How can one simply read a paper before properly understanding the project one embarks on by doing so? If one does, without first understanding that project, perhaps the net effect will be an accumulation of knowledge claims, sometimes called “the relevant facts,” later to be embedded in the as yet badly understood background project. Can…

A funny thing happens. Researching for a paper on immoral art, time and again I google for Santiago Sierra, who I think provides great samples of this new art form. The funny thing is, though, that whenever a page is found discussing any of his works, links are included which have all but evaporated from…

I simply love Currie’s assumption that the real precedes the represented, but object to his use of it. In Image and Mind, he argues that fictional entities because they are non-existent cannot be represented photographically. “A fiction does not have the kinds of properties—shape, size, colour—that could be represented pictorially.” (p. 12). I have called…

Put on a mask and you should find that your expectations will change. You’ll typically expect others to look for clues about who you are, and, when none are found, a hesitancy to communicate with you, perhaps only on instrumental grounds. Did you just tell you’d go shopping for them, then they would typically want…

The first sentence of Kant’s Critique of Judgement (of section 1), in my reading, presents us with the flawed view of human beauty–without mentioning human beings there, and apparently Kant didn’t mean to either–that is threaded through contemporary culture: the view that requires one to treat the object of the gaze as if represented. Gerwen,…

The question whether something is pornography because it is intended to have a certain effect (intentionalism) or because it is used successfully to arouse oneself (utilism)–you probably know it is pornography when you see it (evocationalism or constructionism?) brings out the perennial difference between the descriptive and the evaluative use of concepts. There is always…

Perhaps, Claude Lanzmann, in his review of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, assumes that representations of the Holocaust of necessity become iconic images, assuming, also, that some images shouldn’t be allowed to: photos and films of real events shouldn’t (but why?), nor should pictures of stereotypical Jews (most of these stereotypes stem from Nazi propaganda films), or…

We think perception is reception (of data from the outside world, or impressions), but tell me: How do we know this? Is their an introspective manner for us to establish this fact? How much of what one perceives comes unsuspected? Not much, does it? Much of what we perceive conforms to our expectations. How often…

One of the assets of Claude lanzmann’s film Shoah is this that it presents moral witnesses in places that are sure to stir their memories. Lanzmann did not invite them over to the studio for an interview, nor did he visit them in their own homes. The relevant places are either historical sites (the camps;…

“But how can he tell what the holocaust was, if he is telling the story of a German who saved 1300 jews, while the overwhelming majority of the jews was not saved? Even when he shows the moment of the deportation to the Cracau ghetto, or the camp officer shooting at the deported, how can he do justice, even then, to the normalcy of the procedure of murder, the machinery of the extermination? It did not go like that for everyone. In Treblinka, or in Auschwitz, the possibility of salvation was inconceivable.” (Lanzmann). … (read on)