Finding Space
Featured Towards a Poetics of Fascination: Disentangling the Mimetic Thinking of Giordano Bruno
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carlos Gutiérrez Cajaraville
«Those poems by Giordano Bruno are a gift for which I am grateful with all my heart. I have ‘taken’ them… as invigorating drops». In this way Nietzsche expressed, in May 1883, his enthusiasm for the writings of the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). It is not difficult to discern the reasons why those poems turned out to be so stimulating for Nietzsche since, long before the ideas of individualistic self-sufficiency managed to impose themselves, Bruno characterized the human and more-than-human condition as an inevitable play of affective contagions. In this communication we will not only place Bruno within the genealogy of mimetic precursors, but we also explore some of those mimetic bonds and the affects they elicit. To do this, we will focus on his general theory of bonds (De vinculis in genere), which is a whole catalog of images – both visual and sonic – and mimetic movements and affects, and we will put it in relation to his Italian poems (especially De gli eroici furori). Thinking about these links, which are nothing but vital forces that operate below, through and beyond human, lead us to reflect on the relevance that these non-modern conceptions could have today.
The Rhizome and Différance: Literature after Deleuze and Derrida
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joseph Kronick
This paper compares Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, focusing on their theory of minor literature, with Derrida’s thinking of the literature as secret. Minor literature is conceived in terms of force: it is a machine for producing lines of direction, assemblages, not structures. In Derrida, literature is almost synonymous with the secret because both respect what he calls absolute singularity, the separation that binds one to the other. We might say the difference between Deleuze and Derrida is the difference between a philosophy of immanence to one of the promise. In view of the disarray of literary studies in America, the subject of John Guillory’s Professing Literature, Deleuze and Derrida propose an understanding of literature that restores its importance without resorting to metaphysical ideas of subjectivity, hierarchy, and history. Guillory argues that literary criticism was developed as a profession before it became a discipline; that is, it became a profession via its place in the university system. A discipline, however, is defined by its object and methods. Literature is the object of the discipline of critique. The problem, however, is that neither literature nor criticism have been adequately defined. Using Guillory’s work to frame my argument, I propose that his historicist and sociological approach not only fails to resolve the problem he identifies but also misinterprets the meaning of literature for life. Deleuze and Derrida provide complementary approaches, one that may be called political, the other ethical, exemplifying their passion(s) for literature.
