Termin

Building on the distinction (highlighted by Derrida) between constative and performative speech acts, on the one hand, and the event, on the other, we shall attempt to specify a resistance to knowledge and to power. Is it the resistance of an irreducible otherness which, nonetheless, addresses me, speaks to me (Levinas); is it the resistance to symbolisation of the real (Lacan)? How may one respond to, how may one take responsibility for this resistance, which insistently imposes itself, breaks in, interrupts? How may we leave a place for such resistance within our lives, and in our institutions? We shall attempt to characterise an ethical response to, and responsibility towards the event’s resistance – which may provide an ethical resistance to (the reduction of the social field to) politics.

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