The philosophy of “presence” seeks to challenge current understandings of meaning and understanding. One can trace its origins back to Vico, Dilthey, and Heidegger, though its more immediate exponents include Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and such contemporary philosophers of history as Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia. The theoretical paradigm of presence conveys how the past is literally with us in the present in significant and material ways: Things we cannot touch nonetheless touch us. This makes (...) class='Hi'>presence a post-linguistic or post-discursive theory that challenges current understandings of “meaning” and “interpretation.” Presence provides an overview of the concept and surveys both its weaknesses and its possible uses. In this book, Ethan Kleinberg and Ranjan Ghosh bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectives—history, sociology, literature, cultural theory, media studies, photography, memory, and political theory. The book features critical engagements with the presence paradigm within intellectual history, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. In three original case studies, presence illuminates the relationships among photography, the past, memory, and the Other. What these diverse but overlapping essays have in common is a shared commitment to investigate the attempt to reconnect meaning with something “real” and to push the paradigm of presence beyond its current uses. The volume is thus an important intervention in the most fundamental debates within the humanities today. Contributors: Bill Ashcroft, University of New South Wales; Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley; Susan A. Crane, University of Arizona; Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal; Suman Gupta, Open University Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University; John Michael, University of Rochester; Vincent P. Pecora, University of Utah; Roger I. Simon. (shrink)

Are any nonhuman animals conscious? Why, if at all, should we strive to conserve natural environments? In what sense are we parts of nature? In this book, Simon James draws on a range of philosophical and literary sources to develop original answers to these and other questions, setting out a refreshingly new approach to environmental philosophy"--Provided by publisher.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the presence of psychoanalysis in Adorno’s ’Philosophy of the new music’. He draws on the Benjaminian scheme of understanding Baudelaire’s poetry (understood as an elaboration of the shock experiences in life in post-industrial Revolution capitalism), but uses it in music criticism. The works of Schönberg and Stravinsky, the mostimportant composers of two schools of the so-called “new or modern music”, deals with different compositional subjects and their ways of dealing with (...) the shocks of modern life. Both Benjamin and Adorno draw on Freudian theory for the understanding of this notion of shock, in particular his theory of anxiety and trauma. The works of these composers, understood as models of trauma elaboration, offer different ways of reacting to trauma: the identification with the aggressor and resistance. Therein lie elements that help to defend the hypothesis of the centrality of the notion of suffering in Adorno’swork. (shrink)

This communication wants to deal with the relations between the Philosophy of Plato and the cult of Dionysus in Ancient Greece. This makes necessary to distinguish the cult of Dionysus with its feasts and secret rituals, especially the maenadic rites of women, from orphism. The Maenads practiced rites closely associated with mania and those rites included bloody sacrifice (sparagmos) and the consommation of raw flesh (omophagy). As we assumed in our book“Dionysos em transe: la voix des femmes”, this cult (...) was an iniciatic feminine rite, connected to biological transformations particular to women, as pregnance and birth. At the other side, orphism is an asceptic and vegetarian sect, which clearly influenced some platonic theories, as exposed in Cratyle or Gorgias, concerning “the body as the tomb of the soul”. What we want to show here is the dionysiac character of some other theories, as those about the mania in Phaedrus or even the so called “platonic theory of Love” in the Symposium. We are dealing than with the definition of Philosophy itself in platonic dialogs: is Philosophy a study about death as orphic influence demands or is it a work of birth, as dionysiac influence suggests? (shrink)

CHAPTER I THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUSSERL'S 'PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC'. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: WEIERSTRASS AND THE ARITHMETIZATION OF ANALYSIS In ...

The paper introduces a new model of telepresence. First, it criticises the standard model of presence as epistemic failure, showing it to be inadequate. It then replaces it with a new model of presence as successful observability. It further provides reasons to distinguish between two types of presence, backward and forward. The new model is then tested against two ethical issues whose nature has been modified by the development of digital information and communication technologies, namely pornography and (...) privacy, and shown to be effective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 63-82 [Access article in PDF] Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther's Defense of the Real Presence Thomas Osborne Recent scholarship has brought into question the traditional interpretation of Luther as being hostile towards philosophy. 1 Graham White claims that Luther holds a place in the history of logic as a member of the Nominalist tradition. 2 (...) Bruce D. Marshall argues that Luther and Thomas Aquinas fundamentally agree on the relationship between faith and reason. 3 Both scholars recognize that Luther himself stressed the importance of logic and used late medieval philosophical techniques. Although I agree with this scholarship that Luther's thought must not be understood in isolation from late medieval thought, I will argue that Luther uses philosophical ideas in a way which conflicts with that of the scholastic tradition. The focus here is on Luther's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason in the context of Luther's controversy over the Eucharist with the Swiss sacramentarians, among whom Zwingli and Oecolampadius were the most prominent. 4 Although Luther uses philosophical [End Page 63] distinctions to argue against what he thinks are misinterpretations of the Bible, he does not in any explicit and systematic way use philosophy to arrive at a theological understanding of the Eucharist. Luther differs from his scholastic predecessors in that he uses philosophy not to develop theological conclusions but only to attack errors about the Bible, and so the concern here is with Luther's use of Nominalist doctrines about presence in his attack on the sacra-mentarians' belief that Christ cannot be present both at the right hand of God and in the Eucharist at the same time.In his discussion of the Eucharistic doctrine which is presented in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Luther not only argues against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice but also against transubstantiation. 5 Luther explicitly states that he was influenced on this issue by Peter D'Ailly, a Nominalist follower of William of Ockham. D'Ailly and other Nominalists thought that transubstantiation was not the only possible way that Christ could be present in the Eucharist, since if God wished he could also make Christ present along with the substance of the bread and wine. 6 From a Nominalist [End Page 64] perspective transubstantiation requires two actions of God, namely, the annihilation of the substance of the bread and the placement of Christ's body under the species. Therefore, consubstantiation would be a simpler account of Christ's Eucharistic presence. If Christ's body were present along with the substance of the bread annihilation would not have to occur. But D'Ailly and the Nominalists argue that we know from Church authority that the real presence occurs through transubstantiation. On this issue the Nominalists differ from Thomas Aquinas, who gives philosophically-based arguments against consubstantiation. 7 When Luther attacks Thomas, he attacks not so much the use of philosophy in theology as Thomas's philosophy: "But this opinion of Thomas hangs so completely in the air without support of Scripture or reason that it seems to me he knows neither his philosophy nor his dialectic." 8Since the Nominalist belief in transubstantiation rather than consubstantiation rests on an acceptance of Church authority, the rejection of such authority would seem to lead to a rejection of transubstantiation. If Luther had assented to traditional Nominalist theology with the sole exception of its reliance on Church authority, one would expect him to argue for the necessity of consubstantiation. However, Luther sees himself as rejecting an unnecessarily philosophical theology in a return to a more biblical faith. 9 Luther claims that he argues for a particular understanding of the Eucharistic presence but rather "that every one may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation." 10 Although Luther's training in Nominalist theology leads him to think that consubstantiation is possible, he at no point argues that a belief... (shrink)

This paper considers whether, and if so how, the modelling of joint action in social philosophy – principally in the work of Margaret Gilbert and Michael Bratman – might assist in understanding and applying the concept of concerted practices in European competition law. More specifically, the paper focuses on a well-known difficulty in the application of that concept, namely, distinguishing between concerted practice and rational or intelligent adaptation in oligopolistic markets. The paper argues that although Bratman's model of joint (...) action is more psychologically plausible and phenomenologically resonant, its less demanding character also makes it less useful than Gilbert's in our understanding of the legal concept of concerted practice and in dealing with the above difficulty. The paper proceeds in two parts: first, a discussion of the concept of concerted practices in European competition law; and second, a discussion of Gilbert and' Bratman's models of joint action, including a comparative assessment of their ability to provide an evidentiary target and an evidentiary platform for conceited practices. (shrink)

This is a book review so there is no abstract!

Taking its cue from contemporary western debates on presence in the social sciences and the humanities, this volume focuses on "presence" both as everyday experience and as an experience of intense moments. It raises questions about diverse social configurations of presence as well as about the specific cultural repertoires which encode, articulate, and shape discourses of presence. The contributions take as a premise that phenomena of presence are connected to particular forms of knowledge. Especially tacit (...) knowledge (pre)determines experiences of individual and collective presence and becomes tangible in moments of presence or presentification. (shrink)

Husserl describes arithmetic as a branch of formal ontology. It is an ontology because its goal is to lay out the essential truths about a region of objects, and it is formal because the determinate region of number deals with a characteristic of every possible object. The mathematical experience proper requires something more than the constitution of "concrete numbers" in acts of collecting and counting, for its objects are "ideal numbers" that emerge from eidetic variation over corresponding concrete numbers. With (...) remarkable clarity, Miller coordinates Husserl's various writings on the nature of number by stressing the key theme of identity in presence and absence. Concrete numbers are "determinate multitudes" which are not presented in sensuous intuition, but rather in sensuously founded categorial operations, i.e., explication, in which the parts of an indiscriminately given whole are explicitly articulated as parts, and comparison, in which the multitude generated through such explication is explicitly related to other multitudes. These operations account for the original presence of number. But we can intend numbers in their absence as well as in their presence. For example we may intend a determinate multitude in the absence of the sensuous group in question, or we may experience a different mode of absence when an intended number is frustrated by subsequent intuitive registration, or we may deploy the distinctive absence generated by signs in the process of calculating without authentic articulation of the relevant determinate multitudes. The presence of ideal numbers requires the free play of fantasy, for we must imagine collections of items and also imagine ourselves counting the items in order to disengage their purely formal character. We must discern an identical presence of "four" in a cluster of persons, a collection of apples, and even in some arbitrarily contrived group such as a "feeling, an angel, the moon, Italy." The absence of generic community in the latter example helps us to appreciate what Husserl means by the purely formal nature of arithmetic. Formal ontology is not restricted in scope to some particular region, but is concerned with properties that belong to every possible object precisely as such. Thus, whereas Euclidean geometry is a regional ontology, set-theory and number-theory must be considered as branches of formal ontology, for the basic concepts of these disciplines are strictly formal. Anything that can be thought of can be counted. (shrink)

Chiefly on Desire and liberation by Vaddera Chandidas, b. 1938.

This article introduces a semiotic methodology that can be applied in Comparative Philosophy as an alternative to still dominating content-based methods. Isuggest distinguishing between three semiotic structures that operate on the basis of different relations between the signifier and the signified. These are the structures of “presence”, “representation”, and “significance”. I argue that ancient Chinese philosophy tends to employ the first structure whereas traditional Western philosophy tends toward the second. Postmodern philosophy, however, gives preference to (...) the third one. In accordance with these different semiotic structures, culturally and historically different conceptions of nature and culture have emerged. (shrink)

The debate over the possibility of Christian philosophy remains largely intractable because of the modern assumption of a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology. The metaphysical basis of this assumption is an understanding of the world's relationship to God that emphasizes efficient causality and thus introduces a hiatus between the world and God. This contrastive understanding of transcendence parallels insistence on the disciplinary distinction between philosophy and theology. ;St. Gregory Palamas , in his two major works, the (...) Triads and One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, articulates a metaphysics according to which all beings participate in God as their formal principle. This metaphysics maintains God's transcendence in a non-contrastive manner such that it coincides with divine immanence. The possibility to be explored is whether this metaphysics may support an alternative approach to the Christian philosophy debate. ;In Chapter One I argue that the prevailing, anti-philosophical reading of Palamas is misled by his rhetoric and therefore fails to recognize that the target of his criticism is not philosophy in general, but a nascent Byzantine modernism. Chapter Two details the nature of this target as presented by Palamas's main opponent, Barlaam of Calabria. In Chapter Three I examine the metaphysics of participation, which presents the coincidence of transcendence and immanence that is the basis both of Palamas's well-known distinction between God's ousia and activities and of Palamas's radical Dionysian apophaticism. ;In Chapter Four I develop the implication of this metaphysics: the world is radically and thoroughly theophanic or symbolic. The proper comportment of one's soul before such a reality must be contemplative. Therefore, I argue in Chapter Five, the soul must be transformed by the spiritual exercises that constitute philosophy as such a way of life. For Palamas, philosophy is intrinsically constituted by the soul's eros for God. In Chapter Six I argue that once philosophy is understood in this way, the assumed disciplinary distinction between philosophy and theology disappears. Palamas's antimodern stance, then, undermines the modern presuppositions of the Christian philosophy debate and thus may provide an alternative solution. (shrink)

My fundamental purpose (1937)--Metaphysical journal (1938-43)--Presence and immortality (1951)--The unfathomable, an unfinished play (March 1919).

This book treats the presence of God and the presence of persons. The experience of the presence of God is a well-recognized religious experience in theistic traditions. The experience of the presence of persons, this book argues, is an analogous moral experience. As it is possible for individuals to come into the presence of God – to have this phenomenal experience – so it is possible for them to come into the presence of persons. (...) Kellenberger explores how coming into the presence of persons is structurally analogous with coming into the presence of God. Providing a highly focused analysis of the two seemingly distinct concepts, normally thought to fall under different subfields of philosophy, the chapters carefully draw paralells between them. Kellenberger then goes on show how, analogous to “the death of God,” a loss of the consciousness of the reality of God and his presence, is a “death of persons”, felt as a loss of the sense of the inherent worth of persons and their presence. This volume finishes with an examination of the concrete moral and religio-ethical implications of coming into the presence of persons, and in particular the implications of coming into the presence of all persons. (shrink)

As with a previous colloquium at Moscow in 2004, when my topic was literature in the Federal Republic of Germany during the post-World War II decades, I want to speak about tensions between war and postwar generations in Russia and in Germany, and my perspective will again be largely autobiographical. Of course this convergence (bordering on repetition) is not random. For I believe that remarkably complex affinities exist between Germany after the twelve-year-short nightmare of National Socialism and Russia after the (...) long stagnation of the Soviet Union. In both cases, a national collapse made cultural circles and newly elected governments…. (shrink)

The presence of parents or other guardians (commonly termed ‘supervision’) and parental knowledge are factors that are both robustly negatively associated with a range of anti-social and risky behavioural outcomes such as adolescent crime. However, parental presence/supervision and parental knowledge are both (i) regularly used inaccurately as proxies for parental monitoring, (ii) poorly defined and operationalised, and (iii) rarely linked to negative behavioural outcomes with plausible mechanisms that adequately explain their association. These problematic aspects of the parental monitoring (...) literature are a barrier to research into adolescent outcomes and the varied role of parents. This theoretical paper facilitates solutions these problems by clarifying the concepts of parental presence, supervision and knowledge. This discussion delineates presence from supervision and knowledge from monitoring. It specifies how presence and knowledge are not parenting actions, and neither constitute parental monitoring. These concepts are clarified within the parameters of a recent framework of goal-directed parental action and parental monitoring. Doing so constitutes under-labouring that facilitates future discovery of their distinct and yet inter-related mechanisms of influence on adolescent action and development. These structured conceptual developments are also of benefit for our better future understanding of parenting and parental monitoring by providing a framework within which to re-situate existing empirical research findings. (shrink)

This volume explores the relevance of classical texts and thought-systems alongside contemporary philosophical consciousness. It also evaluates the absences in contemporary thought patterns and the new epistemes relevant to the Indian subcontinent. The book discusses the present lack of original philosophical discourse in the context of South Asia, especially India. Raghuramaraju investigates the reasons for the decline of traditional philosophical schools and Sanskritic studies in the subcontinent.

Plutôt malvenus que bienvenus, les étrangers dont la présence est illégale sur le territoire sont soumis à des injonctions contradictoires, comme celles d’être invisibles et de vivre depuis plusieurs années sur le territoire pour prétendre à un titre de séjour, ou comme celle d’avoir des bulletins de salaire, bien que non autorisés à travailler. Loin de l’aura, du punctum de l’indice, comme certains l’ont définie, la présence – quand elle est étrangère – est assujettie à de tels barèmes et justificatifs (...) qu’elle est vécue comme une peine. (shrink)

Presence: The Key to Mental Excellence is a compilation of author's original articles, essays, poems and journal entries in chronological order from 1981 through 1990. These are simple expressions of a searching mind trying to understand itself and Nature. Such a mind is amazed by the wonder of the humanbeing and the intricate inter-relatedness in Nature. In its wanderings, it stumbles upon the unique peace in itself and is struck by the glory of this amazing experience. A sense of (...) joy and creative happiness dawns on such a mind. The book is an attempt to express this unique wonder of "growing out of oneself" and realizing humanity as truly an integral part of this incredible natural process. This process of "Life" thrives wherever and whenever it can. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Paul Ricœur’s political philosophical writings on the task of decolonization and European responsibility in light of a horizon of intercultural dialogue. Departing from the exchange between Ricœur and his former student Enrique Dussel, it discusses the Ricœurian critique of modernity. After giving some background on Ricœur’s reflections on decolonization, it will clarify what Ricœur calls the “crisis of the concrete universal in the thinking and in the historical experience of Western Europe,” and what role cultural difference has (...) in this crisis. Considering Ricœur’s explicitly European perspective, this will lead us to a critical discussion on the envisioned possibility of a world-historical subject. Finally, I will discuss the role of European self-reflection in relation to a horizon of intercultural dialogue and narration from a post-/decolonial perspective. (shrink)

"[An] important essay by a philosopher who more convincingly than any other I can think of demonstrates the continuing significance of his vocation in the life of our culture."--Karsten Harries, The New York Times Book Review With The Presence of Myth , Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning. "Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy (...) of culture which extends to all realms of human intercourse--intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional. . . . [His] book has real significance for today, and may well become a classic in the philosophy of culture."-- Anglican Theological Review. (shrink)

"[An] important essay by a philosopher who more convincingly than any other I can think of demonstrates the continuing significance of his vocation in the life of our culture."—Karsten Harries, _The New York Times Book Review_ With _The Presence of Myth_, Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning. "Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy of (...) culture which extends to all realms of human intercourse—intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional.... [His] book has real significance for today, and may well become a classic in the philosophy of culture."—_Anglican Theological Review_. (shrink)

In Human Presence Erickson offers a thoughtful study of some fundamental features of human nature central to a theoretical and therapeutic understanding of human existence. Though the language employed is largely philosophical, interfaces with psychoanalysis and religion are made in order to stimulate dialogue that reaches beyond the traditional boundaries of discipline. It is toward more such dialogue that Human Presence serves as preparation. The author provides a probing contrast between traditional psychoanalysis and existential conceptions of time consciousness (...) and he articulates the issues involved in experience or lived time in their centrality to human self-understanding. The author suggests how both conceptions, the existential and the psychoanalytic, enlarge yet limit awareness and insight. In a revealing way, Human Presence raises deep and unavoidable issues regarding the human in us all. Stephen A. Erickson is Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School, and is a guest faculty member of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. (shrink)

In this essential companion to the classic The Inward Morning, sixteen distinguished contemporary philosophers celebrate Henry Bugbee’s remarkable philosophy. The essays trace his explorations of thought, emotion, and the need for a sense of place attuned to wilderness. Representing a range of traditions, the thinkers included here touch on an equally broad spectrum of inquiry, including existential philosophy, religion, and environmental studies. The essays progress from general introductions to considerations of more specific themes in Bugbee’s philosophy to (...) reflections on the man as teacher, mentor, and friend. Provocative in their own right, these contributions provide a commentary on The Inward Morning. This volume thus becomes a valuable tool for the careful reader seeking to fully appreciate the vivid text that has inspired it while at the same time offering insight into contemporary issues in the philosophy of nature. (shrink)

Theology and literature, as the twentieth century progressed, increasingly treated religion not in terms of the objectifications of dogmas and devotions but as the unseen presence of the divine in an individual life. Readers and critics saw degrees of belief and modalities of sin in the novels of Graham Greene. The writer acknowledged the influence of European novelists and theologians on his narratives. Karl Rahner’s theology of human existence within an atmosphere of grace along with a presentation of the (...) transcendental and the categorical in expressions of faith and grace recall some modern novels like Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case. Both theologian and novelist point to God’s presence as silent, varied, mysterious, and real. (shrink)

THESE are difficult days in which to philosophize, and not only for institutional, historical, or political reasons. Nor is it a matter mainly of a disconcertingly eclectic pluralism of possible ways of doing philosophy; this has been a problem, or at least a temptation, ever since the disciples of Plato clustered into competing sects. More alarming, and more challenging, is the fact that the very idea of thinking and writing reflectively in various ways hitherto acknowledged by a broad consensus (...) as "philosophical" has come into serious question. The particular form in which such doubting has emerged is itself various. In Europe, it has taken the shape of undermining the self-assurance of the "metaphysics of presence" by attempting to show that the notion of determinate presence is constricting and groundless, or self-deceptive and self-deconstructing, or relative to historical epistemes or epochs of Being. In Anglophone countries, strikingly complementary efforts have been made to dissolve traditional philosophical concerns with knowledge and reality, mind and other persons, into a tenuous tissue of language, of word-play and word-use: all becomes "wordwork" in Joyce's prophetic term. Or else--in a move that expressly conjoins continental and analytic tendencies--all becomes "conversation" of an unending and self-reabsorbing sort. (shrink)

La double expérience que chacun de nous a des mouvements de son corps – comme objet mondain et comme organe de sa volonté – atteste, au sein de la métaphysique de Schopenhauer, la provenance de tout objet de représentation de la Volonté en soi. Nos « mouvements » charnels se prêtent cependant encore à des modalités diverses, selon qu’ils sont volontaires ou involontaires, et selon que la volonté y est appréhendée à travers une perception interne de ses « actes » (...) successifs ou à travers des sensations de plaisir et de douleur se rapportant à des « désirs » conscients ou inconscients. Formulé dans un langage freudien, la volonté-pulsion inconsciente se phénoménalise selon le double régime de la représentation et de l’affect, c’est-à-dire au sein d’un corps propre dont le principe de réalité et le principe de plaisir se disputent le gouvernement. Cette analyse des comportements corporels humains sert aussi de fondement à la philosophie de la nature de Schopenhauer. De même que nos actes volontaires, tout en se conformant à des « motifs » rationnels, puisent leur énergie dans une pulsion irrationnelle, les mouvements des corps matériels, tout en se conformant aux lois de la physique, restent animés par des « forces naturelles » qu’il faut comprendre comme la présence de la volonté pulsionnelle au sein de la nature. Croisant perspectives métaphysiques, anthropologiques et cosmologiques, l’auteur veut plus particulièrement mettre en lumière que la philosophie de la Volonté de Schopenhauer est la philosophie d’une force pulsionnelle nihiliste, héritière pessimiste du rationalisme leibnizien et visionnaire de la pulsion de mort de Freud. Tout en s’inscrivant dans le sillage kantien, cette philosophie conteste aussi déjà le principe d’une subjectivité originelle au nom du principe d’une vie pulsionnelle anonyme, inconsciente et irrationnelle. (shrink)

¡PRESENTE! investigates the many answers to a seemingly simple question: What does it mean to be present? Performance studies scholar Diana Taylor answers that question by offering an expansive explication of presence as both ethical command and performative knowledge production. Taking the histories of state violence, colonialism, and imperialism as her starting point, Taylor situates being ¡Presente! as an embodied and performed practice of standing alongside those harmed by historical and ongoing violence. Noting that Present/e is simultaneously single and (...) plural in English and Spanish, and drawing on Jean Luc Nancy's formulation of being singular plural, Taylor asks how presence is imbricated in questions of subject formation and collectivity. She begins with reframing the racialization of Latin Americans as a coming into presence through colonial conquest-a presence not as subjects but as subjugated objects-and asks what was made absent through this racialized process. For Taylor, the epistemicide of Indigenous, Native, and African ways of knowing stands at the center of this process of presence and absence. To counter this ongoing epistemicide, Taylor situates ¡Presente! as a performative and decolonial mode of knowledge production that decenters European Enlightenment traditions and seriously takes up Native, Indigenous, and African ways of knowledge and temporality. Grounded in performance studies, this book links knowledge to action as a doing practice, or what Taylor calls a "peripatetic strategy" that emphasis movement in learning. This book offers an expansive theory of ¡Presente! in various locations and situations: the original colonial conquest of Columbus and the Spanish; the May 1968 student protests; a study in Zapatistan autonomy; the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa; queer histories of Mexico; and the former torture centers of the Pinochet dictatorship. Throughout these varied locations, Taylor weaves a methodology, theory, and practice of ¡Presente!. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of performance studies, Latin American studies, American studies, critical ethnic studies, colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial studies, and queer theory. (shrink)