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Essays by Virgil Brower

HORIZON, 2021

The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveile... more The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in
2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes
worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak”
by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads
in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth,
or any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a
mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly
revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language
exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten
(mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of
language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests
ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a
presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the
Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning.

Le foucaldien, 2020

This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society.... more This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion.

Insects in Literature & the Arts, 2014

"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communica... more "Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection."

Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, 2017

"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bew... more "One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources, rendering explicit what remains implicit and providing a reliable guide to his reading of the many figures he draws from....‘Submerged Dialogues’, focuses on figures who seem to be lurking in the background of Agamben’s arguments even though he mentions them only fleetingly, if at all."
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani

Roman Ingarden and His Times, 2020

This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an in... more This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by Jean-Luc Marion. It compares the dynamics of time in the former with the those of wine in the latter. Emphasis is given to lngarden's insinuation of time as fluid, liquid,
or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption of semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time.

Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2020

This essay experiments with Kant's writings on rational religion distilled through the Strange Ca... more This essay experiments with Kant's writings on rational religion distilled through the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as canonical confrontations with primal problems of evil. It suggests boundaries between Stevenson's characters and their occupations comparable to the those conflicted in the Kantian university, namely, law, medicine, theology, and philosophy (which makes a short anticipatory appearance in his earlier text on rational religion). With various faculties it investigates diffuse comprehensions-respectively , legal crime, biogenetic transmission, and original sin-of key ethical modes: will, inheritance, incorporation, freedom, duty, obligation, love, living, and killing to conclude on the possible logic of evil (or evils of logic) collateral and possibly innate to Kant's comprehension of radical evil.

Assuming Gender, 2:1, 2011

"The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality... more "The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality within philosophical, feminist, and lesbian traditions..."
("Editorial" by Michelle Iwen)

Abstract:
The 'traditional philosophical prestige' of seeing and touching, as analyzed by Emmanuel Levinas, comes to dominate the qualities of the other three senses. An investigation of the roles of these prestigious senses, along with the resultant privileged sense-organs of the hand and the eye, within phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and gender- or queer-theory suggests that the part of the prestige of touch will have been related to its function in the phenomenality of feeling. Yet the sense of taste seems to be as applicable, if not more so, to the phenomenal experience of selfhood based on feeling as theorized by Edmund Husserl and Jean-Luc Marion. The tongue, rather than the hand, is reconsidered as a sense-organ of touch in order to salvage the all but lost tang of the tangible. As such, the tongue and taste not only illuminate the shortcomings of binary gender theories based on either inner feeling or outer surface anatomy (or, either interior orifices or exterior appendages), but further discover a remarkable phenomenology of the body to be found in the writings of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig that moves beyond certain masculine tendencies lurking about the hand and observation (as described by Freud and Butler). The phenomenal experience of the other that yields either empathy (for Husserl), love/eros (for Marion), or hearing and heeding 'Thou shall not kill' (for Levinas) has much to learn from the orality of women's writing. The third body, as written by Cixous, can experience the self as selftaste (as considered by Derrida) and experiences the other as the taste of the other. It is, thereby, opened to a love or a justice (or an erotic justice) beyond the proclamation of Levinas that 'ethics is an optics' as well as any ethics as a mere haptics to be found in Husserl or Marion, where feeling seems always determined by the hand.

Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, 2017

"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bew... more "One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources, rendering explicit what remains implicit and providing a reliable guide to his reading of the many figures he draws from....‘Submerged Dialogues’, focuses on figures who seem to be lurking in the background of Agamben’s arguments even though he mentions them only fleetingly, if at all."
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani

Acta Universitatis Carolinae Theologica , 2019

Jean-Luc Marion obliquely suggests that we return to religion when we think through and struggle ... more Jean-Luc Marion obliquely suggests that we return to religion when we think through and struggle with those topics that philosophy excludes or subjugates. This paper investigates a selection of such subjugated motifs. Marion’s recent claim (perhaps even ‘principle’): “auto-affection alone makes possible hetero-affection,” will be examined through piecemeal influences made upon its development through Marion’s return to religious thinking beyond the delimited jurisdiction of philosophy. Although still proper to the philosophies of Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, Marion finds new insights by tracing their legacy back further to the Christian gospels, Augustine, Aquinas, and, importantly, Nicholas of Cusa. Philosophy, proper, (if there is such a thing) may well adumbrate human understanding of data, phenomena, and possibility by discouraging any further thinking of them in terms of love, givenness, or revelation. It is by preferentially opting for these themes that philosophy excludes or subjugates that makes possible the entanglement of truth with love, suggested by Marion: “truths that one knows only if one loves them first.”

Inside Higher Ed, May 3, 2012

"It’s a fascinating essay, one that thoroughly justifies and vouches for spending serious time wi... more "It’s a fascinating essay, one that thoroughly justifies and vouches for spending serious time with great, or nearly great books. It’s actually exciting when he recounts the logical fallacies that are uncovered through reading a Malcolm X speech. The idea of assigning *Gravity’s Rainbow* to illustrate the concepts of analytic philosophy is motivating — but the essay is most exciting when he talks about the way the students respond"
~ vouchedbooks.com (10 May 2012)
https://vouchedbooks.com/2012/05/10/great-books/

Everyday Genius, Jun 2012

For the month of June, EG has become a print journal. The 110-page magazine features work from 2... more For the month of June, EG has become a print journal.
The 110-page magazine features work from 21 writers, four artists, and no analytic philosophers.
http://www.everyday-genius.com/2012/06/

Postscripts: Journal of Sacred Texts, 3:2, 2010

"Brower offers a deconstructive reading of what it means to taste (the coming of, the justice of)... more "Brower offers a deconstructive reading of what it means to taste (the coming of, the justice of) the messiah in Luther and Derrida, among others..."
("Editorial" by Jay Twomey, p. 130)

Abstract:
This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipisisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of self-reflexivity that emerges in the sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh

Wassard Elea Rivista, 6:3, 2018

French Literature Series, 38, Psychoanalysis in Francophone Literature & Film, 2011

"Brower provides a vivid demonstration of the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition in France ... more "Brower provides a vivid demonstration of the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition in France and its theories of the incarnate word. Taking off in large part from Derrida's reading of Freud's essay on the mystic writing pad, Brower asks what do we mean by a slip of the tongue or slip of the pen, and in what way do the images that surround these notions privilege sight over the other senses. The tongue, moreover, is not just an organ of speech. It is also the site of taste. Taste seems immediate; it seems to be removed from the scene of writing, or from the ineradicable difference that Derrida detects in Husserlian phenomenology in *Speech and Phenomenon*. But to the extent that Derrida sees taste and touch as part of the future of psychoanalysis, then these senses too much be mediated, must be inscribed in the logic of the trace and hence subject to interpretation. Taste, and particularly self-taste, is never simply present, but always mediated by the voice of the Other..."
("Introduction" to FLS 38, by Paul Allen Miller, p. xvii)

Abstract:
Following one of Jacques Derrida’s early questions — namely, How is writing involved in speech? — this essay reconsiders the role of the tongue and the sense of taste in the oral phenomena of speaking and saying. The contact the tongue makes with the mouth or teeth is just as much a materialization of language as what is commonly called “writing.” The tongue acts as a pen and the mouth, as a blank page (or palimpsest). Mouthed writing is accompanied by sense experiences. There are various selftastes to the tastes of speaking, the tastes of words, or, even, the tastes of thoughts. Freud’s notes on speaking in one’s sleep, telepathy, the mystic writing-pad, and memory are revisited and sup- plemented with the writings of Hélène Cixous on the taste of words, telephoning, saying-to-oneself, and forgetting. The auto-affection of tasting-oneself-speakwriting is offered as an alternative to the meta- physical presumptions Derrida implicates in Husserl’s understanding of speech based on the auto-affection of hearing-oneself-speak. As such, writing (haunted by the trace of death) and speech (invested with living- presence) is now confronted with the selftastes of speakwriting with one’s stylangue in and on the mouth as the scene of writing (ever accompanied by tastes of life-death).

Zētēsis: International Journal for Fine Art, 1:1, 2013

Tolerance of same-sex relations in the earlier Platonic dialogues is called into question in Plat... more Tolerance of same-sex relations in the earlier Platonic dialogues is called into question in Plato's *Laws.* Jennings offers insightful historical and political motivations as to why this Platonic anomaly may have come about. The colloquial image of the gay-friendly Plato is all the more dangerous because it is so tacitly presupposed ~ so uncritically accepted ~ that it seems almost genetically to pass down through the educated classes. To out Plato ~ he who very well may have invented the closet ~ as, himself, a closeted proto-homophobe is utterly scandalous and utterly necessary and...deserves our attention and applause.

Insects & Texts (Actes du colloque Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Toulouse, 4-5 mai 2010), 2011

Interviews by Virgil Brower

Theology, Philosophy & Media Newsletter, 2018

"Brower talks about his research and shares his experience of being a cTPM fellow in Prague."

Full Journal Issues by Virgil Brower

Zētēsis, The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences. , 2013

Zētēsis, No. 1 has both a booklet (uploaded separately as Vol 1.5) and a volume of writing (this ... more Zētēsis, No. 1 has both a booklet (uploaded separately as Vol 1.5) and a volume of writing (this uploaded version here). Please read both together!

From the Preface:

Preface
We Libidinal Economists! Daybreak, Version √2

With this debut volume of Zētēsis, the artists, philosophers, designers, technicians and scientists involved with this project and committed to an ‘old fashioned’ kind of research – that which is generated by a curiosity and deep commitment to know (the whatever) – declare a new Daybreak. It is one that intends to take as a given, complexity and the irrational / imaginary in art and the sciences, physics and metaphysics, culture and its economies, skin and the pleasures of the flesh. It steps to the atonal rhythms of the mimetic patterns of camouflage and the flâneur. It aligns itself with the history of those who were (and remain) willing to ask and act upon this basic question: Supposing it could be otherwise, what would this otherwise look like, become, be, now? We want to say that however it would look, be, become (now), the journey to find out must be fuelled by experiment, rigour, and a willingness to risk.

We owe a strong debt of thanks to our past and present-day interlocutors, from the genealogists, libidinal economists, feminists and queer theory / practitioners to those dancing in, on, and with this new field of ‘wild science’ and its very welcome co-collaborator, the sensual. We also owe a strong debt of thanks to those who were and remain willing to take a (financial) punt on this possibly awkward, possibly bruised, blue-sky thinking endeavour: The Birmingham School of Art in particular and its wider platform, The Birmingham Institute for Art and Design at bCu along with the staff and student artists, designers, philosophers, technicians, web aficionados, research fellows and scientists who gave generously of their time, despite wider pressures cascading onto their already overworked work schedules.

This is not a perfunctory acknowledgment to the School of Art at Margaret Street. For the academic, dare we say, intellectual world – and the universities that nourish its diversity, strident intelligence, playfulness and rigour —seems to have lost its way. This world, our world, challenged as it has been for the last decade or so with profound cuts in the arts & humanities, alongside a gluttonous appetite for all things STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths), and topped with a seemingly wilful misreading of what constitutes experimentation, thinking, practice, indeed research itself, especially when it comes to art, philosophy, social science, culture, needs a bit of TLC (Tender Loving Care).

So the journal and its future offspring, comes with a warning: be prepared to think outside the proverbial box, and to do so, slowly and with care, as if approaching an untamed but curious beast. As an aid memoire, we dedicate this, the first volume, no. 1 to questioning The Cruelty of the Classical Canon. Each intervention / contribution / design decision has been peer-reviewed with members from an internationally and discipline-diverse advisory board. Some of the selected pieces support the classical canon; others reject it outright; still others try to strike a delicate balance between outright rejection and the appeal of its tried and tested repertoire. All have something to do with Nietzsche’s seminal text, Daybreak, Lyotard’s shout (demand), We Libidinal Economists! and the first discovered imaginary number,√2. It is up to you to decide which is which, and why.

Welcome to Zētēsis: a re-search generated by curiosity.

Johnny Golding Editor

HORIZON, 2021

The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveile... more The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in
2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes
worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak”
by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads
in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth,
or any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a
mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly
revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language
exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten
(mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of
language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests
ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a
presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the
Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning.

Le foucaldien, 2020

This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society.... more This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion.

Insects in Literature & the Arts, 2014

"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communica... more "Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection."

Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, 2017

"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bew... more "One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources, rendering explicit what remains implicit and providing a reliable guide to his reading of the many figures he draws from....‘Submerged Dialogues’, focuses on figures who seem to be lurking in the background of Agamben’s arguments even though he mentions them only fleetingly, if at all."
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani

Roman Ingarden and His Times, 2020

This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an in... more This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by Jean-Luc Marion. It compares the dynamics of time in the former with the those of wine in the latter. Emphasis is given to lngarden's insinuation of time as fluid, liquid,
or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption of semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time.

Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2020

This essay experiments with Kant's writings on rational religion distilled through the Strange Ca... more This essay experiments with Kant's writings on rational religion distilled through the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as canonical confrontations with primal problems of evil. It suggests boundaries between Stevenson's characters and their occupations comparable to the those conflicted in the Kantian university, namely, law, medicine, theology, and philosophy (which makes a short anticipatory appearance in his earlier text on rational religion). With various faculties it investigates diffuse comprehensions-respectively , legal crime, biogenetic transmission, and original sin-of key ethical modes: will, inheritance, incorporation, freedom, duty, obligation, love, living, and killing to conclude on the possible logic of evil (or evils of logic) collateral and possibly innate to Kant's comprehension of radical evil.

Assuming Gender, 2:1, 2011

"The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality... more "The gendered body takes a phenomenological turn in Brower’s cosmopolitan essay on oral sexuality within philosophical, feminist, and lesbian traditions..."
("Editorial" by Michelle Iwen)

Abstract:
The 'traditional philosophical prestige' of seeing and touching, as analyzed by Emmanuel Levinas, comes to dominate the qualities of the other three senses. An investigation of the roles of these prestigious senses, along with the resultant privileged sense-organs of the hand and the eye, within phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and gender- or queer-theory suggests that the part of the prestige of touch will have been related to its function in the phenomenality of feeling. Yet the sense of taste seems to be as applicable, if not more so, to the phenomenal experience of selfhood based on feeling as theorized by Edmund Husserl and Jean-Luc Marion. The tongue, rather than the hand, is reconsidered as a sense-organ of touch in order to salvage the all but lost tang of the tangible. As such, the tongue and taste not only illuminate the shortcomings of binary gender theories based on either inner feeling or outer surface anatomy (or, either interior orifices or exterior appendages), but further discover a remarkable phenomenology of the body to be found in the writings of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig that moves beyond certain masculine tendencies lurking about the hand and observation (as described by Freud and Butler). The phenomenal experience of the other that yields either empathy (for Husserl), love/eros (for Marion), or hearing and heeding 'Thou shall not kill' (for Levinas) has much to learn from the orality of women's writing. The third body, as written by Cixous, can experience the self as selftaste (as considered by Derrida) and experiences the other as the taste of the other. It is, thereby, opened to a love or a justice (or an erotic justice) beyond the proclamation of Levinas that 'ethics is an optics' as well as any ethics as a mere haptics to be found in Husserl or Marion, where feeling seems always determined by the hand.

Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, 2017

"One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bew... more "One of the greatest challenges Giorgio Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources that he draws upon in his work...The present volume aims to guide the reader through the maze of Agamben’s sources, rendering explicit what remains implicit and providing a reliable guide to his reading of the many figures he draws from....‘Submerged Dialogues’, focuses on figures who seem to be lurking in the background of Agamben’s arguments even though he mentions them only fleetingly, if at all."
~ "Introduction" by Kotsko & Salzani

Acta Universitatis Carolinae Theologica , 2019

Jean-Luc Marion obliquely suggests that we return to religion when we think through and struggle ... more Jean-Luc Marion obliquely suggests that we return to religion when we think through and struggle with those topics that philosophy excludes or subjugates. This paper investigates a selection of such subjugated motifs. Marion’s recent claim (perhaps even ‘principle’): “auto-affection alone makes possible hetero-affection,” will be examined through piecemeal influences made upon its development through Marion’s return to religious thinking beyond the delimited jurisdiction of philosophy. Although still proper to the philosophies of Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, Marion finds new insights by tracing their legacy back further to the Christian gospels, Augustine, Aquinas, and, importantly, Nicholas of Cusa. Philosophy, proper, (if there is such a thing) may well adumbrate human understanding of data, phenomena, and possibility by discouraging any further thinking of them in terms of love, givenness, or revelation. It is by preferentially opting for these themes that philosophy excludes or subjugates that makes possible the entanglement of truth with love, suggested by Marion: “truths that one knows only if one loves them first.”

Inside Higher Ed, May 3, 2012

"It’s a fascinating essay, one that thoroughly justifies and vouches for spending serious time wi... more "It’s a fascinating essay, one that thoroughly justifies and vouches for spending serious time with great, or nearly great books. It’s actually exciting when he recounts the logical fallacies that are uncovered through reading a Malcolm X speech. The idea of assigning *Gravity’s Rainbow* to illustrate the concepts of analytic philosophy is motivating — but the essay is most exciting when he talks about the way the students respond"
~ vouchedbooks.com (10 May 2012)
https://vouchedbooks.com/2012/05/10/great-books/

Everyday Genius, Jun 2012

For the month of June, EG has become a print journal. The 110-page magazine features work from 2... more For the month of June, EG has become a print journal.
The 110-page magazine features work from 21 writers, four artists, and no analytic philosophers.
http://www.everyday-genius.com/2012/06/

Postscripts: Journal of Sacred Texts, 3:2, 2010

"Brower offers a deconstructive reading of what it means to taste (the coming of, the justice of)... more "Brower offers a deconstructive reading of what it means to taste (the coming of, the justice of) the messiah in Luther and Derrida, among others..."
("Editorial" by Jay Twomey, p. 130)

Abstract:
This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipisisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of self-reflexivity that emerges in the sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh

Wassard Elea Rivista, 6:3, 2018

French Literature Series, 38, Psychoanalysis in Francophone Literature & Film, 2011

"Brower provides a vivid demonstration of the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition in France ... more "Brower provides a vivid demonstration of the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition in France and its theories of the incarnate word. Taking off in large part from Derrida's reading of Freud's essay on the mystic writing pad, Brower asks what do we mean by a slip of the tongue or slip of the pen, and in what way do the images that surround these notions privilege sight over the other senses. The tongue, moreover, is not just an organ of speech. It is also the site of taste. Taste seems immediate; it seems to be removed from the scene of writing, or from the ineradicable difference that Derrida detects in Husserlian phenomenology in *Speech and Phenomenon*. But to the extent that Derrida sees taste and touch as part of the future of psychoanalysis, then these senses too much be mediated, must be inscribed in the logic of the trace and hence subject to interpretation. Taste, and particularly self-taste, is never simply present, but always mediated by the voice of the Other..."
("Introduction" to FLS 38, by Paul Allen Miller, p. xvii)

Abstract:
Following one of Jacques Derrida’s early questions — namely, How is writing involved in speech? — this essay reconsiders the role of the tongue and the sense of taste in the oral phenomena of speaking and saying. The contact the tongue makes with the mouth or teeth is just as much a materialization of language as what is commonly called “writing.” The tongue acts as a pen and the mouth, as a blank page (or palimpsest). Mouthed writing is accompanied by sense experiences. There are various selftastes to the tastes of speaking, the tastes of words, or, even, the tastes of thoughts. Freud’s notes on speaking in one’s sleep, telepathy, the mystic writing-pad, and memory are revisited and sup- plemented with the writings of Hélène Cixous on the taste of words, telephoning, saying-to-oneself, and forgetting. The auto-affection of tasting-oneself-speakwriting is offered as an alternative to the meta- physical presumptions Derrida implicates in Husserl’s understanding of speech based on the auto-affection of hearing-oneself-speak. As such, writing (haunted by the trace of death) and speech (invested with living- presence) is now confronted with the selftastes of speakwriting with one’s stylangue in and on the mouth as the scene of writing (ever accompanied by tastes of life-death).

Zētēsis: International Journal for Fine Art, 1:1, 2013

Tolerance of same-sex relations in the earlier Platonic dialogues is called into question in Plat... more Tolerance of same-sex relations in the earlier Platonic dialogues is called into question in Plato's *Laws.* Jennings offers insightful historical and political motivations as to why this Platonic anomaly may have come about. The colloquial image of the gay-friendly Plato is all the more dangerous because it is so tacitly presupposed ~ so uncritically accepted ~ that it seems almost genetically to pass down through the educated classes. To out Plato ~ he who very well may have invented the closet ~ as, himself, a closeted proto-homophobe is utterly scandalous and utterly necessary and...deserves our attention and applause.

Insects & Texts (Actes du colloque Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Toulouse, 4-5 mai 2010), 2011

Theology, Philosophy & Media Newsletter, 2018

"Brower talks about his research and shares his experience of being a cTPM fellow in Prague."

Zētēsis, The International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Sciences. , 2013

Zētēsis, No. 1 has both a booklet (uploaded separately as Vol 1.5) and a volume of writing (this ... more Zētēsis, No. 1 has both a booklet (uploaded separately as Vol 1.5) and a volume of writing (this uploaded version here). Please read both together!

From the Preface:

Preface
We Libidinal Economists! Daybreak, Version √2

With this debut volume of Zētēsis, the artists, philosophers, designers, technicians and scientists involved with this project and committed to an ‘old fashioned’ kind of research – that which is generated by a curiosity and deep commitment to know (the whatever) – declare a new Daybreak. It is one that intends to take as a given, complexity and the irrational / imaginary in art and the sciences, physics and metaphysics, culture and its economies, skin and the pleasures of the flesh. It steps to the atonal rhythms of the mimetic patterns of camouflage and the flâneur. It aligns itself with the history of those who were (and remain) willing to ask and act upon this basic question: Supposing it could be otherwise, what would this otherwise look like, become, be, now? We want to say that however it would look, be, become (now), the journey to find out must be fuelled by experiment, rigour, and a willingness to risk.

We owe a strong debt of thanks to our past and present-day interlocutors, from the genealogists, libidinal economists, feminists and queer theory / practitioners to those dancing in, on, and with this new field of ‘wild science’ and its very welcome co-collaborator, the sensual. We also owe a strong debt of thanks to those who were and remain willing to take a (financial) punt on this possibly awkward, possibly bruised, blue-sky thinking endeavour: The Birmingham School of Art in particular and its wider platform, The Birmingham Institute for Art and Design at bCu along with the staff and student artists, designers, philosophers, technicians, web aficionados, research fellows and scientists who gave generously of their time, despite wider pressures cascading onto their already overworked work schedules.

This is not a perfunctory acknowledgment to the School of Art at Margaret Street. For the academic, dare we say, intellectual world – and the universities that nourish its diversity, strident intelligence, playfulness and rigour —seems to have lost its way. This world, our world, challenged as it has been for the last decade or so with profound cuts in the arts & humanities, alongside a gluttonous appetite for all things STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths), and topped with a seemingly wilful misreading of what constitutes experimentation, thinking, practice, indeed research itself, especially when it comes to art, philosophy, social science, culture, needs a bit of TLC (Tender Loving Care).

So the journal and its future offspring, comes with a warning: be prepared to think outside the proverbial box, and to do so, slowly and with care, as if approaching an untamed but curious beast. As an aid memoire, we dedicate this, the first volume, no. 1 to questioning The Cruelty of the Classical Canon. Each intervention / contribution / design decision has been peer-reviewed with members from an internationally and discipline-diverse advisory board. Some of the selected pieces support the classical canon; others reject it outright; still others try to strike a delicate balance between outright rejection and the appeal of its tried and tested repertoire. All have something to do with Nietzsche’s seminal text, Daybreak, Lyotard’s shout (demand), We Libidinal Economists! and the first discovered imaginary number,√2. It is up to you to decide which is which, and why.

Welcome to Zētēsis: a re-search generated by curiosity.

Johnny Golding Editor