The decolonization of France is not over yet. Blind to what was coming , France is now badly hit by the boomerang : linguistic isolation, postcolonial studies in slumber, deafness towards the boys and girls of the suburbs : words are cruelly lacking for institutions to make sense of what’s happening. At a loss, the media can only multiply distortions in media coverage and the authorities produce repression/selection at the borders. In this paper, the author develops the apparent differences (...) between English and French as colonial and postcolonial languages, as well as the difference between the language and politics of young boys and girls from the suburbia in France. (shrink)

The “boomerang thesis” enjoys widespread currency in contemporary scholarship: that the means and ends of colonial domination would “spin back” to the metropole is an idea with intuitive grip. This article extrapolates the depth of meaning this metaphor contains, as well as what it conceals. It first considers the “boomerang” as it appears in Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, a poetic work that captures the moral and experiential return-effects of imperial violence. Turning to Hannah Arendt’s The Origins (...) of Totalitarianism—the only articulation of the thesis that uses the word “boomerang”—the article disaggregates the teleological, ideological, and institutional elements that spun back from European colonies in the imperial era. Finally, it traces the development of the thesis in Michel Foucault’s “Society Must Be Defended,” where it is transformed into a more general explanatory mechanism. Each theorist indicates how distance operates to transform dubious, even hateful ideas into acceptable practices. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s account of imperialism has become an unlikely source of inspiration for scholars invested in anti-colonial and postcolonial critique. However, the role of settler colonialism in her thought has come under far less scrutiny. This essay reconstructs Arendt’s account of settler-colonization. It argues that Arendt’s republican analysis of imperialism hinges on her notion of the boomerang effect, which is absent in settler-colonial contexts. Arendt recognized some of the distinctive features of settler expansionism but reproduced many of (...) the ideologies that sustain practices of settler-colonial conquest. This interpretation sheds light on the promises and limits of contemporary retrievals of Arendt’s analysis and critique of imperialism by foregrounding the specificity of settler colonialism as an axis of ongoing colonial violence. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler's account of technology as constitutive of the human as such is without precedent. However, Stiegler's work must also be understood in terms of its explicit appropriations from the thought of Jacques Derrida. An important, yet overlooked, context for framing Stiegler's relation to Derrida is the question of nonhuman life thought in terms of différance . As I argue, Stiegler's account does not unfold the most profound implications of Derrida's understanding of nonhuman life as différance . While Stiegler describes (...) human life as prosthetic and in default of origin, there is no treatment of the way in which nonhuman life is also aporetic and constituted in terms of its relatedness to exteriority. I conclude with a reconsideration of Stiegler's work from the perspective of Derrida's richer account of nonhuman life as différance in order to bring to light an anthropocentric aspect of Stiegler's work. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1989, Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy has continued to produce animated debate with regard to the radical sense of futurity which defines and structures this text. In this essay, I first draw into question the common Nietzschean framing of this futurity and argue that the temporality of this futurity should be interpreted within the context of Heidegger's often overlooked descriptions of this coming time as granted by the last god. It is this anticipated gift that can (...) be seen to constitute the hermeneutic center around which the whole of Contributions is composed. In the final section, I then offer a critique of Heidegger's account of the relation between his last god and its granted time in terms of the givenness of a gift. (shrink)

Charles Bambach’s recent book Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks traces the themes of rootedness and the earthly in Heidegger’s thought. Focusing on the role of these themes in the major works of the 1930’s, Bambach offers an account of Heidegger’s relation to contemporaneous conservative and National Socialist ideologies. In this review article, I question the fundamental presupposition guiding Bambach’s approach and present specific reservations regarding his use of untranslated material from Heidegger’s Nietzsche lecture courses.

In this essay, I argue that the scope of Heidegger’s dialog with Hölderlin in Contributions to Philosophy is wider than has often been acknowledged. Traditionally, accounts of this relation have focused solely on tracing Heidegger’s appropriation of Hölderlin’s “flight and arrival of the gods.” In addition to this theme, the relation between Heidegger’s Hölderlin and the project of Contributions should also be framed in light of the specific understanding of attunement which Heidegger developed in his 1934-35 Hölderlin lecture courses. From (...) the perspective opened by this reading, I bring into question and offer an alternative to a widely accepted interpretation of Contributions’ structural composition. (shrink)

It is well known that Heidegger described his Nietzsche lecture courses as confrontations with National Socialism. Traditionally, this sense of resistance was seen firstly in the fact that Heidegger read Nietzsche at the level of metaphysics and explicitly rejected those ideological appropriations which attempted to reduce Nietzsche’s philosophy to the level of biologism or mere Weltanschauung. This essay argues that the way in which Heidegger framed his interpretation of will to power in his first and second Nietzsche lecture courses can (...) be seen to contain a more explicit critique of the contemporaneous “official” Nietzschebild than has customarily been said. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s 1953 lecture “The Question Concerning Technology” has been one of the most influential texts in English language philosophy of technology. However, within this field Heidegger’s understanding of technology is widely seen to be a conventional essentialist account of technological phenomena. In this essay, I argue that a close reading of what Heidegger exactly demarcated as the essence of technology can be seen to limit the degree to which Heidegger’s understanding of technology should be interpreted as a traditional form (...) of technological essentialism. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the question of divinity provides an important context for reading Heidegger’s initial two Nietzsche lecture courses (1936–37). First,I demonstrate how this often overlooked background can shed light upon the way in which Heidegger understood the meanings of will to power and eternal recurrence in this period. Second, I argue that the related themes of need (Not) and necessity (Notwendigkeit) in these lectures can be seen as an important framework for understanding the relation between Heidegger’s (...) early Nietzsche engagement and his Contributions to Philosophy (1936–38). (shrink)

Derrida always stressed the importance of his engagement with Heidegger and often returned throughout his life to different aspects of Heidegger’s thought. With the recent publication of his 1964-65 course, Heidegger: The Question of Being and History greater insight is now possible into the exact terms of Derrida’s early engagement with Heidegger and the significance he would accord it in the major works of 1967 and beyond. With the reception of this text just beginning, many lines of interpretation are being (...) unfolded. However, one aspect not yet addressed in this early reception which will be crucial for approaching and orienting this work is the theme of auto-affection. The concept of auto-affection is important for assessing Derrida’s Heidegger course for two reasons. Firstly, Derrida understands auto-affection to be Heidegger’s most radical figuration of temporality in the period of Being and Time. Secondly, tracing Derrida’s early focus on auto-affection in Heidegger can provide an important context for understanding the initial development of what would become a prominent theme in Derrida’s own work. My argument in this paper is structured in three sections. In the first, I give a brief introduction to Derrida’s course. I then present the theme of auto-affection in this course and demonstrate its central importance. In conclusion, I show how Derrida’s treatment of this theme in the context of his early Heidegger engagement can be seen to look forward to his employment of auto-affection in Speech and Phenomena. (shrink)

In his recent book The Open: Man and Animal, Giorgio Agamben examines the relation between the essence of the human and the living in Martin Heidegger’s thought. Focusing on the treatment of this relation in Heidegger’s 1929/30 lecture course “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics,” Agamben argues that the dimension of the open, which is central to Heidegger’s understanding of the human essence, can be seen as implicitly dependent upon Heidegger’s account of the essence of animality. In this essay, I argue (...) that Agamben’s reading is insufficient because it has not taken full account of the specifically temporal character of the openness proper to Heidegger’s understanding of the human essence. In conclusion, I present an alternative account of the way in which Heidegger framed his descriptions of animality in the 1929/30 lecture course as articulating the openness characteristic of human being. (shrink)

Most accounts of Heidegger’s relation to Nietzsche have traditionally focused on his famous Nietzsche lecture courses or upon his brief yet highly significant references to Nietzsche in Being and Time. However, with recent English translations of key lecture courses from Heidegger’s early Freiburg period it has become clear that during this time another distinct phase of Heidegger’s long and complex relation to Nietzsche can be identified. In this essay, I first chronicle Heidegger’s earliest references to Nietzsche in the period from (...) 1909–1916. I then turn to Heidegger’s early Freiburg lecture courses and demonstrate that the proximity between Nietzsche and Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology in this period was much greater than has traditionally been said. In conclusion, I argue that one of the most important examples of Heidegger’s appropriation of Nietzsche in this period can be seen in the concept of destruction which played a central role in Heidegger’s account of phenomenological methodology. (shrink)

The United Nations' (UN) adoption of a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is intended to mark a fundamental ethical turn in the relationships between indigenous peoples and the community of sovereign states. This moment is the result of decades of discussion and negotiation, largely revolving around states' discomfort with notion of indigenous self-determination. Member states of the UN have feared that an ethic of indigenous self-determination would undermine the principles of state sovereignty on which the UN is itself (...) grounded. However, such fears are the result of very poor understandings of the ethical principles under which the relations between indigenous peoples and nation-states already have been formed under centuries of European colonialism. The principle of self-determination embraced in this Declaration does not diverge from colonial norms; it entrenches these norms as international policy. Without doubt, indigenous peoples are more likely to benefit than suffer from states' observance of the Articles within this Declaration. Reducing the challenge of indigenous peoples' rights to the notion of self-determination set out in this document, though, misses an extraordinarily important opportunity to critically investigate the ethic of rights that has produced an opposition between nation-states and indigenous peoples to begin with. A true turn in the ethics of this relationship would see not simply the institution of a right to self-determination but, rather, indigenous peoples' right to first determine the nature of self for themselves. (shrink)

The chapter explores the perceptual and epistemic structures of boomerang perception, as developed by María Lugones, by focusing on contemporary lived experiences of Latinas of commercialization and homogenization. Boomerang perception is the mechanism through which people of color are constructed through a white imaginary lens and denied subjectivity. The internalization of boomerang perception subsequently yields horizontal hostilities whereby people of color construct each other through white eyes and engender a fake/real dichotomy that polices the boundaries of communities. (...) The commercialization of Latina identity in the 21st century serves as one example that draws out the ways in which boomerang perception is internalized and plays on the production of the real/fake dichotomy. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of conocimiento, the chapter subsequently considers the possibilities of resistance through the development of style politics that can transform embodied ways of knowing. In this capacity, the chapter takes up the project of chonga stylized politics as exemplifying practices of conocimiento. (shrink)

It is, without a doubt, a difficult task to address at once the state of philosophy as embodied by the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and the place of one’s own thought within it. This is the task that a co-director’s address tries to fill. Whether with a critical reexamination of the phenomenological mode of seeing distinctive of SPEP, of philosophical progress, or of the place of transcontinental philosophy, prior co-directors found ways to subtly chart the windings and turns (...) of the many streams that assemble to form this society.We seem to be, however, at a different juncture, so that another... (shrink)

We seek to bring Black bodies and lives into full view within the enterprise of Indigenous health research to interrogate the unquestioned good that is taken to characterize contemporary Indigenous health research. We articulate a Black bioethics that is not premised upon a false logic of beneficence, rather we think through a Black bioethics premised upon an unconditional love for the Black body. We achieve this by examining the accounts of two Black mothers, fictional and factual rendering visible the racial (...) violence Black bodies have been subjected to. We call for a Black bioethics that reimagines the Black body as beautiful and belonging—to both someone and somewhere. (shrink)

Two years ago, astrophysicists studying Type Ia supernovas discovered that our universe is a much stranger place than we had imagined, with invisible vacuum energy accelerating its expansion. (See my column about this in the May-1999 Analog.) However, new astrophysical observations from the BOOMERanG experiment (Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geomagnetics), a balloon-borne cryogenic microwave telescope measurement that flew at an altitude of about 24 miles over the Antarctic, indicate that our universe is also rather ordinary, in (...) that its space is maximally flat. The term “flat” as used here means that the space of our universe is neither positively curved like a ball or negatively curved like a potato chip. It appears that in our universe, the tendencies of space toward positive curvature from gravitational attraction and towards negative curvature from expansion kinetic energy are precisely in balance, leaving space on the average completely free of curvature. (shrink)

This paper explores that the topic of ethics dumping, its causes and potential remedies. In ED, the weaknesses or gaps in ethics policies and systems of lower income countries are intentionally exploited for intellectual or financial gains through research and publishing by higher income countries with a more stringent or complex ethical infrastructure in which such research and publishing practices would not be permitted. Several examples are provided. Possible ED needs to be evaluated before research takes place, and detected prior (...) to publication as an academic paper, because it might lead to a collaborative effort between a wealthier country with restrictive ethical policies and a less wealthy country with more permissive policies. Consequently, if that collaboration ultimately results in an academic paper, there are ethical ramifications of ED to scholarly communication. Institutional review board approval is central to avoid ED-based collaborations. Blind trust and goodwill alone cannot eliminate the exploitation of indigenous or “vulnerable” populations’ intellect and resources. Combining community-based participatory research using clear codes of research conduct and a simple but robust verification system in academic publishing may reduce the risks of ED-based research from being published. (shrink)

This article criticises the political-economic analysis of settler colonial studies, which it draws out through an immanent critique of its most famous practitioners. It then offers a critical genealogy of the wider theoretical trend that secures it: the post-Cold War vogue of asserting the ever-increasing centrality of primitive accumulation in global capitalism – what we might term a mode of predation. Finally, it teases out the tensions and confusions in the reliance of settler colonial studies upon Marx’s concept (...) of surplus populations, as well as problems abounding in Patrick Wolfe’s ‘logic of elimination’. Overall, it argues that the frequent claim that we inhabit a global settler modernity cannot be sustained through these notions, and that this claim is profoundly moral and academic, lacking political and analytical value. The insistence on the durability of settler colonialism amounts, in this literature, to a claim on behalf of settler colonial studies itself. (shrink)