2022, mainly by Hagi Kenaan
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2021
In "Todtnauberg," the poem in which Paul Celan responded to his encounter with Martin Heidegger, ... more In "Todtnauberg," the poem in which Paul Celan responded to his encounter with Martin Heidegger, the concept of hope becomes central. The paper focuses on the ways in which hope figures in between the poet and the philosopher, showing that their different understanding of the value of hope is indicative of a much deeper disagreement that calls for an investigation. This investigation is neither analytic nor purely conceptual, but requires us to develop a new way of listening to hope's resonance, one that uncovers the presence of a chasm cutting through the space of language in which this mood becomes meaningful for the poet and the philosopher.
Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 2022
J orge Luis Borges begins his story "Delia Elena San Marco" by relating a memory, the memory of s... more J orge Luis Borges begins his story "Delia Elena San Marco" by relating a memory, the memory of saying goodbye to Delia. We said goodbye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once. From the sidewalk on the other side of the street I turned and looked back; you had turned, and you waved goodbye. A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o'clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that that river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice? Then we lost sight of each other, and a year later you were dead. 1
Books by Hagi Kenaan
Photography and Its Shadow, 2020
In the heated debates over the significance and value of photography that swirled around the medi... more In the heated debates over the significance and value of photography that swirled around the medium in the first few decades after its invention, it was already clear
to both enthusiasts and detractors that the new image-making process was poised to radically alter human experience. Today, a hundred and eighty years after its inception, photography has established itself as the regulating standard for seeing and picturing, remembering and imagining, and, significantly, for mediating relations between ourselves and others. It is now so intimately intertwined within our ordinary routines that we cannot begin to imagine our everyday lives without it. Photography has become an intrinsic condition of the human, a condition that—with Heidegger in mind—may be termed “an Existential.” And yet, photography’s rootedness in the ordinary is so deep that its existential dimension also typically hides from us, challenging us to find a vantage point as well as a philosophical language for describing its pervasive presence.
The book thus lays the groundwork for a philosophical interpretation of the changing condition of photography in the twenty-first century. It should be understood as a prolegomenon—not the kind of wide-ranging Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics we know from Kant and the history of philosophy, but one that is more narrowly construed, concentrating on a specific metaphysical problem: an introduction to a future metaphysics of the image or to a future ontology of the visual. The term “future” applies here, as it does in Kant, to invite further
elaborations of a preliminary ontological framework; but, in contrast to Kant, it also serves to acknowledge and address the ever-changing character of the phenomenon
under investigation and, specifically, the fact that as the visual changes, it generates new possibilities for the future of the image. Photography, as Hans Belting reminds us, constitutes only “a short episode in the old history of representation.” The hegemony of the photographic is a short, and likely, a passing chapter in our relationship with
images. Yet, as it is caught between “today and tomorrow,” photography also provides an opportune framework for rethinking the condition of the visual image in its movement toward the future, a future for which we are responsible, since its trajectory is determined by our present age.
Evental Aesthetics, 2021
In this wide-ranging interview, Hagi Kenaan and Assaf Evron reflect on the potential of photograp... more In this wide-ranging interview, Hagi Kenaan and Assaf Evron reflect on the potential of photography to intervene in times of crisis such as the current global pandemic. This is done in light of Kenaan's new book Photography and Its Shadow, which points to the marked rupture in our relationship with the world that photography provoked and which explains how this initial rupture is crucial for understanding our contemporary visuality. The disappearance of the shadow in photography is indicative, the book argues, of an irreversible change in our relationship to nature, to the real, and to time and death.
Hagi Kenaan. Photography and Its Shadow, Stanford University Press, March 2020, 248 pp. Hardcover ISBn: 9781503606364, paperback ISBn: 9781503611375.
«Le mot hébreu pour «visage» est une forme plurielle: Panim. C’est dire comme le visage est à la ... more «Le mot hébreu pour «visage» est une forme plurielle: Panim. C’est dire comme le visage est à la fois ce qui regarde et ce qui est regardé ; c’est dire à quel point on (re)connaît l’Autre dans le visage que l’on voit, dans celui qui nous regarde, dans cet entre-regards qui fait la relation humaine. C’est pourquoi le visage ne se laisse jamais regarder comme une image, et c’est peut-être le sens de la formule énigmatique de Levinas, «l’éthique est une optique», qui revient à plusieurs reprises dans ses écrits. Dans un monde saturé d’images et de visages désincarnés (publicité, écrans, foule), que reste-t-il de notre responsabilité quand il s’agit de voir? Notre regard porte-t-il encore en puissance la dimension éthique que lui accordait Levinas? «Il n’y a pas si longtemps, il est arrivé quelque chose à notre regard. L’expérience de la vision a changé. Le champ visuel a subi une transformation radicale. Les images sont pourtant plus nettes que jamais. Le niveau des pixels ne cesse d’augmenter. Mais cette acuité dissimule le fait que le sens de la vue n’a plus de sens, que l’œil est cliniquement mort. » C’est à partir de ce constat qu’Hagi Kenaan propose une autre éthique du regard après Levinas.
The Present Personal is a book of our time. Written in Israel, The Present Personal begins with a... more The Present Personal is a book of our time. Written in Israel, The Present Personal begins with an honest confession: “Living in Tel Aviv, in Israel, it has been impossible to alleviate the darkness of this period, one during which violence, hatred, intense human suffering together with the growing indifference toward the suffering of others has become the form of daily life” (Kenaan, 2004, p. iii). Despite the darkening situation that “threatens to leave the engagement with humanistic work bereft of any genuine value”, The Present Personal makes a philosophical attempt to capture the personal at the very heart of the structural at a time when the singular seems either to have disappeared into the propositional, or to have taken flight into a more radical non-propositional it.
Edited Books by Hagi Kenaan
Springer, Contributions to Phenomenology, 2011
Phenomenology and Post-Phenomenology by Hagi Kenaan
The article examines Levinas’s evolving relationship with Husserl. It
shows how the critical dial... more The article examines Levinas’s evolving relationship with Husserl. It
shows how the critical dialogue with Husserl and, specifically, the
transfiguration of Husserl’s key notion of “intentionality,” grounds
the maturation of Levinas’s ethical thinking. It does so by unpacking
the manner in which the Levinasian critique of Husserl is tied to a
concept of “debt” through which Levinas understands his long-lasting
relationship with the founder of phenomenology.
This paper is concerned with the implications of H usserl's phenomenological reformulation of the... more This paper is concerned with the implications of H usserl's phenomenological reformulation of the problem of error. Following H usserl, I argue that the phenomenon of error should not be understood as the accidental failure of a fully constituted cogito, but that it is itself constitutive of the cogito's formation. I thus show that the phenomenon of error plays a crucial role in our self-understanding as uni ed subjects of experience.
Philosophia, vol. 45, Springer , 2017
We are all familiar with the fact that moods change. But, what is the significance of this famili... more We are all familiar with the fact that moods change. But, what is the significance of this familiar fact? Is change merely a factual characteristic of moods or can it also offer us a lens for gaining a deeper understanding of mood's essence?. The essay's starting point is Heidegger's treatment of moods and their manner of changing. Heidegger, I show, is interested in our ordinary shifts in mood as indicators of a fundamental existential structure that underlies the specificity of any particular mood. Yet, is the changing of moods only a means to reveal the inherent depth-the always already-of our givenness to moods, or is it a dimension significant onto itself? Moving beyond Heidegger, I thus explain why change should be understood as the grounding condition of our being-in-a mood, and consequently, what it means to embrace the relationality and intrinsic plurality-the being singular-plural-of a subjectivity of changing moods. In doing so, I am concerned with the implications that such an analysis carries for the ethical question regarding the freedom and responsibility we have in and over our moods.
Theory and Criticism, 2012
Philosophy of Photography by Hagi Kenaan
Critical Inquiry, The University of Chicago Press, 2015
Uploads
2022, mainly by Hagi Kenaan
Books by Hagi Kenaan
to both enthusiasts and detractors that the new image-making process was poised to radically alter human experience. Today, a hundred and eighty years after its inception, photography has established itself as the regulating standard for seeing and picturing, remembering and imagining, and, significantly, for mediating relations between ourselves and others. It is now so intimately intertwined within our ordinary routines that we cannot begin to imagine our everyday lives without it. Photography has become an intrinsic condition of the human, a condition that—with Heidegger in mind—may be termed “an Existential.” And yet, photography’s rootedness in the ordinary is so deep that its existential dimension also typically hides from us, challenging us to find a vantage point as well as a philosophical language for describing its pervasive presence.
The book thus lays the groundwork for a philosophical interpretation of the changing condition of photography in the twenty-first century. It should be understood as a prolegomenon—not the kind of wide-ranging Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics we know from Kant and the history of philosophy, but one that is more narrowly construed, concentrating on a specific metaphysical problem: an introduction to a future metaphysics of the image or to a future ontology of the visual. The term “future” applies here, as it does in Kant, to invite further
elaborations of a preliminary ontological framework; but, in contrast to Kant, it also serves to acknowledge and address the ever-changing character of the phenomenon
under investigation and, specifically, the fact that as the visual changes, it generates new possibilities for the future of the image. Photography, as Hans Belting reminds us, constitutes only “a short episode in the old history of representation.” The hegemony of the photographic is a short, and likely, a passing chapter in our relationship with
images. Yet, as it is caught between “today and tomorrow,” photography also provides an opportune framework for rethinking the condition of the visual image in its movement toward the future, a future for which we are responsible, since its trajectory is determined by our present age.
Hagi Kenaan. Photography and Its Shadow, Stanford University Press, March 2020, 248 pp. Hardcover ISBn: 9781503606364, paperback ISBn: 9781503611375.
Edited Books by Hagi Kenaan
Phenomenology and Post-Phenomenology by Hagi Kenaan
shows how the critical dialogue with Husserl and, specifically, the
transfiguration of Husserl’s key notion of “intentionality,” grounds
the maturation of Levinas’s ethical thinking. It does so by unpacking
the manner in which the Levinasian critique of Husserl is tied to a
concept of “debt” through which Levinas understands his long-lasting
relationship with the founder of phenomenology.
Philosophy of Photography by Hagi Kenaan