Aleksandar Mijatović

This chapter reassesses contingency, one of the principal concepts of continental theory. The argument’s gist is to demonstrate how the dualities of contingency and necessities, reason and unreason, change and immutability, chance and cause, stability and volatility, order and disorder, and frequency and irregularity, do not simply appertain to relations of exclusion. Instead of being contraries, these opposed terms are complementaries, implying each other. It is proposed not to take these terms as oppositions but as compositions. Such conceptual compositions involving complementing contrapuntal relations transform dividing lines into overlapping zones. The argument is presented as a retrospective discussion starting with Quentin Meillassoux’s Après la finitude: Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence, a contemporary classic, and theoretical tour de force tending to blur the division between analytic and continental theory. Meillassoux’s argument is contrasted with David Hume’s non-probabilistic version of the pro et contra dialogue on miracles. The thesis is that the notion of miracles could be saved from theological, dogmatist, and superstitious interpretations if they were supplanted with the concept of contingency given in Althusser’s writings. Contrary to Meillassoux and his opponents, such as Badiou or Žižek, Althusser presents a compositional version of the relationship between contingency and necessity.

Karl Marx u Njemačkoj ideologiji i Kapitalu uvodi optičku metaforu ljudskog oka kroz koju tumači problematiku ideologije i robnog fetišizma. U radu se razmatraju mogućnosti interpretacija ovih Marxovih metafora. U svjetlu se tih interpretacija razmatra jedna od središnjih postavki vizualnih studija da se vizualna kultura moderniteta gradi na potkopavanju epistemološke prevlasti viđenja. Rad problematizira koncepciju modernističkog utjelovljenog promatrača koju uvodi američki povjesničar umjetnosti Jonathan Crary. Prema Craryju, ova drugačija ideja promatračkog subjekta potkopava klasičnu filozofijsku ideju o rastjelovljenosti spoznajnog subjekta. Prema Craryjevoj argumentaciji takva se klasična ideja subjektivnosti s modernitetom ne zamišlja više kao temelj spoznaje, nego kao figura ideologije. Međutim, preokretanje Marxova odnosa između optičkih metafora i pojmova ideologije te fetišističkog karaktera robe baca potpuno drugačije svjetlo na pitanje promatračke subjektivnosti. Završna je postavka rada da se camera obscura i ljudsko oko ne trebaju isključivo shvaćati kao puke metafore koje je Marx u Njemačkoj ideologiji i Kapitalu upotrebljavao kao analogije preko kojih je tumačio pojmove kao što su ideologija ili fetišizam robe. Postupak čitanja može isto tako ići i u obrnutom smjeru: camera obscura i ljudsko oko su pojmovi koji su objašnjeni posredstvom već definiranih pojmova ideologije i fetišizma robe. Ako se perspektiva čitanja zamijeni na taj način postaje jasno da iz postavke o utjelovljenom promatraču ne proizlazi nužno i postavka o utjelovljenom karakteru doživljajā viđenja.Camera obscura and human eye were key metaphors engaged in the interpretation of the concepts of ideology and commodity fetishism in Karl Marx’s fundamental texts German ideology and Capital . The aim of this paper is to reconsider interpretative strategies that Marx used while he was proposing his main thesis on ideology and commodity fetishism. In the light of these considerations the paper addresses one of the central propositions of the contemporary visual studies that modern visual culture undermines epistemological privileging of the vision. The paper critically discusses the concept of the embodied observer that American art historian Jonathan Crary introduced in the philosophy, art history, cultural history and visual studies. According to Crary the idea of vision as primarily rooted in the corporeality of the observer undercuts Cartesian idea about vision as primarily disembodied event. Crary claims that with the rise of the modernity disembodied subjectivity turns from the site of the knowledge into the figure of ideology. However, reversing the Marx’s relation between optical metaphors and concepts of the ideology and commodity fetishism poses the problem of the observing subjectivity in the quite different terms. Final proposal of this paper is that camera obscura and human eye should not only be considered as optical metaphors that Marx used in German ideology and Capital as mere analogies for explaining concepts such as ideology or commodity fetishism. Reading procedure could well go into the opposite direction: the camera obscura and the human eye are the concepts explained via the already defined concepts of the ideology and commodity fetishism. If the reading perspective is switched in that way it is clear that the thesis of the embodied observer does not necessarily entail the embodied character of the visual sensations

Rad se bavi koncepcijom slikanja francuskog filozofa Jeana-Luca Nancyja. Njena je osobitost da se ona gradi u odmaku od fenomenoloških i mimetičkih pojmova kao što su reprezentacija, predodžba, pojavljivanje, otkrivanje, ili davanje. Pa ipak je pojam slikanja za Nancyja u tijesnoj vezi s ontološkim pojmovima svijeta, smisla i stvaranja ex nihilo. No ta veza opet nije od vrste »deduktivna izvođenja« pojma slikanja iz pojmova svijeta, smisla i stvaranja ex nihilo, već se slikanje određuje preko koncepta fragmenta. U radu se naznačuju linije dodirivanja i razdvajanja između ideje fragmenta i Nancyjevih eseja o slikanju.This paper discusses Jean-Luc Nancy’s conception of painting. According to Nancy, painting could not be properly understood relying on phenomenological notions such as representation, appearing, disclosure, or giving. Instead, Nancy relates painting with the ontological notions such as world, sense, and creation ex nihilo. Nevertheless, this relation is not a kind of “deductive inference” of the notion of painting from notions of world, sense and creation ex nihilo, but the notion of painting is defined through the concept of fragment. Therefore, the attempt of the paper is to draw dividing and connecting lines between the notion of fragment and Nancy’s essays on painting