Phenomenology of the Alien: Basic Concepts

Notes

85 Notes Introduction 1. A formal outline of the phenomenology of the alien which I envision can be found in chapter 1 of Topography of the Alien (Topographie des Fremden, 1997). The different dimensions of the alien are examined in detail in chapters 5–6 of The Jagged Lines of Experience (Bruchlinien der Erfahrung, 2002). 2. In this instance, I deliberately diverge from the order in which these ideas were developed in order to facilitate the understanding, since Response Register presupposes some of that which is only fully unfolded in The Jagged Lines. The “to what” of responding points back to the “by what” of having been overcome. 3. Let me at this point mention the Vienna-based journal Polylog, a Journal for Intercultural Philosophy, in which by now quite a number of thematic issues have appeared. 4. This work draws upon the following earlier studies: Chapter 1: congress presentation in Düsseldorf, 1998, published in Moderne(n) der Jahrhundertwenden , ed. V. Borsò and B. Goldammer (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000); Italian translation, Bologna 2003. Chapter 2: Jaspers lecture in Oldenburg and congress presentation in Bonn 2002; Italian translation published in Paradigmi 20, no. 60 (2002); Georgian translation, Tbilisi 2002; Chinese translation, Beijing 2004; German in Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen 19, German Congress for Philosophy, ed. W. Hogrebe (Berlin: Akademie, 2004). Chapter 3: published in Der Anspruch des Anderen, ed. B. Waldenfels and I. Därmann (Munich: Fink, 1998); first publication in Japanese, Osaka 1996; further publications in Spanish , Hungarian (1997), Russian, Czech (1998), Polish (1999), French (2000), Italian (2002), English and Georgian (2003). Chapter 4: lectures in Copenhagen 2002 and in Helsinki 2003, published in Vernunft – Entwicklung – Leben, ed. U. Bröckling, A. Paul, and St. Kaufmann (Munich: Fink, 2004); English translation in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3 (2004); Finnish translation in Ajatus 61 (2004). Chapter 5: published in Links (Pisa, Rome) 2 (2002). Chapter 6: published in Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache, ed. A.Wierlacher et al., vol. 26 (Munich: Iudicium, 2000); Italian translation in Aut-Aut no. 313–14 (2003). 86 N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 0 – 3 3 Chapter 1 1. The figure of the apolis emerges from the background of the polis, and Sophocles contrasts it with the uJyivpoli", the “outstanding one in the city’” (Antigone 5.370). The person who comes under the title of apolis corresponds to the “stateless person” in our current sense, but it can also be taken in a wider sense as analogous to the aforementioned atopos who is literally “placeless” and who is also considered to be “out of place” or “strange.” The alpha privativum in both Greek expressions can be conceived not merely as a negation, but also as expressing a withdrawal. 2. See Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit, chapter 3: “Unerzählbares.” 3. See Vittoria Borsò, whose book Mexiko jenseits der Einsamkeit—Versuch einer interkulturellen Analyse (1994) contains an interesting view of the motif of the alien in contemporary literature and literary theory. 4. These ideas are explored in my Grenzen der Normalisierung (1998). 5. This impossibility is not limited to but includes a pathological side. See my contribution, “Gelebte Unmöglichkeit,” in Inszenierungen des Unmöglichen: Theorie und Therapie schwerer Persönlichkeitsstörungen, ed. C. Rohde-Dachser and F. Wellendorf (2004). Chapter 2 1. The aforementioned “as” is familiar to us from other languages as h/|, qua, als, comme, or come. 2. The old doctrine of catharsis would also need to be questioned again, no matter whether catharsis is conceived of as a cleansing of affects or a cleansing from affects. The process, understood half in medical, half in moral terms, which used to be called “cleansing” and is nowadays called “working through,” turns all too easily into an affectively guided ordering of the pathic. 3. The fact that intentionality and causality are not separated by an abyss became clear to me early on (see Der Spielraum des Verhaltens, 1980, chapter 4). It just took some time to differentiate the concept of effect with sufficient precision . 4. We need, however, to note the growing significance of emotions both in psychology and in neurophysiology after they have long been in the shadow of cognitions which are more accessible to computer modeling. Hubert Dreyfus has brought phenomenological aspects into this debate for a long time, giving more credit to bodily situatedness, habitualization, and implicit knowledge than traditional role models. 5. See my reflections on the “aporias of violence” in Dabag, Kapust, Waldenfels...