bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“I Fiddle on the Corner Where They Throw the Coins”: Altman’s Brand in Europe
Authors: Dombrowski Lisa
Published: September 2022

Robert Altman’s reputation as an anti-Hollywood filmmaker with a keen eye for the absurdities of American culture endeared him to European film industry professionals and audiences, who often considered his work, thematically and aesthetically, as more European than American. Yet Altman’s turn to directing transnational European productions rooted in distinctly local subject matter raised questions regarding his ability to maintain European investment in his brand. This chapter offers an analysis of the financing, publicity, marketing, reception, and box office of Altman’s three European productions between 1990 and 2001—Vincent & Theo (1990), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), and Gosford Park (2001)—and reveals the centrality of consistent, though at times uneven, European support to Altman’s late career productivity. European financiers, distributors, festival programmers, critics, and audiences demonstrated a willingness to engage with Altman’s work even when their American peers’ faith in him wavered, suggesting the distinct cultural resonance of Altman’s “more European than American” brand overseas. Even when aspects of individual Altman films failed to meet expectations, the value placed by European consumers on Altman’s association with artistry over commerce maintained European loyalty and added significant revenue to his films’ balance sheets.
Political Thought in the Mamluk Period
Authors: El-Merheb Mohamad
Published: September 2022

The legal theorists, jurists, judges and administrators of the late Ayyubid and early Mamluk period tackled a central question in their political thought: how best to govern their communities. This book proposes a taxonomy of the main themes and concerns of this political thought under the three ideals of the rule of law, limited government and legitimate delegation of power. Further, it recommends a contextualist approach for interpreting Islamic political texts based on their narrow social, intellectual and political contexts. The book studies both Ibn Jamaʿa’s (639/1241–733/1333) well-known works and previously unstudied treatises and, additionally, presents a fresh interpretation of a distinctive Sufi political thought and uncovers its interrelatedness with Ashʿari-Sufism and Shafiʿism.
Reading Islamic Political Thought
Authors: El-Merheb Mohamad
Published: September 2022

Chapter 1 outlines the book’s methodology and gives an overview of the prevalent impediments and impaired approaches in the field of the history of Islamic political thought. It justifies the decision to employ contextualism as a reliable and needed methodology to interpret the political texts of the late Ayyubid and early Mamluk period.
Sufi Political Thought
Authors: El-Merheb Mohamad
Published: September 2022

Chapter 3 examines the anonymous Misbah al-hidaya as a model for thirteenth-century Sufi conceptions of highest political authority that identified the sultanate as the legitimate heir of prophethood. It introduces the reader to the intellectual and socio-political milieu within which these ideas emerged and treats the active participation of Sufis in the circles of politics in Mamluk Cairo and Damascus. The chapter explores how the Misbah’s unknown author proposed moderating sultanic power through a Sufi proprietary political language rooted in the shariʿa and Islamised ethical systems deriving from Graeco-Arabic philosophy.
The Late Ayyubid and Early Mamluk Context: Ibn Talha and al-Qarafi
Authors: El-Merheb Mohamad
Published: September 2022

Chapter 4 demonstrates how the original contributions of Ibn Talha (d. 652/1254) and al-Qarafi (626/1228– 682/1283 or 684/1285) were formative to the political thought produced in this period and challenges the scholarly focus on the study of literary genres of political texts. It highlights the influence of the social, professional and ideological contexts of both authors in shaping their innovative postulations and conceptions of the rule of law. The chapter provides further proof that medieval political thinkers only treated concerns and ideas that were available to them in their empirical and intellectual worlds.
Introduction
Authors: Röck Tina
Published: September 2022

The introduction presents the main argument of the book, namely that there is a correlation between ontological/metaphysical ways of understanding what there is and the epistemological approaches employed to gain access to this reality. The chapter outlines the aim of the investigation, namely, to combine an epistemological approach with a description of reality to yield a form of realism that is able to grasp the temporal, creative and dynamic world we live in. Dynamic realism aims to provide a middle path, that avoids both dogmatism and relativism. The chapter finally contextualises and relates this aim to the current emergence of metaphysical thought and new forms of realism in the continental tradition as well as the more established forms of realism in the analytic tradition.
A New Metaphysics? Correlating Ontology with Epistemology
Authors: Röck Tina
Published: September 2022

In this chapter arguments for the correlation between phenomenology and process ontology as an adequate starting point to investigate the concrete, physical reality we are living in, are presented. This specific correlation is presented as an adequate starting point for the development of dynamic realism. This chapter establishes the meaning of the term ‘correlation’ contrasting its understanding in Meillassoux and Husserl. Standard views on internal and external relations are used to clarify and contrast the unique nature of co-relations. The chapter then moves on to focus on various correlations between epistemologies and ontologies - between ways of thinking (knowing) and concepts of Being. Further arguments for the claim that investigating realism means to focus both on ontological as well as (correlated) epistemic issues, are provided.
Experience and Temporal Being
Authors: Röck Tina
Published: September 2022

This chapter moves on to discuss experience from a process ontological perspective, and thus compliments the discussions of experience from a phenomenological perspective introduced in part two. This chapter focuses on non-phenomenological ways of investigating experience beyond empiricism, namely as direct ontological experience. I will discuss Bergson’s method of intuition and Whitehead’s account of feeling as specific forms of accounting for ontological experiences. These accounts of experience try to circumvent the subject-object distinction, and thus undermine the realism-idealism debate. This chapter furthermore addresses the question as to why we do not always experience genuine duration and discuss Whitehead’s and Bergson’s approaches as ways to help us develop the ability to see actual change that is always given in experience.
Being between Ontology and Epistemology
Authors: Röck Tina
Published: September 2022

This chapter introduces resistance as the hallmark of the real and engaged experience as an account of experience that is able to come to terms with the real as that which resists. Engaged experience is developed as a combination of phenomenological experience and ontological experience. To clarify the nature this concept, engaged experience is contrasted with phenomenological experience proper and empirical renderings of experience. It is argued that engaged experience is engaged in two fundamental ways, it is engaged in minimising preconceptions (this aspect is derived from phenomenological understanding of experience), and it is engaged in the sense that it is an active ontological aspect of what there is, i.e. it is ontologically connected to all other processes. This chapter proposes that only engaged experience is an adequate epistemic comportment towards phenomena if the aim is to disclose concrete reality.
Telling the Tale of a World in Turmoil: Conversations with Jocelyne Saab 1
Authors: Hadouchi Olivier
Published: September 2022

This first paper in the collection presents a new and updated edited summary of nine extended interviews that took place over a number of years between Jocelyne Saab and renowned film critic and academic Olivier Hadouchi. These interviews were first published online in 2013 but will be reformatted to reflect on the totality of Jocelyne Saab’s oeuvre. The interviews took place in Paris, between 2010 and 2013. Jocelyne Saab took up the question-response format with great honesty, seriousness of purpose, and patience—remarkably so, since the interviews each lasted several hours. In these interviews she speaks about taking her first steps as a journalist filmmaker, about her first films and experiments with cinema, about her experience as an assistant director on Circle of Deceit (Schlondorf, 1981); about her work across the Maghreb, Egypt, and Asia; and about her video installations. It is a rich text that serves, in this edited collection, as an introduction to the oeuvre of Jocelyne Saab and provides at the same time a platform for readers of the volume to hear from Jocelyne through her own words, as she represents herself in these extended interviews.
From Class Struggle to Sectarian Warfare: Jocelyne Saab’s Beirut Trilogy
Authors: Vimercati Giovanni
Published: September 2022

Saab's film in fact captures, both visually and poetically, the existential indeterminacy that over ten years of fratricidal warfare had been imposed on the country and its cinema. By looking at this particular film I intend to explore the aesthetic nexus between wartime economy and film production, between the brutal realism of armed conflict and the metaphysical desolation of Beirut at the time (which Saab immortalizes with such grace and profundity in this film). While in her "Beirut Trilogy" the Lebanese director was still trying to make sense of the Civil War, in Une vie suspendue the senseless degeneration of a conflict far removed from its initial causes represents the very choreography of the film. In this chapter I trace the spectral suspension that the director conveys in the film back to its material conditions, focusing on how its aesthetic apparatus reflects the absence of any possible meaning and future (in a war folded unto its own, self-perpetuating self). I will also look at the synergic similarities and divergences between Saab's documentary practice and her fictional understanding of cinema which in this particular film meet and interact in a stimulating way.
A Mother and Daughter Reunion: How Jocelyne Saab Shot her Last Documentary, My Name is Mei Shigenobu
Authors: Inuhiko Yomota
Published: September 2022

As a film historian and critic, the Years of Lead in the 1970s are his burden, which almost became fatal. When the Red Army (RA) in Japan split off into countless groups, the United Red Army (URA) – one of the most radical groups – fought a gunfight against the police in 1972. The Japan Red Army (JRA), another group derived from the RA, built a base in Beirut, working voluntarily for Palestinian refugees. Japanese women’s weeklies portrayed Fusako Shigenobu, the leader of JRA, as a female hero. When he met Jocelyne Saab in 2016, he was already familiar with her work. Their meeting was the fruit of a collaboration which the author reports here, around the last unfinished work of Jocelyne Saab: Shigenobu: Mother and Daughter. Yomota Inuhiko proposes to draw a parallel between Jocelyne Saab's intended narrative and the artist's personal biography, particularly in her relationship with her mother.
‘Talking about something much larger’: Script Development and Creating Metaphor and Meaning in Jocelyne Saab’s Dunia
Authors: McVeigh Margaret
Published: September 2022

During her career, Jocelyne Saab was concerned with human issues, and the issue of Arab women in particular. In her films, Saab showed how Arab women have a restricted freedom and a limited independence because of society and traditions. They tend to experience issues such as marginalization, violence, male bullying and forced marriages. Based on that, Saab always tackled those issues in her films in a daring and vibrant style. And because the cases she triggers in her projects are presented with controversial interpretations, this often leads to numerous criticisms on her work. Saab has always seen the female figure as the most dominant factor of her narratives. I will illustrate this through discussion of Gahzal Al Banat (1985), Kany Ya Ma Kan, Beyrouth (1995), Dunia (2005) and What’s Going On? (2009). I will discuss how she highlighted the female personalities and their issues in her films through narrative and visual language, focusing specifically on the body in motion and sensual dance. What are the cinematic methods Saab used in her films to move the female figure from being oppressed and restricted to a journey of self-discovery? Did this fit with the vision that Saab had for Arab women?
The Feminist Cinema of Jocelyne Saab: Women’s Relationships and the Philosophy of Dance in Four Fiction Feature Films
Authors: Soboh Maram
Published: September 2022

This chapter considers the narrative and aesthetic challenges and creative decisions Jocelyne Saab faced in making her first feature film, Dunia (Kiss Me Not on the Eyes) in 2005. Dunia is a “re-invention” and exploration of many real issues facing Arab women. The film took Saab seven years to make, filmed in Egypt and produced in Egypt, France, Libya and Morocco. Confronted with stark issues facing women in contemporary Egypt, including the continuing tradition of female genital mutilation (then still practiced on 97% of young Egyptian women), as a former front-line journalist and documentary maker Saab found “the truth became too hard to tell”. No longer able to make stories representing reality in Middle-Eastern conflicts, Saab turned to the fictional world of feature film. To understand Saab’s development of narrative and aesthetics in Dunia, this chapter - based on interviews with the filmmaker - melds established screen studies fields including poetics and neo-formalism and the emerging field of script development to discuss the multi-faceted creative process of developing story, metaphor and meaning for the screen.
Fiction and Voyeurisms: For a Fantasmatic History
Authors: Polverini Léa
Published: September 2022

Nasri, who seeks to capture the image of his lover by taking her picture at the opening of What's Going On (2009), is driven by the same desire as Jocelyne Saab when she films Beirut’s ruins or a lost Alexandria: both are voyeurs, attempting to recompose a world through fiction. Not that it is a perverse voyeurism, but rather a storyteller’s voyeurism, of which the poet in What's Going On, perched on his building-observatory, could be an avatar, spying, and revealing an alternative reality. Saab’s documentaries about war represent what might be called the "weak times" of the conflict: Saab aims to remember a certain image left by the city, just as The Ghosts of Alexandria (1986) tries to reconstitute the cosmopolitanism so praised and worn out. Whether those documentaries are contemporary to the conflict or created afterwards, they are phantasmatic reconstructions, fed by literary representations. The poetic speech emancipates itself from historical contingencies and builds an intertextual web. The waste lands lead, as if language was contaminated by the surrounding decaying spaces, to an aesthetic of fragment, in the rhapsodic editing, but also and especially in the images commentary made by the voice-over or the characters.
On the Commemoration of Mexico ’68: Los agachados de Rius, número especial de los cocolazos de julio-agosto-septiembre y octubre quién sabe si tambor …
Authors: Harris Chris
Published: September 2022

Contemporary Mexican society is haunted by the spectres of Tlatelolco and the massacre of students on the 2nd of October that can be found in the as yet, under-explored work of comic artists. This chapter will take a key example and consider the value of comic art to communicate trauma. With an eye to the fiftieth anniversary of Tlatelolco a special edition of Los agachados from 1968, the ‘número especial de los cocolazos’, emerges as a comic by Rius with a distinctively hauntological dimension. It is a comic that must now be considered, as an integral part of the literature of Tlatelolco, and also as a site of Mexican visual culture that provides an exceptionally productive terrain for revisiting and re-thinking Derrida’s concept of ‘hauntology’. The principal critical dilemma to be addressed through the analysis of this comic concerns the idea of the text not simply as a passive ‘site of memory’ but rather as an active ‘site of memorialisation’. The comic raises key issues about the events leading up the massacre of students in 1968 and those implicated in the deaths.
British Cinema and a Divided Nation
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

This book examines representations of the nation found within contemporary British cinema against a backdrop of rising political tensions and deepening social divisions following the ‘Brexit’ referendum of 23 June 2016. It offers an exploration of the ways in which the contest of ideologies always at work within media representation have played out post-2016. The focus is on historical and contemporary drama films. Contemporary British Cinema and a Divided Nation analyses a nation’s contested understandings of its past, present and future, probing the various ways recent mainstream films have approached the concept of nationhood. Consideration is given to whether there might be seen to be a new, or renewed, emphasis on the competing ideological perspectives that confront each other around the issue of nationalism. Is what we see, the negotiation of a new relationship with the world for a new age, or simply a re-iteration of a long-standing British, or English, understanding of national identity? A crucial aspect of this approach is necessarily an assessment of the relative importance of this issue in relation to other socio-economic concerns found in the films under discussion. Each of the central focus films considered completed production after the referendum of 2016. Earlier British films act as points of comparison but, generally, will not be analysed in depth.
Identity Politics: Where Hands Touch (Amma Asante, 2018) and A United Kingdom (Asante, 2016)
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

Each of these historical dramas focuses on the story of an interracial relationship. The first between a black African man and a white British woman, and the second between a young biracial black woman in Germany prior to the Second World War and a young white German who is the son of a Nazi officer. The second of these films in particular challenges not only notions of racial purity but also simplistic positions posited in relation to national identity. Neither film met with much box-office success and the reasons why this might be the case is explored in relation the contemporary political context.
Rural Poverty: Dark River (Clio Barnard, 2017) and The Levelling (Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

Both of these films by female directors following a central female character returning to the family home in the countryside and facing the need to address those things that made them leave in the first place. Personal issues involving individuals on their own emotional and psychological �journeys� are placed within the contexts of rural poverty. Classic divisions between town and country are placed within a specific contemporary UK context. Specific places within the UK are documented in such a way as to demonstrate the nature of the experience of living within rural communities in those areas.
Conclusion: Liberal Consensus Politics, Economics, and Class
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

The political struggle between Right and Left has escalated over the past decade. At the heart of this confrontation is the question of the relationship of the nation state to the wider world. In addition, over the past twenty years the global confrontation between the West and the rest of the world has intensified. Direct reference to the concept of the nation, to confrontation with the threatening Other, and to migration and the crossing or defending of borders, are to be found within the range of contemporary British films considered here. The politics of identity and belonging are found throughout these historical and contemporary dramas. In focusing on certain aspects of history and in highlighting certain aspects of contemporary life, the filmmakers are determinedly shaping the contexts within which they suggest the contemporary political landscape needs to be seen; and, in discussing their films, the filmmakers often explicitly highlight these themes. The focus here has been on the range of choices made by the makers of these films in relation to the current socio-political context of the period in Europe and the UK, and in particular resurgent nationalism.
Introduction: Bound in a Nutshell – Shakespeare’s Vibrant Matter
Authors: Fazel Valerie M. , Geddes Louise
Published: September 2022

The introduction acquaints readers with the concept of Shakespeare as a variable object and explains its value to Shakespeare studies. It proposes that through the lens of OOO, Shakespeare is perceived as an object that contains all vast meanings ascribed to it through performance and appropriation, recentering Shakespeare as the object at the heart of the appropriative act. Attending to rhizome theory and Desmet’s work on tiny ontologies, the introduction argues that appropriation can never be “unfaithful” to Shakespeare because Shakespeare has infinite capacity to absorb its various shapes, each actualized by the political ecologies in which human users situate him.
Sight Unseen: Visualising Variability through Ontological Representations in Macbeth
Authors: Pye Valerie Clayman , Gargano Cara
Published: September 2022

Starting with Morton’s notion of the hyperobject, this chapter locates Shakespeare’s texts – the ultimate humanist object – in terms of the interobjective relations between objects both present and absent in Macbeth. Focusing explicitly on Macbeth’s absent-present dagger, this chapter interrogates the relationship between the material and the immaterial and the ways in which they create a traumatic tension between the seen and unseen. The play lines, “art thou but a dagger of the mind?” introduces visual variability as seen on the page, as seen on the stage, and as seen in the imagination. Through the lens of object-oriented ontology, this essay explores and examines the friction and fissure between the text’s agency and the actor’s agency that displaces the author Shakespeare and focuses on the prismatic qualities of production. Through these points of refraction, that both depend and challenge the actor-audience relationship, this essay will examine competing agencies of text, actor, and audience.
‘The Promised End’: Shakespeare and Extinction
Authors: Lutz Michael
Published: September 2022

Beginning with philosopher Ray Brassier’s idea of extinction – a cosmological fact according to contemporary science, an annihilation where matter itself dissipates into elementary particles, undoing the correlationist impulse to figure the autonomous human mind as the motor of history, “the thought of the absence of thought” (Nihil Unbound 229-230) – this chapter recontextualizes the critical tradition of Shakespeare’s futurity in a moment where economic, political, and ecological disasters loom ever larger. How might Shakespeare’s work help us theorize a future not of tradition, heritage, and continuity, but rather one of radical difference, loss, and discontinuity? This chapter first considers King Lear’s critical history as an allegory of religious apocalypse. Lear’s panorama of disaster is an invitation to speculate about futures radically different from and even hostile to present modes of social life. Lear’s recurrence in modern post-apocalyptic media becomes “disaggregated” across a variety of media and genres, from avant-garde film to contemporary novels. Unfolding from the Shakespearean original in multiple ways, but always expanding toward an apocalyptic horizon, King Lear and its various adaptations develop a grammar for imagining futures that, in representing the obliteration of the present (and its Shakespeare), might also suggest opportunities for radically different futures, and radically different Shakespeares.
The Question: ‘What is “continental” philosophy?’
Authors: Lambert Gregg
Published: September 2022

Redefinition of the polemical opposition of the historical fields of ‘analytic vs. continental’ philosophy employing Deleuze’s early text on ‘Desert Islands’ and Derrida’s Of Grammatology.
Ethics for Drone Operators: Rules versus Virtues
Authors: Olsthoorn Peter
Published: September 2022

Beyond considerations of state practice, individual agency is morally significant too, so it is useful to conceptualise drone violence by reference to the personal experience of the individuals who directly wield that violence. This chapter moves ethical discussion away from traditional, rules-based, state-centric modes of thinking about military violence. Today, most militaries regard virtue ethics as an important complement to regulations imposed from above. Military virtues such as honour, courage and loyalty dominate official lists of virtues desired behaviours within militaries. Yet, as this chapter shows, it is evident that some conventional soldierly virtues are not particularly helpful to military personnel operating armed drones. The chapter assesses the ethics of drone violence from the perspective of military virtues and military ethics education, and it addresses the question of what change might be needed: a different interpretation of the existing virtues; a new set of virtues; or an abandonment of efforts to teach virtues? This challenge arises partly because armed drones raise risk asymmetry in war to a new level, so the chapter also addresses the extent to which, and how, the possibility of ‘riskless warfare’ make drone use ‘virtue-less’.
The Persian Prison Poem
Authors: Gould Rebecca Ruth
Published: September 2022

The Persian Prison Poem is the first study of the prison poem genre (habsiyyat) across twelfth-century Central, South, and West Asia. While documenting the emergence of a concept of poetry as a form of political resistance, the book shows the profound entanglements of poetry and power across premodern Eurasia. This book traces the political role of poetry in shaping the prison poem genre across twelfth-century Central, South, and West Asia. The emergence of the genre is indebted to the changing role of the poet, who came into increasing conflict with Ghaznavid and Saljuq sovereigns as the genre developed. Uniting the polarities of perpetuity and contingency, the poet’s body became the medium for the prison poem’s oppositional poetics. Bringing modern European theorists such as Ernst Kantorowicz, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno into conversation with classical Persian poetics, this book offers an unprecedented account of prison poetry before modernity, and of premodern Persianate culture within the framework of world literature and global politics.
Welcome Friends: Reading Derrida’s Politics of Friendship
Authors: Collison Luke , Fathaigh Cillian Ó , Tsagdis Georgios
Published: September 2022

Introducing the collective volume Derrida’s Politics of Friendship: Amity and Enmity, this chapter sets the stage for the rich and manifold contributions that comprise the undertaking. ‘Welcome Friends’ begins by unfolding and contextualising the emergence of Derrida’s text, from the seminar room to its publication in 1994. This is followed by an outline of the structure of Politics of Friendship along with a discussion of its key notions, namely those notions that are decisive and specific to Derrida’s treatment of friendship: aimance, teleopoiesis and the perhaps. In turn, the introduction offers a sustained account of the reception and influence of Derrida’s text, within various fields and discourses, from deconstruction itself, to classics, feminism and political theory, with a particular emphasis on Carl Schmitt scholarship. The chapter closes by summarising the contribution of the collection and showcasing their relation to the themes and the reception of Politics of Friendship.
Who or What: Differential Friendship
Authors: Tsagdis Georgios
Published: September 2022

Aristotle’s question of friendship coalesces around the figure of the friend. The friend forces the question of a determinate ‘who’ into the fray, while sustaining the question ‘what’: what it is to be a friend, that is, what traits, conditions and practices are required to discover and sustain friendship in the friend. Derrida’s reading locates the measuring up of the who of the friend against the what of friendship in the Aristotelian word tis. Signifying both ‘who’ and ‘what’, tis opens a differential that destabilises friendship. Identifying the tremor of this destabilisation with nothing less than the task of deconstruction, Derrida indicts Aristotle for failing to follow the
deconstructive gesture he has himself set into motion. Yet Derrida does not undertake the labour either: unlike ‘Ousia and Grammē’ which complete the deconstructive gesture on time on behalf of Aristotle, the Politics of Friendship supresses the thematic, or rather relegates it to the margins, where its force remains undiminished. The present essay thematises the who–what differential, aiming to establish it on an equal footing with the logic of the supplement. Recovering the who–what differential as a key articulation of différance opens new terrains of analysis and affinities of thought.
Beyond Presence: Derrida’s Fidelity to Husserl in Politics of Friendship
Authors: Menegalle Giovanni
Published: September 2022

The chapter examines the phenomenological underpinnings of Politics of Friendship. By reconstructing some of the key arguments in Derrida’s early reading of Husserl, it shows how his later thinking of politics and friendship flows from the specific critique of presence developed in these formative works. This critique had been aimed against what Derrida had taken to be phenomenology’s metaphysical foundations, but it remained faithful to many of Husserl’s own positions, notably on the experiences of time and the other. The chapter thus offers an assessment of Derrida’s continuing ‘fidelity’ to Husserl in his later political thought.
Hostility in Philosophy – ­Between Hegel and Heidegger
Authors: Lindberg Susanna
Published: September 2022

The starting point of this chapter is Derrida's reading of Aristotle's idea of friendship that is at the same time a necessary and impossible condition of philosophy. I will test Derrida's idea in a specific case, that of the "friendship" between Hegel and Heidegger, between whom, as I will show, "there is not friendship" at all, but an active hostility (that I will also refer to Derrida's discussion of Schmitt).  However, instead of regarding hostility as an obstacle to dialogical philosophy, I will show how it grows into a condition of radically open philosophizing. Finally, this reading also functions as a deconstruction of Heidegger's conception of love of truth that Derrida presents in the last part of Politiques de l'amitié, Philopolémologie.
Responding Justly to ‘the Friend’
Authors: Cohen Joseph , Zagury-Orly Raphael
Published: September 2022

The essay “Heidegger’s Ear. Philopolemology (Geschlecht IV)”, although omitted in the English language edition of the Politics of Friendship, figures as the last chapter in its original French edition (Paris, Galilée, 1994). In this text, Jacques Derrida analyses Heidegger’s interpretation of Heraclitus, most particularly the meaning of the Heraclitean polemos, through which the former proposes an entirely novel reading of the “als Hören der Stimme des Freundes, den jedes Dasein bei sich trägt” in Sein und Zeit (§ 34, p. 163). 
In our contribution, we will develop a succinct explication of Derrida’s text and mark how it deploys, in relation to the general hypothesis of the Politics of Friendship, a resounding deconstructive critique of Heidegger’s ontological-philosophical project as a whole as well as offer a renewed approach of the intricate relation between the political and friendship. We will also develop how and why this relation intervenes and affects the hyperbolical and “indeconstructible” idea of justice which Derrida, in the same years as the Politics of Friendship, is explicating and deploying in other key texts, such as Force of Law (Paris, Galilée, 1994).
Two Structures of Friendship: On the Specular and the Spectral
Authors: Michaelsen Cathrine Bjørnholt
Published: September 2022

This chapter explores a possibility that questions near the end of the book, namely, the possibility that there might be at least “two different, even antagonistic or incompatible, structures” of friendship (277). This paper seeks to interrogate them under the two headings of ‘the specular’ and ‘the spectral.’ The specular friendship would be a friendship of the mirror in which I never see anything but my friend seeing me, that is, a narcissistic friendship in which I never see my friend as other than me but always only as ‘another me.’ The specular friendship would thus be caught in the imaginary and phantasmal duality of the ego and the ideal ego, which is also a friendship in which the friend may transmute into the enemy or the evil double at any given moment. The spectral friendship would designate Derrida’s hopeful questioning of the possibility of transcending the specular relation of ‘I’ with ‘me’ towards a spectral other. This spectral other would be the one who does not accompany me, but who both precedes me from out of an immemorial past and who always remains ahead of me, always yet to come.
The Possible Echo
Authors: Kamuf Peggy
Published: September 2022

This chapter explores the recurrent references to Echo, Ovid’s mythical nymph, in Derrida’s Politics of Friendship. It argues that the repetition inherent in Echo, and indeed Derrida’s own repetition of the figure, is not a simple repetition, but rather a complex and inventive response. This is briefly contrasted to Schmitt’s dismissal of Echo within his work. The argument then goes beyond Politics of Friendship to include other texts by Derrida, including Rogues. There we see that Echo plays a crucial and subtle role, offering a possibility of radical invention that is tied closely to a democracy to come. Through this, we come to see Echo not as a minor part of Derrida’s work, but rather as a fundamental figure and means to think through a different repetition, an iteration that is not a reiteration of the same.
Political Friendships to Come? Futurity, Democracy and Citizenship
Authors: Kelz Rosine
Published: September 2022

Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship can help clarify how the political sphere can be thought of as open – towards an unexpected future and towards those who are excluded from current political communities. The notion of ‘democracy to come’ reminds us that democracy is related to a radically open future. In The Politics of Friendship the idea of ‘democracy to come’ emerges from a deconstructive reading of Western political thought. This possible future democracy needs to address a logic of political friendship as fraternity, which has been long inscribed into the political. This links political community and citizenship to notions of autochthony where a connection is drawn between ‘blood’, land and nation. Going against this logic gives room to an ethics of alterity, where political friendship could build on an appreciation of difference. This would open the possibility of novel politics of solidarity, which could Derrida’s idea of democracy to current social movements for refugee rights which seek to radically question the notion of the nation-state.
The Law of Autoimmunity
Authors: Lloyd Chris
Published: September 2022

Lloyd's chapter, 'The Law of Autoimmunity,' argues that The Politics of Friendship should be recognised as the text which features the inaugural appearance of Jacques Derrida's last great master-concept: autoimmunity. The chapter illustrates three, originary, appearances of autoimmunity: two explicit, as per Derrida’s original French text, and one implicit, ex post facto, as per Derrida’s own re-reading of The Politics of Friendship, some fifteen years later. The chapter also argues that although some commentators have concentrated on reading autoimmunity’s immunological-biological connotations, this is in fact an error, contradicting Derrida’s own clarifications on his usage of autoimmunity. By way of correction, the chapter argues that autoimmunity is best understood as a juridico-political concept, first appearing in one of Derrida’s most famously political texts. Finally, the chapter argues that Derrida had begun to propose a cohesive, general, ‘law’ of autoimmunity, emanating from his deconstructive thought.
Interruption and Responsibility: Derrida’s Passive Decision
Authors: Senatore Mauro
Published: September 2022

In his “Foreword” to Politics of Friendship, Derrida draws attention to one of the central tasks of the text: the question of what a decision is and who decides. This chapter offers a close reading of the text focused on the decision and the deciding subject. At stake is precisely how subjectivation and decision are articulated according to the unconditionality of the event. The chapter elaborates on Derrida's intervention via the ‘passive decision’, a decision given over to the other, as an alternative that draws together and short-circuits the aporetic determinations he identifies in its classical conception. Linking these questions with those of responsibility and justice, the chapter expands its scope to address the contemporaneous account in ‘Force of Law’ and reflect on the implications for later works.
Modal Aporias: Derrida on the reale Möglichkeit of Friends and Enemies in Schmitt
Authors: Collison Luke
Published: September 2022

Derrida’s engagement with Carl Schmitt, in Politics of Friendship, pursues multiple, intertwined deconstructive strategies. This chapter retraces the lines of approach made through the modal category “real possibility”, a modality that appears to lie in the space of spectrality, between the usual categories of possibility and actuality. Elaborating Derrida’s attempted “spectral inversion” of Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction, the chapter critiques a key moment in which Derrida equivocates between the exceptional and the improbable. Instead of the spectral, the chapter suggests that post-thermodynamic models of energy offer a better model for Schmitt’s use of the real possibility, based on his interest in Georges Sorel.
Mining and Mining Towns: A Conceptual Framework
Authors: Marais Lochner , Burger Philippe , Pilossof Rory , Lenka Molefi , Pool Antonie
Published: September 2022

This framework chapter addresses the consequences of shifting social responsibilities, new inequalities and the sustainability concerns created by this neoliberal phase and asks what will happen in the likely case of mining decline and closure in Emalahleni. The chapter foremostly focuses on describing the local realities in a growing coal and energy town of South Africa, Emalahleni. Considering the current reality, the chapter asks whether a just transition from coal-generated energy is possible and what the local implications will be of this global restructuring of the energy sector. A thorough investigation of a big topic like this, with all the ramifications that a just transition involves, could not be contained within one book if the authors attempted to cover several mining towns and cities. Emalahleni was selected because it is a microcosm of the global struggle for a just transition for all, in the face of the demand to switch from coal-fired energy. Books that use a case study of a single town or city to illuminate broad issues are not uncommon. Coal mining in South Africa, mining towns and neoliberalism in the mining industry are addressed. The methods and eight main research questions which the book answers were unpacked.
Informal Settlements in the Mining Context
Authors: Marais Lochner , Ntema John , Campbell Maléne , Cloete Jan , Lenka Molefi
Published: September 2022

Informal settlements and mining development often go hand-in-hand in South Africa. This co-relationship results from policies to dismantle hostels and mining villages by shifting the responsibility from the mining companies to individual households and local governments. Attempts to address historical problems have created their own problems. This chapter looks at informal settlements in Emalahleni against a background of structural constraints caused by the dominance of capital and misguided government policies. We use concepts from complexity theory to understand the development and value of informal settlements in a mining settlement. We ask how informality links to mining and how people use informality to deal with mining risks. In addition, we ask what the contributing reasons for developing informal settlements in mining towns are.
Coal and Water: Exploiting One Precious Natural Resource at the Expense of Another?
Authors: Esterhuyse Surina , Buschke Falko
Published: September 2022

Coal is an important energy resource in South Africa. The environmental sustainability of coal extraction is however questionable. This is especially true for natural water sources, which can be severely degraded by coal mining activities. The impacts of coal mining on water resources include direct, indirect, induced, and cumulative impacts. In this chapter, the authors assess the total impact of coal mining pollution on water bodies in Emalahleni within the eMalahleni-Witbank coalfield of the Mpumalanga Highveld. The effects of land use around Emalahleni on the ecosystem’s natural water purification function were simulated. The simulation allowed the authors to quantify the cumulative impacts of changing rainfall patterns anticipated under climate change, as well as some scenarios of continued ecosystem degradation or restoration. Induced impacts on municipal water supply have also been assessed by summarising water usage data from an Emalahleni household survey. The case study offers a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing the water-energy nexus and demonstrates how integrating the water and energy sectors is essential for securing a more sustainable future.
Sustainability Reporting by Collieries
Authors: Crous Cornelie
Published: September 2022

This chapter discusses the level of sustainability reporting by Collieries in Emalahleni with a specific focus on Water, Effluents and Waste; Emissions; Occupational Health and Safety; Closure Planning, and Indigenous Rights. Reporting on these aspects provides Collieries with the necessary tools to communicate with stakeholders and investors about significant sustainability risks and opportunities, which in turn may lead to increased investment, financial sustainability and an increase in reputation. When comparing the survey results and the disclosures found in the reports of the mines, the results show that the detailed ESG reporting are insufficient and incomplete in addressing the unintended consequences of mining and the perceived inequalities between mine-workers, contract workers and the original inhabitants of the area. One possible reason for incomplete and insufficient reporting may be a result of the proliferation of corporate reporting and insufficient detailed guidance for sustainability reporting.
Residents’ Perceptions of Coal Mining and Energy Generation
Authors: Pretorius Anmar , Blaauw Derick
Published: September 2022

Given that the economy of the town is based on coal mining, this chapter investigates the perceptions of Emalahleni residents regarding energy generation via coal versus renewables. In general the respondents indicated overwhelming support for renewable energy – although not all supported the demise of coal generation. According to the survey results the perceived risks of coal mining (including damage to the environment, air and water pollution and health effects) outweigh the benefits for residents (mostly economical). The strongest opposition for coal-generated energy mainly came from older respondents, female respondents and lifelong residents of Emalahleni. Not surprisingly, households consisting of mining employees were more supportive of coal-generated energy.
Socio-economic Dynamics of the Informal Economy
Authors: Blaauw Derick , Pretorius Anmar , Schenck Rinie
Published: September 2022

The well-being of Emalahleni’s residents is linked to the boom and bust cycles faced by the local economy. Many people who lose their jobs as a result of this are forced to seek income earning opportunities in the informal economy and day labouring is one of these employment seeking strategies. This chapter investigates the dynamics and changes in the day labour market to provide a micro-perspective of the impact of mine closures and shrinking businesses on the local economy. Two comparable surveys conducted in 2008 and 2018 reveal that the absolute number of day labourers and the proportion of foreigners increased significantly; unemployment is as high as 86% and real and reservation wages have decreased as result of the oversupply and limited demand. The increased supply in the day labour markets with limited demand will undoubtedly influence lives and livelihoods of the day labourers in Emalahleni in the years to come.
A More Resilient Policy Approach to Spatial Fragmentation
Authors: van Aswegen Mariske , Drewes Ernst
Published: September 2022

In this chapter the concept of spatial fragmentation and its impact on resilience within the urban environment is deliberated. This fragmentation, coupled with apartheid planning in South Africa, has led to urban inequalities and sprawling cities, exacerbated by the locality of coal deposits between the built-up areas. The inefficient and unadaptable layout and design of specifically Emalahleni, encumbers true resilience for this city. This chapter proposes a multifaceted approach to land-use and spatial policy to deal with the structural and spatial problems associated with mining towns in general. This policy approach will assist in mitigating the problems experienced, and improve the long-term sustainability and resilience of the city.
Culmaily, a Model of Improvement: Reform, Resistance and Rationalisation in South‑eastern Sutherland
Authors: Simpson Duncan
Published: September 2022

Like other Hebridean proprietors, Stewart Mackenzie suffered from the decline in cattle and kelp prices at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and from problems of debt management and population increase. With some input from his wife Mary, he attempted to increase the revenue from the island of Lewis by developing fisheries, whisky distilling and sheep farming. He believed that prosperity could be generated and that small tenants who made way for sheep farms could be given alternatives by being moved into existing settlements and onto previously uncultivated land. The productivity of small tenants was intended to be increased by a programme of ‘lotting and leasing’, a system later known as crofting. Distance from markets and incompetent implementation were important factors in failure to reduce debt levels or to prevent destitution. However, larger farms were divided to create middle sized ones and crofting townships. It is argued that clearances on Lewis at this time were less extensive than has been suggested, that mixed motives, confused decision making and shortage of capital contributed to failures and that, as T.M. Devine has shown elsewhere at this period, the Stewart Mackenzies refused to exploit their economic opportunities to the full.