Rationale for Reading Programme

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This rationale was presented, in slightly more schematic terms, at the outset of the Reading Programme. I
have fleshed it out a bit at the request of students who are also following the programme in preparation for
Winter School 2015.
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I would ask participants to keep the following in mind when doing the readings etc:
1) A central concern that guides the ordering of the texts for this reading programme is to provide
participants with a sense of the aesthetic that extends beyond the commonly held notion of the
appreciation of art or form. As such, the programme offers two separate itineraries for aesthetics as
a concept:
a. Beginning with Fanon, we present aesthetics as a form of judgement that holds a very
troubling implication for the question of the postcolonial, of race, of the project of, as
he phrases it, "setting a foot a new man", a concept of man that has already "left this
European" concept of man behind. So to be clear, for Fanon aesthetics as a
philosophy of judgement is exceptionally important but needs to be refashioned, so to
speak. This is where the Bachir Diagne text comes in. A critical element that he
provides, through reading Senghor in relation to Bergson etc, is precisely the shape of
the terrain on which such a new concept of the aesthetic might be formed. This is why
we are reading his book alongside the other itinerary.
b. Beginning from Kant, we sketch the contours of an itinerary that traverses the
foundation of aesthetics as a philosophy of judgement that is most clearly inscribed in
the concept of Man that Fanon et al want to depart from. Due to time constraints, we
rely somewhat on secondary readings of some key figures, such as Schiller and
Hegel, to craft the depth of the stakes of the aesthetic and, particularly, how it relates
to:
i. the transition from grasping the aesthetic as a philosophy of judgement
which would enable the philosophical project more generally, and in
return, enable the self identification as man (with all the requisite
characteristics such as a white skin, a capacity for reason, established
dominion over land [i.e. property], and a penis) which in its claim offers the
colonial project a sense of legitimacy, on the one hand (this is in Kant, for
eg.)
ii. to a sense of the aesthetic as a question only of taste (Schiller and Hegel),
as in Hegel's statement that "when we speak of aesthetics we speak of
nothing but fine art", that nevertheless is intimately connected to the
philosophical outworking of the conditions through which a person might
be able to self-identify as Man. Notice, the racial displacement is
established in Kant, is embellished in Hegel and Schiller (i.e. they are able
to assume its validity for Man). As the reading on Schiller makes clear, this
has incredibly important political implications. In fact, the implications are

so stark that we might state that the question of aesthetics is the question
of politics.
This trajectory has, of course, never been able to articulate itself in pure separation from the racial
other. This is where the Brown readings become useful in highlighting exactly how the racial other in
fact comes to write the concept of the beautiful as it is found in Kant's philosophy of judgement. The
racial other is, quite simply, the trace that enables the articulation of the entire Kantian philosophical
project.
2) Technology has always been an integral question in the articulation of both Man and Aesthetics as
a philosophy of judgement. To tie this in to the problematic of the Winter School in a far to simple
and hasty formulation: to speak technically is to speak the question of Man. As such the reading
programme seeks to hold on to this broader sense of the aesthetics and technology, precisely to
resist the sense of technology as external to the human. The stakes for this are set out in the first
readings of Derrida and Stiegler. In fact, we read this alongside the Fanon to highlight that while
the expression of the concern is different, the concern itself is turned toward the same problematic
-- the need to think the concept of man anew.
3) This brings us to the final weeks of the reading programme. Here we read Senghor and Cesaire as
two explicit attempts to counteract the second itinerary outlined above, as well as to sketch the
terrain for the emergence of a new sense of Man through the production of a new sense of the
aesthetic. Critically important here is that this IS NOT a question of sketching a sense of the
aesthetic that would emerge from "outside Europe", as the decolonial thinkers are want to argue,
but rather that the thinking of this work must set-to-work on Europe as much as on what has been
produced as non-Europe, not to affirm the non-European in the face of the European, but rather to
place the entire dichotomy in to question. These readings join with the Bachir Diagne to set the
terrain for a critical reflection on two distinct but not separate questionings of technology, Man, and
aesthetics that are found in Deleuze and Stiegler. These final readings, approached within the
frame of the itineraries sketched above, will prepare participants in the Winter School to critically
engage and read the talks, discussions, lectures, etc. that will be offered through the Winter School
under the theme of "technically speaking".
4) In summary, participants in the reading programme should be left with a strong sense of the
following:
a) of aesthetics as a philosophical concept and its implications for art, for politics, and for
race
b) of the terrain through which aesthetics, technology, and Man, can be thought as
elements internal to the formulation of each other, and as such in need of coherent
theoretical and philosophical "re: working"
c) of a ground from which to productively engage with the discussions at Winter School
so that participants are not passive recipients of a discourse presented by "experts",
but rather active shapers of a discourse that might critically inflict the perspectives
offered by the "experts".