Julia Sushytska

The concept of Eastern Europe was constructed during Enlightenment in order to solidify and purify the idea of Western Europe. The essay proposes that today the notion of Eastern Europe can be reclaimed: although traceable to a specific geographical region, Eastern Europe cannot be reduced to geopolitical and economic categories. It is rather a way of being that Heraclitus traces out with his aphorism “I went in search for myself.” Challenging the dichotomy between the West and the non-West, Eastern Europe provides a vantage point from which we can approach philosophical and political problems in new ways. The essay relies on the philosophical concepts developed by Heraclitus, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Merab Mamardashvili.

John McCumbers’ book On Philosophy: Notes from a Crisis challenges the key dichotomy of Western philosophical tradition— the distinction between form, or οὐσία, and matter. This basic ontological distinction, first formulated by Aristotle, appears under different guises throughout the history of Western thought, making oppression integral to philosophy, and leading the discipline into the situation of a major crisis, in which, as McCumber eloquently argues, philosophy and philosophers find themselves today. In this essay I argue that by developing the notion of the speaking of matter McCumber subverts the oppressive history of Western philosophy. I explore this rich concept, showing how it successfully undermines ousiodic ontology. By drawing on McCumber’s text, and also on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Gloria Anzaldúa I argue that a non-ousiodic ontology has to prioritize anomalous, or seemingly contradictory beings. I discuss one possible direction such ontology could take—it could focus on the internal stranger, or the metic, to use an ancient Greek term.