This book is an attempt to defend the undefendable: the suicide bomber as a figure of thinking, a figure that foregrounds the singularity of each event; and it is this un-understandability-which is part of understanding itself-that the suicide bomber never lets us forget. For, the suicide bomber is the poet par excellence, reminding us of the possibility of an event; not because of the effects of her actions, but due to the gift of her life, and more importantly the unknowability that is her death. And like with poetry, all analysis only makes it worse. In this manner, (s)he remains an unending question for us; a question that even questions itself as a question. And if one maintains the question, one is always already other to everything, other even to one's self. In this way, the gap between the self and the other is maintained such that this space is never taken hostage. For, the moment this space of negotiation is gone, we are in the realm of terror."Jeremy Fernando's The Suicide-Bomber; and her gift of death calls for the ability to respond to intentional death. It is a brilliant study about the blank spot within the becoming of teleology, and the game of 'finitude'." -- Hubertus von Amelunxen Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at the European Graduate School. He works in the intersections of literature, philosophy, and the media; and is the author of Reflections on (T)error, and Reading Blindly. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

The Suicide Bomber; And Her Gift of Death

Politics & Social Sciences

Fernando, Jeremy

Philosophy

Atropos Press

Terrorism is usually regarded as the enemy of globalization and capitalism.  However this analysis completely misses the point as terrorism is precisely what allows globalization to exist: by ensuring that the fantasy of total exchangeability is never fulfilled, terrorism sustains the logic of capital itself.  Reflections on (T)error is a meditation on the problems of confining the thinking of terrorism within the logic of exchange. This logic keeps us in the cycle of exchangeability: we remain within the game of surplus value and one-upsmanship; human lives are the very stake with which this game is played. It is only through looking at terror as such - as a singularity - that this cycle might be avoided; not by opposition nor by distancing oneself from it, but rather by complete immersion in terror itself.  This book seeks to respond to the need to reconstitute the question of terrorism from a philosophical standpoint. It is addressed to researchers that think the realms of terrorism, post-structural philosophy and media philosophy.

Reflections on (T)error

VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller e.K.

This book is an attempt to read, to respond to, the Occupy Movement in four movements. Opening with a reading of Flann O’Brien’s evocative short story, ‘John Duffy’s Brother’, it opens the dossier of the generative powers of imagination: not just in opening possibilities in the world, but that what is brought forth is always already a world onto itself. This is followed by a reading of Hermann Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’, with a particular focus on the utterance, « I would prefer not to » ; not just as a phrase of negative resistance, but as a potential challenge, as a seductive challenge. The third movement is an attempt to directly respond — if such a thing is even possible — to the Occupy Movement in all of its potentiality: in no way, shape, or form, does the text attempt to explain it; instead, it attends to it in all of its possibilities, unknowabilities, absurdities even — en bref, as an event. It ends with an attempt to reflect on what it means to speak of something, especially an event — through, and alongside, the slippery figure of the subject, the « I ».

je me touche

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Delere Press

On Invisibility: or, Towards a Minor Jiu-Jitsu

Requiem for the Factory is a conversation between two forms of writing: language, and light. This occurs in a tale that attempts to explore the relationality of a self to her self through the figure of a factory. Told through an "I" that refuses to remain stable, one is never sure whether this is a moment when the tale is recounted, recalled, or whether it is being told at the moment of telling. And this is why this requiem has to be narrated. What is foregrounded is not only the fact that memory, history, is fictional, but more pertinently that the self-and the "I"-can only be uttered, perhaps even known, through fictionality. This is not to say that the self is imagined-unreal-but that the imaginary is in the very fabric of reality itself. This is a tale of two writings that are speaking to, and with, each other, whilst also speaking in their own realms at the very same time.

Requiem for the Factory

Literary

At the heart of this book lies attempts to read: reading here being understood as the openness to the possibility of another; a relation that occurs prior to any semantic or formal identification, and, therefore, prior to any attempt at assimilating, or appropriating, what is being read to the one who reads. Thus, an event. It opens with Lim Lee Ching's reading of this book; a reading before your reading, as it were. And is followed by Jeremy Fernando's attempts to respond to the many Roland Barthes -- all whilst foregrounding the risk that, even as one attempts to read as openness to the possibility of another, all reading potentially re-writes the other; that his reading may well be an inscribing of his R.B.; that whilst reading it, you may well be making your very own R.B.. In the midst of which, you will find a piano score composed by Jachin Pousson: which is both a nod to the fact that Barthes was a pianist, and also a note to the musicality of the thought of Roland Barthes.The hope is that these readings bring, open the possibility of, pleasure: not just for the one who reads, but perhaps even for -- if one allows oneself to imagine -- the text. For the one we call, name -- can do nothing but name -- Roland Barthes.

For The Pleasure of The Text ...

&laquo; ... It has taken me years to admit -- perhaps only to myself -- that I don't care about writing something important, something significant. That my only hope, wish -- dream even -- is to write something beautiful ... (139) This book attempts to open the dossier of fidelity; and, in particular, attend to the question of the relationship between fidelity and its object, to the question of: must there be an object to fidelity? For, if one is faithful to something or someone, is one responding to the what, the characteristics of the thing, the person; or the who, the person, thing, as such? Which is not to say that what and who are necessarily distinguishable, separable, to begin with. However, if we open the possibility that the who is always already beyond us -- outside of knowability, if even only slightly -- this suggests that it is the spectre, the potential unknowability, that haunts all relationality. Thus, even if there is an object to one's fidelity -- for, without which one cannot even begin to speak of fidelity, speak of relationality -- this might well be an objectless object or, at least, an object that remains veiled from us. In order to explore this relationship -- in which one cannot even be sure if there is a relationality; for, without the object, the nature, if one can call it that, of the relation is speculative -- the text takes the form of an exploratory fiction. Where it attempts to bear witness to the possibility of fidelity -- keeping in mind that fiction is both the limit to, and condition of, testimony -- whilst quite possibly only testifying to the possibility of being able to testify. Nothing more.

in fidelity

This text attempts to respond to the question of the relationship between art and resistance, to the possibility of art as resistance -- that is, it is an attempt to meditate on the possible relationship between resisting and art. Whilst doing so, it also tries to attend to the notion that art is an encounter -- between one and something that is brought forth in the movement from craft to something other than what is created through tekhn&#275;. And, if so, it is always also potentially unknown, unknowable, until it happens, perhaps even after it happens. That, even as it might be experienced, felt -- an encounter through aisthesis -- it is quite possibly a moment beyond cognition; un pas au-delà, as it were. And if so, then perhaps all attempts to know it potentially do nothing other than to frame, to confine, its potentiality. Thus, perhaps the very thing that one has to do -- if one is to attempt to maintain the possibility of resistance in art -- is to resist what one thinks art itself is.

Resisting Art

Arts & Photography

Our skin -- all over us, inside us; multiple, divisible, same same but different; different in parts within, and all over, the same self; a multiplicity. And where, it is our scars -- that write themselves onto us, the keloids that hold us, claw us (khele) together -- which give us form (eidos). Without which, there is no possibility of even knowing (eidenai), catching a glimpse of, our very self. The skin upon which I write, upon which I writhe. Which writhes on me as I write. As I am writing skin.

writing skin

S/Z A European Manifesto

Žižek, Slavoj

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