Friday, June 3rd, 15.30 – 18.30, at Università di Verona, Room 1.1
Abstract:
This paper questions, starting from Derrida’s works, the theoretical possibility of a place for non-violence into subjectivity.
The experience of Derrida in docu-films (and his subsequent reflections on it) – where he is actor of himself – will be analysed. The concrete ex-position of his discourse to heterogeneous registers (music, images, cutting, direction) and the not full control on his own image (suspended between private and public) may consistently modify the paradigm of self-representation and self-recognition.
Subjectivity vacillates between conscious attention and automatism, between mastery and letting ‘the other’ traverse me. Precisely in the ambiguous space between activity and passivity, non-violence can arise within subjectivity and unceasingly reconfigure it.
I also argue that being active/passive, as well as actors/directors, may be a pervading condition nowadays, thinking to the increasing net-anthropological dislocation – and reconfiguration – of identity, and of one’s own images, scripts and written remains.
The statute of one’s own image (public/private, external/mental) is changing; one must accept a partial ex-author/isation on one’s own products (intellectual or ethical-political), and learn to manage the transformation. This management works as a (paradoxical) new form of non violent engagement politique, a very primitive and modest pattern of commitment, but possibly necessary.
