Bruce Janz

The Terror of the Place: Anxieties of Place and the Cultural Narrative of Terrorism

Place is sometimes understood as reinforcing personal and cultural identity in the face of dissipating versions of modernism or postmodernism. However, that identity can also come with a variety of cultural neuroses and manias that are inscribed on place. I consider the ways in which terrorism has become a feature of place, and how we can expect to see the terror of the place in the future. First, we can expect a relative diminishment in ‘place-making imagination’, the ability to see places as rich, ambiguous, and multi-purposed. Second, we can expect the terror of the place to exhibit itself as an inability to come to terms with the other. Third, we can expect the continuation and development of a triumphalist narrative of place, including a sense of entitlement. Fourth, we can anticipate the death or the fear of the agora, the true ‘agoraphobia’, as the public space of discourse is closed down, and the private space of patriarchally enforced agreement gains ascendancy. Fifth, we can expect people to regard specific places as having fixed and permanent meanings, and to try to constrain those meanings in such a way as to guarantee that permanence. Sixth, we can expect topophobia, not only the fear of place but also stage fright, as the expression of self on the world stage becomes more and more limited and narrowly focussed. And seventh, we can expect a re-assertion of memory of place, perhaps with a shifted baseline, as the places of terror become exhausted. We can furthermore expect all of these phobias and manias to be rationalized as virtue in a society that cannot deal with the terror of the place.

Neurophenomenology : an integrated approach to exploring awe and wonder

Astronauts often report experiences of awe and wonder while traveling in space. This paper addresses the question of whether awe and wonder can be scientifically investigated in a simulated space travel scenario using a neurophenomenological method. To answer this question, we created a mixed-reality simulation similar to the environment of the International Space Station. Portals opened to display simulations of Earth or Deep Space. However, the challenge still remained of how to best capture the resulting experience of participants. We could use psycholog- ical methods, neuroscientific methods or philosophical methods. Each of these approaches offer many benefits, but each is also limited. Neurophenomenology capitalises on and integrates all three methods. We employed questionnaires from psychology, electroencephalography, electrocardiography, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy from neuroscience, and a phenomenological interview technique from philosophy. This neurophenomenological method enabled extensive insight in experiencers and non-experiencers of awe and wonder (AW) in a simulated space scenario that otherwise would not have been possible. Traditional empirical analyses were completed, followed by individual differences analyses using interview transcriptions paired with physiological responses. Experiencers of AW showed differences in theta and beta activity throughout the brain compared to non-experiencers. Questionnaires indicated that non-experiencers of AW gave more positive responses of religious and spiritual practices than experiencers of AW. Interviews showed that awe and wonder were more likely to occur when watching the simulated Earth view instead of the Deep Space view. Our study is a success- ful example of neurophenomenology, a powerful and promising interdisciplinary approach for future studies of complex states of experience.

Using a simulated environment to investigate experiences reported during space travel

Astronauts report certain experiences that can be classified as awe and wonder when looking out of their space station or shuttle portals at two different stimuli: the earth and deep space. Based on these reports, it was of interest to further investigate those types of experiences by using a mixed-reality environment resembling an International Space Station workstation designed to expose subjects to simulated stimuli of the earth and deep space. The study is multidisciplinary, involving simulation construction, physiological assessment, psychological testing, textual analysis, and phenomenological interviews. The goal was to induce in the average person the experiences and responses of the astronauts. Preliminary results show promise for using a virtual/mixed-reality environment in a laboratory when assessing cognitive/affective experiences, such as awe and wonder, found in a real-world context.

Shame and Silence

Abstract Samantha Vice’s proposal on how to live in ‘this strange place’ of contemporary South Africa, includes an appeal to the concepts of shame and silence. In this paper, I use Emmanuel Levinas and Giorgio Agamben to move the discussion of shame from a moral to an existential question. The issue is not about how one should feel, but about the kind of self that whiteness in South Africa makes possible today. Shame desubjectifies. Vice’s recommendation of silence is then taken as witnessing/listening, which I argue grounds the possibility of a recovery of the self.

“Thinking Like a Mountain”: Ethics and Place as Travelling Concepts

The phrase ‘ethics of place’ comes with a host of ambiguities. It is not simply ethics derived from specific locations, much less ethics applied to specific places. It is not ethics that is situational, or relativist, or historicized, or subjective. It is not ‘applied’ ethics, as opposed to meta-ethics.

Reason and Rationality in Eze's On Reason

abstract The title of Emmanuel Eze’s fmal, posthumously published book uses the words “reason” and “rationality” in a maimer that might suggest they are interchangeable. I would like to suggest that we not Reat them as the same, but rather tease out a difference in emphasis and reference between the two. In African philosophy, the problem of reason is really two separate problems, the first of which I will call the “problem of reason” (that is, the question of whether there are diverse forms of reason or only one universal form) and the second the “problem of rationality” (that is, the question of whether everyone has the capacity to deploy reason past what mimicry or programming makes possible). Both of these problems are addressed by Eze’s schema for forms of reason. He identifies several forms, but focuses on “ordinary reason”, which allows all the other forms to operate. Ordinary reason also makes rationality possible, that is, the culturally specific yet emergent way of navigating forms of reason. Reason is necessarily diverse, because its multiple forms are deployed differently by different rationalities.

Philosophy-in-Place and the provenance of dialogue

Dialogue, as a concept, is often seen as both central to and a prerequisite for philosophical understanding, especially across cultural divides. I wish to reposition dialogue from being a force for unity and transcendence, to being a force for distinction and immanence. This creative tension is possible only when one takes a place-based approach to philosophy, that is, when one recognises that concepts have their own provenance, a provenance which was defined and developed as questions were raised in an environment of productive inter-traditional tension. Philosophical traditions are constructed as they (to use Deleuze and Guattaris terms) deterritorialise and reterritorialise thought, that is, as they transform concepts into usable markers of philosophical life. I will resist the impulse to move to the meta-level of ‘conversation’, which serves only to obscure the productive tension between traditions. Attending to the place of philosophy, on the other hand, makes possible both a more thorough self-critical attitude, and the possibility of a productive encounter with philosophy- in-place. African philosophy, I will argue, provides a useful and instructive space in which to rethink dialogue. If we focus on the differences between traditions (what I will term ‘thought-lives’), we will make dialogue productive, rather than regarding it as just a prior condition to reason or as a liberal ideal.

Walls and Borders: The Range of Place

Apparently, the wall was something of an engineering miracle even prior to the events that exposed it to the light of day. People used to go down to the basement where part of it was visible, and marvel at its ability to resist 3,500 pounds per square inch of pressure over 3,300 feet. When it was called upon to bear even more it rose to the challenge, anthropomorphically speaking. Now it is being compared to the Liberty Bell,1 a physical object that symbolizes a signature and defining (albeit vastly different) event. This wall, built to hold back the Hudson River from flooding the basement of the World Trade Center, was once the foundation and physical site of a place, but has now itself become a place. It has transformed from site to situation. It is being written retrospectively as a humble and unglamorous object (the “bathtub”) that rose to be a noble, even heroic place, one which because of the “miracle” of superior engineering stood when everything else fell. This object which newly defines a place has become the classic American story of triumph over insurmountable odds. It has become personified, narrativized, and valorized—it “held” against the onslaught like a defender protecting a city, saving the lives of people who were rushing out of the building. It is a place of memory, although precisely what is being remembered depends on who faces the wall. It is the Wailing Wall. It is being incorporated into the new design for the site by the architects and the memorial planners, an unlikely remembrance to and representation of horrific events. It is the hypostatization of a narrative of siege, another quintessentially American story about the triumph (if only moral) of the inside over the outside. It is the Alamo, it is Independence Day, it is homeland security. Less literally but no less viscerally than Maya Ying Lin’s Vietnam Memorial, it has already been inscribed with the names of those who were lost. At worst it has become a commodified tourist attraction (how long will it be before you can get little models of the wall for your very own, to put beside your brick from the Berlin wall?), and at best it is the localization and focal point of shared meaning, a place that makes identity available to be shared. It is not so much the essential nature of this or any other place that has me interested, but rather the passing in and out of being of a place. Places are in flux, sliding in and out of existence, and our discourse about place is also in flux, sliding between disciplines and uses. This movement is neither obvious nor expected, as place usually suggests stability and permanence. As a philosopher, my initial tendency is to think about place in the abstract, by trying to make it static and external. We have a long history of this—Aristotle thought that place was a kind of “skin” that wrapped itself around every physical thing, but which is shed when the thing moves. Almost no one after Aristotle accepted his version of place,

Watsuji Tetsuro, Fudo, and climate change

In this paper, I wish to consider Watsuji Tetsuros (1889–1960) concept of climate (fudo), and consider whether it contributes anything to the relationship between climate change and ethics. I will argue that superficially it seems that fudo tells us little about the ethics of climate change, but if considered more carefully, and through the lens of thinkers such as Deleuze and Heidegger, there is ethical insight in Watsujis approach. Watsujis major work in ethics, Rinrigaku, provides concepts such as between-ness and trust that enable his philosophy of climate to move from a theory of national characters (as Fudo is often seen to be) to an approach to living well within ones milieu.

Dialogue and listening

When we think about dialogue, we often implicitly assume that we are thinking about speaking. We are faced, though, with the breakdown of the ‘rules’ of dialogue, resulting in a situation that has more in common with war than with a marketplace of ideas. I raise the question of the other side of dialogue, listening, as having an active role in constructing the ecosystem of thought in which dialogue can happen. Listening is difficult to compel, hard to measure, and easy to mischaracterize, but it nevertheless is crucial in establishing the conditions for productive intellectual exchange.