The Challenge of the Subject in the Face of the Real

Rita Šerpytytė

doi:10.13135/2704-8195/9222

Rita Šerpytytė Vilnius University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4818-1192

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13135/2704-8195/9222

Keywords: Subject, Transcendental, Transformation, Reality, Experience, Privativity

Abstract

In one of her recent interviews, Catherine Malabou pointed out a problem which I deem to be pivotal in considering the question of the real with all its implications: speculative realists are indifferent to the subject. In this paper, I will present my position that in contemporary philosophy it is precisely the problem of the subject that becomes an actual challenge when raising the question “What kind of reality are we talking about?”; “What is real?” In light of treating the problem of the subject as a theoretical challenge in regard to the question of reality, two positions, that of Catherine Malabou (The New Wounded, Before Tomorrow) and Giorgio Agamben (Infanzia e storia), will be analysed and attempted to be compared. I will endeavour to discuss the problem how is the notion of the subject, the question of its identities, its transformations, being human-non-human, correlated to the question of reality.

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Author Biography

Rita Šerpytytė, Vilnius University

Rita Šerpytytė is full professor of philosophy and Chair of the Department for Continental Philosophy and Religious Studies at Vilnius University (Lithuania). Her research involves Heidegger’s philosophy, Hegel’s philosophy, postmodern philosophy, contemporary Italian philosophy (especially Gianni Vattimo, Giorgio Agamben, and others), speculative and new realisms, and the problem of nihilism and negativity in Western philosophy. She was a visiting fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy) in 1993 and 1996; a visiting researcher at the Center for Religious Studies in Trent (Italy) in 2004; and a visiting professor at Turin University (Italy) in 2020. She has lectured at various universities in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, USA, and has been an invited lecturer at international conferences at various universities in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany. Some select monographs of hers in Lithuanian include Nihilism and Western Philosophy (2007); Secularization and the Culture of the Present (ed )(2013); Transformations of Ontology: Media, Nihilism, Ethics (2015; co-ed. with D. Bacevičiūtė and Tomas Sodeika); and Spectres of Reality: Western Nihilism between Diagnosis and Theory (2019). Prof. Rita Šerpytytė was awarded the 2022 Lithuanian Science Prize (one of the most important annual scientific awards in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences in Lithuania).

References

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Foucault, Michel. 2006. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France. 1981-1982. Tr. Engl. Graham Burchell. New York: Picador.

Freud, Sigmund. 1961. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Tr. Engl. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press.

Malabou, Catherine. 1912. Ontology of the Accident. Tr. Engl. Carolin Shread. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Malabou, Catherine. 2012. The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage. Tr. Engl. Steven Miller. New York: Fordham University Press.

Malabou, Catherine. 2014. Before Tomorrow. Epigenesis and Rationality. Tr. Engl. Carolyn Shrad. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Šerpytytė, Rita. 2021. “Ten, kur nėra formos, yra norma. Catherine Malabou kalbina Kristupas Sabolius” in Apie tikrovę, Sabolius Kristupas, edited by, 206-222. Vilnius: Lapas.