Madalina Diaconu

Collecting goes beyond art collecting and seems to meet a more general need. Although it originally aided survival and has predecessors in the animal world, the gesture of collecting has complex motivations. After exploring the collector’s psychology and the behavioural differences between collectors and spectators, this paper analyses the logic of collecting and its principles: order, variation, attractive and meaningful display, the control of contingency, processuality and growth, seriality, and limitation. Finally, the paradoxical attempt to collect non-collectibles, such as gods, clouds or human relations will be shown to illustrate a para-aesthetics of collecting which ranges from the poetics of everyday life to aestheticism.

Mădălina Diaconus Beitrag zum Bild Europas in Rumänien zieht in Betracht hauptsächlich kulturphilosophische Interpretationen seit dem Beginn des Modernisierungsprozesses in Rumänien vor etwa 150 Jahren. Vor dem Krieg überwogen die Spekulationen über eine „rumänische Seele“ und die Forderung der Synchronisierung mit der Entwicklung der westlichen Institutionen und Werte. Diese Diskussionen wurden nach 1989 wieder aufgenommen und beweisen, dass das Selbstbewusstsein der Rumänen, ein integraler Teil Europas zu sein, weiterhin ungebrochen ist.

Contemporary smelly artworks, installations and “scent sculptures” endorse philosophical and anthropological theories about the construction of identity as a relation to oneself and the others through consciousness and memory, as a multi-staged process of social exchange, as a game of risk and trust in making one’s own identity, and as a dialectics of agency and passivity. It is well-known that topophilic emplacement contributes to identity; olfactory site-specific installations and practices “present” specific smellscapes and reflect on their changes. Also olfactory artists who produce uncanny atmospheres recall that personal identity is built along the axes of trust and anxiety. Body odors in general are corporeal signatures that enable individual recognition, yet artists extract them in order to challenge taboos, question gender stereotypes and build open identities. The crucial role of odors for both self-acceptance and non-verbal communication makes artists use them as a means of fostering a new sense of solidarity on a local as well as on a global level. Finally, other artistic projects subvert the anthropological difference and rehabilitate other species’ olfactory sensitivity. With the aid of modern technology, they promise to fulfil old dreams about enlarging the spectrum of our nose and controlling incoming odors and body emissions. Thus, in a paradoxical way, they both advocate to return to the prehuman and urge to become posthuman.

MĂDĂLINA DIACONU, Tasten, Riechen, Schmecken. Eine Ästhetik der anästhesierten Sinne, 2005 ; SILVIA STOLLER, VERONICA VASTERLING,LINDA FISHER, Feministische Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik, 2005 ; KARL SCHUHMANN, Karl Schuhmann: Selected Papers on Phenomenology. Edited by CEES LEIJENHORST and PIET STEENBAKKERS, 2004 ; HIROSHI GOTO, Der Begriff der Person in der PhänomenologieHusserls. Ein Interpretationsversuch der Husserlschen Phänomenologie als Ethik im Hinblick auf den Begriff der Habitualität, 2004 ; GÜNTER FIGAL, Lebensverstricktheit und Abstandsnahme. „Verhalten zu sich“ im Anschluss an Heidegger, Kierkegaard und Hegel, 2001 ; JACQUES DERRIDA, Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, 2000

"Gabriel Cercel: Martin HEIDEGGER, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges; Attila Szigeti: Emmanuel LEVINAS, Positivité et transcendance. Suivi de Lévinas et la phenomenology; Cristian Ciocan: Jean-Luc MARION, Crucea vizibilului; Gabriel Cercel: Mădălina DIACONU, Blickumkehr. Mit Martin Heidegger zu einer relationalen ästhetik; Cristina Ionescu: Mark WRATHALL, Jeff MALPAS, Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus; Cristian Ciocan: Ion COPOERU, Aparenţă şi sens. Repere ale fenomenologiei constitutive; Cristian Ciocan: Michael INWOOD, A Heidegger Dictionary; Cristian Ciocan: Linda FISCHER, Lester EMBREE, Feminist Phenomenology; Mădălina Diaconu: Renato CRISTIN, Fenomeno storia. Fenomenologia e storicità in Husserl e Dilthey; Cristian Ciocan: Michel HAAR, La philosophie française entre phénoménologie et métaphysique; Gabriel Cercel: Otto PÖGGELER, Heidegger in seiner Zeit; Roxana Albu: James RISSER, Heidegger toward the Turn, Essays on the work of the 1930s; Cristian Ciocan: Virgil Ciomoş, Timp şi Eternitate. Aristotel, Fizica IV 10-14, Interpretare fenomenologică; Cristina Ionescu: William D. BLATTNER, Heidegger's Temporal Idealism; Bogdan Mincă: Gino ZACCARIA, L'inizio greco del pensiero. Heidegger e l'essenza futura della filosofia; Mădălina Diaconu: Ute GUZZONI, Wohnen und Wandern; Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban: Emmanuel LÉVINAS, Totalitate şi infinit; Mihail Neamţu: Jean-Luc MARION, Étant donné. Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation; Gabriel Cercel: Robert PETKOVŠEK, Heidegger-Index ; Cristian Ciocan: Einar ØVERENGET, Seeing The Self. Heidegger on Subjectivity Mihail Neamţu: Rolf KÜHN, Husserls Begriff der Passivität. Zur Kritik der passiven Synthesis in der genetischen Phänomenologie."