Adrian Johnston

This chapter explores the relationship between the unthinkable and the un-representable in Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), through an engagement with Catherine Malabou’s dialogue with psychoanalysis in The New Wounded. There, Malabou identifies what she sees as new forms of post-traumatic subjectivity that necessitate “the complete theoretical reinvention of psychopathology”. My approach will come from an avowedly Lacanian orientation, but I will be considering what sort of questions Malabou’s concept of “destructive plasticity” poses for psychoanalysis – and for psychoanalytic approaches to trauma – and wondering whether Žižek’s riposte to Malabou – for example – in Living in the End Times is sufficient to meet her challenge. My approach will also be that of a film theorist, and in this chapter I will be seeking to ask what contribution the cinema can make to this dialogue on “cerebrality” and “plasticity”, and – equally – how this dialogue might help us to approach the depiction of trauma in Haneke’s film. Could Amour constitute a fictionalised, cinematic version of what Malabou (after Luria) refers to as a “neurological novel”, where “Anne is no longer Anne”? After all, Malabou herself refers to literature and theatre in her work, so – I will suggest – why not the cinema? As she says, “narrative work is a clinical gesture”, and so this chapter will explore the possibility – through Amour – that the cinema could stage for the psyche knowledge of a trauma that the psyche itself cannot know. By focusing on Anne, I will attempt to explore the subjectivity of the new wounded and approach, from a Lacanian perspective, the post-traumatic subject’s experience of, for example, inhabiting the same body but in a radically different way.

Scientific advances made in the 21st century contend that the forces of nature and nurture work together through an ongoing series of complex correspondences between brain and mental activity in our daily activities with others. Jung's cosmological model of the psyche minimizes the fundamental corporeal condition of human nature and as such is critiqued and amended, influenced by the transcendental materialist theories of subjectivity inspired by Žižek, Johnston and Laplanche.

Review of Adrian Johnston, Prolegomena to Any Future
Materialism. Vol. I. The Outcome
of Contemporary French Philosophy
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013, 257pp.,
ISBN 978-0810129122
Adrian Johnston, Adventures in
Transcendental Materialism. Dialogues with
Contemporary Thinkers
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 376pp.,
ISBN 978-0748673285

In the context of a pluralist critique of linguistic idealism and of social constructivism I consider Adrian Johnston’s transcendental research programme and compare it to a generic scientistic materialist paradigm. I conclude that pluralism should encourage speculation that is in close relation to the sciences without being reducible to them, but that eliminativism as long as it denies its own status as metaphysical speculation degenerates into a new form of scientistic dogma.

This paper wishes to follow the injunction given to us from Badiou that philosophy shouldn't dictate the progress in various fields that it's coupled with (science, politics, etc.), and that it should instead be receptive to the 'Events' in these fields. This paper wishes to take the field of science called 'Complexity Science', specifically the idea of 'Emergentism' in it, as an Event that philosophy should be receptive to. In exploring this relatively new field, this paper wishes to draw the properly radical metaphysical conclusions that crop up from such an investigation. Thus this paper's goal is two-fold: it wishes to explore Emergentism as an important new topic for philosophy, and it wishes to explore the new avenues of thought that this science opens up.

Scientific advances made in the 21st century contend that the forces of nature and nurture work together through an ongoing series of complex correspondences between brain and mental activity in our daily activities with others. Jung's cosmological model of the psyche minimizes the fundamental corporeal condition of human nature and as such is critiqued and amended, influenced by the transcendental materialist theories of subjectivity inspired by Žižek, Johnston and Laplanche.

Francesco Berto, Félix Duque, Adrian Johnston, François Laruelle, Claude Romano, and Alenka Zupančič.

Our school valorises the unavoidable pursuit of ontology, foregrounding the debate on this classical philosophical question. We do not intend to endorse one particular approach to ontology; on the contrary we have attempted to gather what we consider to be the most interesting philosophical perspectives of our time. The 2016 edition will offer a cutting edge, high-quality programme, thanks to the participation of some of the leading contemporary philosophers: Francesco Berto, Félix Duque, Adrian Jonhston, François Laruelle, Claude Romano, and Alenka Zupančič.

The summer school in ontology (formerly ISSO) was inaugurated in 2015 and hosted key figures of contemporary philosophy, such as Giorgio Agamben, Ray Brassier, Paul Livingston, and Davide Tarizzo.

Abstract
This paper draws together a complex assemblage of analysis, critique, and exemplification in its attempt to provide cogent argumentation for its claim that the notion of subjectivity, as championed by Kierkegaard, is immanent to the Hegelian system despite Kierkegaard's express claims otherwise. By simultaneously resisting and insisting on the schismatic differences between Hegel and Kierkegaard, this paper endeavors to illustrate what I allege to be a definite homology between Hegel's absolute Idea and Kierkegaard's concept of essential knowing, which together posit a subjectivity that is defined by the inherent tension of contradiction, and which makes up a particular "materialism" that inheres at the core of a disjunctive absolutism; the truth of which is the subject as such. The emergence of this consideration is to be located in a critico-theoretical conjunction of my own mustering, involving but not limited to Adrian Johnston's transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity, Kant's Thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), and the radical heterodoxy of Slavoj Žižek's dialectical-materialist hermeneutics of Hegelian philosophy. In fine, the aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to provide an (exegetical) account of Hegel's absolute Idea à la Žižek's newly minted dialectical materialism, and (2) to thereby put forward a "neo-Hegelian" reading of Kierkegaard's concept of essential knowing; a reading, I hope, that will pair nicely Kierkegaard's concept of essential knowing with Hegel's absolute Idea—insofar as the very subjectivity that Kierkegaard claims to be lacking in the Hegelian system is nonetheless central to it.

This paper wishes to follow the injunction given to us from Badiou that philosophy shouldn't dictate the progress in various fields that it's coupled with (science, politics, etc.), and that it should instead be receptive to the 'Events' in these fields. This paper wishes to take the field of science called 'Complexity Science', specifically the idea of 'Emergentism' in it, as an Event that philosophy should be receptive to. In exploring this relatively new field, this paper wishes to draw the properly radical metaphysical conclusions that crop up from such an investigation. Thus this paper's goal is two-fold: it wishes to explore Emergentism as an important new topic for philosophy, and it wishes to explore the new avenues of thought that this science opens up. Philosophy isn't a lapdog to the sciences, though it does dwell in its shadow. Philosophy's purpose isn't to clarify the workings of science, or to cloak philosophical debates in the language of science, but is instead to look at advances in science and then see how they force us to rethink our philosophical assumptions and arguments. In this way, science is Evental (as Badiou would say) 1 , and philosophy proper should act with fidelity towards these Events. This holds true for metaphysics especially, despite the strange conclusions that may be reached with such a fidelity. This paper plans to take up this insight by examining how advances in what's been called "Complexity Science" force us to reexamine our metaphysical assumptions, specifically due to "Emergence". Though metaphysics hasn't been deaf to these advancements -much literature has been written about complexity science and metaphysics, however opaquely it was done -I don't believe it has drawn the properly radical conclusions from it, as this paper intends to do. Though I will mostly be focused on ontology in this paper, I will also briefly discuss problems for mereology, free will, and the status of scientific laws.

The relationship between psychoanalysis and the natural sciences has been difficult over the years. Attempts to marry the two, from Freud's infamous 1985 Project for a Scientific Psychology, through Wilhelm Reich's bio-spiritualism, to Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari's libidinal anarchism, have failed again and again — a symptom perhaps of attempting to close a gap that Freud himself warned against prematurely bridging. Today, from the perspective of the life sciences, it appears that recent developments in our disciplines have finally rendered obsolete Freud's pragmatic separation. But this comes with an important caveat: a relationship may not be on the cards either.

A loose, sketchy discussion, continuing on some of my work on Johnston and Zizek. Defending what I think Badiou's position entails. A speculative paper. Given in Baltimore at the wonderful Transcendental Materialism conference at Loyola, organized by Michael Burns, in 2015. Slightly revised.

Para compreender as apostas do “materialismo transcendental”, projeto filosófico de Adrian Johnston, devemos, antes de mais nada, ser capazes de captar a inflexão singular de seu hegelianismo. Para isso, é preciso dividir a elaboração do materialismo transcendental de Johnston em duas fases subsequentes.