimule la nuit, l’autre nuit” kako Maurice Blanchot alegorijski opisuje Orfejev mitski impuls suočavanja s Euridikom na mjestu smrti? Na koji način je moguće i zašto bi bilo bitno pristupiti “pisanju katastrofe”, prema Blanchotovim riječima, koja sama dovodi u pitanje utemeljenost mogućnosti smisla?

 

- Kako živjeti smislenim životom u sjenama nezamislive grozote?

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Alterity, negation & the unthinkable

This presentation explores the French encounter with Japan in Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), Roland Barthes Empire of Signs (1970), and Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983). The presentation focuses on how French cinema’s encounters with Japanese post-WWII reconstruction, Zen Buddhism and nuclear atomic devastation redefine the central position that negation takes in poststructuralist philosophy. In a broader sense Alterity, negation & the unthinkable seeks to show how this series of poststructuralist encounters with Japan, though historically specific, remains significant, foreshadowing in a vital way contemporary existence by exemplifying the harrowing difficulty of living a meaningful life in the shadows of unthinkable atrocity.

 

3 Questions:

- What is the role of the encounter with alterity, negation and unthinkability in poststructuralist thought, and how might theory’s explorations of these problems continue to have aesthetic and ethical significance?

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- How and why might art and theory continually be impelled towards the impossible or unspeakable “night in the night” as Maurice Blanchot allegorically describes Orpheus’s mythical impulsion to face Eurydice in the place of death?

 

- How is it possible, and why might it be vital, to approach the “writing of the disaster,” in Blanchot’s words, whose catastrophe itself calls into question the grounding of the possibility of meaning?

How does one live a meaningful life in the shadows of unthinkable atrocity?

 

Links:

https://punctumbooks.com/titles/xenoflesh-vegan-poetics-and-capitalocene-meat/

https://read.dukeupress.edu/boundary-2/article-abstract/47/4/63/167009/XenofleshA-Zoepoetics-of-Meat

https://www.hippocampus.si/ISSN/2630-4082/55.215-236.pdf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14797585.2019.1590917

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137332066

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Simon Ryle published recently and has forthcoming work on vegan poetics, flesh in David Lynch’s cinematography, ecocide in W.S. Merwin’s poetry, and Capitalocene symbiosis in the fiction of Octavia Butler.

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