Henrik Jøker Bjerre

The Discourse of the University1

On a session in December 1969, Jacques Lacan answered an intervention from the audience of his seminar in a way that must have struck as somewhat surprising. A student had encouraged everyone to leave the university and join forces with the workers and the peasants on the outside, when Lacan asked for permission to make a small remark: “The configuration of workers-peasants has nevertheless led to a form of society,” he said, “in which it is precisely the university that occupies the driving seat. For what reigns in what is commonly called the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics is the university” (Lacan 1991, 206).

This Entrance Was Only Meant For You–Towards a Metaphysics of the Culture of Complaint

Abstract This paper diagnoses a certain culture of complaint, which is a curious formation in the history of mankind that emerges exactly at the moment where the claim, that the “grand narratives” have lost their meaning, goes from being merely an academic postulate to becoming a commonly accepted cultural dogma. Rather than joyfully accepting the liberation from the ostensibly repressive grand narratives, the reaction typical of the members of the culture of complaint has been to blame the big Other for his non-existence. Having discussed this point we proceed to discuss the possibility of genuine political action, given such a bleak prognosis of our own current post-modern predicament. Via the literary work of Franz Kafka, a discussion is opened about the possibilities and constraints on political action in an era where transcendent legitimization is no longer available. The discussion partners are (first) Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jacques Lacan.

Enjoying the Law. On a possible conflict between Kant's views on obedience and enjoyment

Abstract This paper takes on the broad theme of the relation between legality and morality in Immanuel Kants practical philosophy. It aims, more specifically, at a clarification of Kants views on obedience and enjoyment. I claim that Kants statements in his later writings, especially in the Metaphysics of Morals, of the obligation of citizens of a state to subject themselves unconditionally to the sovereign in power, must be seen in connection with his earlier moral writings in order to maintain a proper Kantian conception of the relation between legality and morality. To this end, Kants use of the concept of enjoyment is instructive, and looking at it closely makes it possible to spell out why obedience in itself does not suffice for a moral existence. Subjecting ourselves to the prescriptions of positive law might actually function as a way of escaping the insatiable demands of the moral law. In this case, the positive law not only sustains our enjoyment (by securing basic liberties), but also comes to function as an object of enjoyment itself.

Alenka Zupančič: The Shortest Shadow – Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England, 2003. 193 pages. (Second volume in the “Short Circuits” series)

A subversive reading of a philosophical text might have highly valuable theoretical implications. By not getting or not accepting (the received conception of) the author’s “point”, but rather taking the text as a point of departure for new ways of seeing a problematic, you may be lead into unheard of strains of thought that open a fi eld of new connections of ideas. You might even stumble upon something, which the text unknowingly already says. Such an awareness of the innovative potential in a “short circuiting” approach to the history of philosophy is the background of the MIT Press series appropriately named “Short Circuits”, of which Alenka Zupančič’ book The Shortest Shadow – Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two is the second. The series aims at a critical reading of philosophical texts and concepts “through the lens of a “minor” author, text, or conceptual apparatus”, as Slavoj Žižek says in the series foreword. “Minor” is to be understood here simply as something hitherto unconnected with the text or notion at hand – like when Karl Marx short circuited philosophical speculation by reading it through the lens of political economy, or when Freud and Nietzsche short circuited the highest ethical notions by reading them through the lens of the unconscious libidinal economy. Obviously, though, there must be good subversive readings and bad subversive readings. Good ones, as it were, must be conveying something in the text itself, i.e. they must in a certain sense display what we didn’t know was already there. A new approach must be a reenchantment of the text, if you will, a way of seeing it that makes us think and acknowledge something which we didn’t know we already knew. A bad subversive reading might, on the other hand, also be termed a misreading in that it simply dismisses or fails to acknowledge the potential for thought in the text. A perfect example of the latter can be found in Steven Michels’ review of The Shortest Shadow.1 Michels concludes a long list of disagreements with Zupančič by complaining that “[a]t no point does she explain the particulars of her short circuit. What two elements of Nietzsche has she crossed?” This misreading of Zupančič doesn’t get the point at a level so fundamental that it merely hinders a fruitful encounter. The whole enterprise in Zupančič’ book is to short circuit Nietzsche’s c c