Joel White | Staffordshire University (original) (raw)

Papers by Joel White

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2024

The present article continues my work in logomachy and the philosophy of education. It turns to B... more The present article continues my work in logomachy and the philosophy
of education. It turns to Bernard Stiegler’s concept of the ‘idiotext’ as
the means of terming what I have previously called ‘particular sets of
sense’. The gambit of the article is that ‘intropy’ (uncertainty provoked
by informational complexity) provides a very useful concept to describe
how idiotexts locally make-sense, and their idiomatic nature. Over and
above this, and pertinent to the philosophy of education, intropy aids
in criticising the esoteric and initiative nature of conservative educative
structures (first theorised by R. S. Peters) since it describes the modality
of uncertainty when faced with sets of sense that one is not initiated
into—the inside and outside of sense. The article is, therefore, also con-
cerned with education as the reproduction of idiotexts qua domains of
knowledge. Using figurative spirals (first proposed by Stiegler), spiral
mathematics and a novel formula that integrates entropy into logarithmic
spirals, I represent the maintenance of idiotexts as resisting the ineluc-
table increase in entropy of downward spirals—understood as the defer-
ral of the degradation of sense. Finally, I argue that instead of education
as initiation, which can be described as the educative opening of the
gates to particular domains of knowledge, what is sorely missing is
education as idiotextual as com-prehension, something I term
transeducation.

Technophany, 2023

This article has two overlapping aims, one specific and the other general. Specifically, it will ... more This article has two overlapping aims, one specific and the other general. Specifically, it will demonstrate how the thermodynamic concept of metastability, as it distinguishes itself from thermodynamic stability and instability, may offer philosophical semantics (the philosophy of meaning, reference, and its related issues) the theoretical means with which to formulate or transduce, the laws of a novel logic or art of sense called logomachy. The general aim is, therefore, to introduce this logic of sense so that the article may then serves as a propaedeutic for further work in logomachy.

Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 2023

Modern and contemporary transhumanism has seen a recent rise in academic and popular relevance; s... more Modern and contemporary transhumanism has seen a recent rise in academic and popular relevance; specific naïve metaphysical ideas, such as immortality, have returned with this rise. This article refrains from any ethical or political assessment of transhumanism. Still, it critiques the exact metaphysical or idealistic nature of transhuman-ism and its pursuit of digital immortality: the idea that, through technological advancements, precisely in Artificial General Intelligence, an immortal virtual “self” will become possible. The article follows the form of Immanuel Kant’s “Paralogisms” from the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant is concerned with the substan-tial, immortal nature of the soul and its experiential impossibility. The article will offer theoretical and practical paralogisms (false logical inferences), arguing that the transhumanist claim that digital immortality is possible fundamentally stems from two incorrect major premises. The first concerns the substantial nature of informa-tion, which informs the theoretical paralogisms; the second con-cerns infinite transformation (pure plasticity), which informs the practical paralogisms

Open Philosophy

This article asks what an adequate philosophical response to the certainty of heat death would be... more This article asks what an adequate philosophical response to the certainty of heat death would be: the moment in the timeline of the universe when all possible energy transformations have been actualized and life, thought, and action cease to be possible. Through a reading of Hans Jonas’s existential work on Gnosticism, the article begins by defining what is meant by the notions cosmotheoretical and cosmoethical as well as offering a description of what Jonas calls “cosmic nihilism.” After this, the article looks at two extreme philosophical responses to heat death. The first response examined is by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose eternal return is shown to be a reactive philosophical response to the linear entropic finitude that heat death implies. The second response is by Ray Brassier. Different from Nietzsche, Brassier is shown to affirm the extinction that heat death promises. However, his insistence that heat death partakes of the transcendental and the real, but not the ideal, is ...

Open Philosophy, 2023

This article asks what an adequate philosophical response to the certainty of heat death would be... more This article asks what an adequate philosophical response to the certainty of heat death would be: the moment in the timeline of the universe when all possible energy transformations have been actualized and life, thought, and action cease to be possible. Through a reading of Hans Jonas's existential work on Gnosticism, the article begins by defining what is meant by the notions cosmotheoretical and cosmoethical as well as offering a description of what Jonas calls "cosmic nihilism." After this, the article looks at two extreme philosophical responses to heat death. The first response examined is by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose eternal return is shown to be a reactive philosophical response to the linear entropic finitude that heat death implies. The second response is by Ray Brassier. Different from Nietzsche, Brassier is shown to affirm the extinction that heat death promises. However, his insistence that heat death partakes of the transcendental and the real, but not the ideal, is demonstrated to be amphibolous. In the final part of the article, I offer what could be called a thermodynamic architectonic response to the heat death of the universe, arguing that heat death should be understood as a guiding transcendental Idea in the Kantian sense of the term.

Contingency and Plasticity in Everyday Technologies, 2022

The current urgency of ecological matters has initiated a new philosophical concern with the rela... more The current urgency of ecological matters has initiated a new philosophical concern with the relation between life and thermodynamics (the science of energy and entropy). French philosopher Bernard Stiegler has consequently proposed that anthropogenic climate change-the Anthropocene-be renamed the 'Entropocene.' 1 His justification for offering another kenos to the already long list of alternatives is that anthropogenic climate change is largely conditioned by an acceleration in the rate of entropy production-thermodynamically definable as the unidirectional (from hot to cold) transfer of heat between systems (classical thermodynamics) or the probabilistic distribution of particle energy (statistical mechanics). In support of Stiegler's proposition, theoretical biologist Maël Montévil argues that this acceleration of entropy is being produced at multiple levels from the thermodynamic to the 'biological and the social.' 2 Stored energy in the form of fossil fuels continues to be dissipated at an industrial rate, biodiversity and 'anti-entropy' 3 (what Montévil, after Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly, defines as the functional complexity that contributes to an organism's 'persistence' through time) is declining faster than expected and political alternatives to capitalism, ones that might offer actual socio-ecological solutions have all but disappeared. Following Stiegler, this chapter argue that a philosophy of entropy is needed.

Aesthetic Literacy

nylon and hydrochloric acid (figure. 1).

Performance Philosophy

This article begins by arguing that the ‘madness’ of Antonin Artaud is either fetishised or resis... more This article begins by arguing that the ‘madness’ of Antonin Artaud is either fetishised or resisted, depending on the disciplinary angle from which one works. It proposes an alternative approach to the study of Artaud, which might avoid such pitfalls by reading Artaud’s work as performative philosophy or a philosophy of performance. The approach is defined by the principle of ‘working with’, rather than working on, a literary or philosophical figure. The second part of the article works, or philosophises, with Artaud, reading his work on the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ alongside Immanuel Kant’s work on judgment from the third Critique. It explores the Kantian distinction between determining and reflective judgment, extending reflective judgment into what I call anarchic reflection. To do so, the article elucidates the conceptual relation between actuality, entropy, an-archy, cruelty and sublimity, defining anarchic reflection as an unintentional and/or intentional crisis of the judgment o...

The conceptual gambit of this article is to propose that the notion of anti-entropy should be com... more The conceptual gambit of this article is to propose that the notion of anti-entropy should be complemented by that of exergy investment or destruction, a term first proposed by Zoran Rant in 1956. It argues that one of Bernard Stiegler's most important interventions into deconstruction is the thermodynamic reformulation of Derridean diff erance. I argue that we should view the idea of anti-entropy as likewise the displacement of entropy to an external system. With the notion of exergy, it becomes possible to outline an economics of exergy expenditure and investment that considers this displacement. Having argued for the necessity of exergy as a concept that may complement anti-entropy, I demonstrate that this economy of exergy expenditure, through transductive analogy, can be applied to signification. An economics of exergy may give crucial insight into the transcendental problem of signification; that which Derrida's notion of diff erance first responded to. I ask the question: can a trace-like logic of sense be understood energetically if trace itself is understood to be materially inscribed into the world? Having explored this question, I then outline how education might be understood as both the means through with traditional significations are energetically maintained as well as the means through which metastable significations can be disrupted. I use the recent banning of anticapitalist literature in the UK as an example of what I call logomachics, a conflict of significative exergetic investment and disinvestment.

Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 2020

The notion and image of the Sun occupies a privileged position in the history of philosophy, espe... more The notion and image of the Sun occupies a privileged position in the history of philosophy, especially the history and reception of metaphysics since Plato. 1 The notion of a stable, unchanging source of light gives metaphysics, understood as the desire to transcend the ephemeral and perishable nature of matter, one of its most persistent symbols. 2 Analogically, the closer one is to this clear and distinct sphere of light, the closer one is to a pure intellection that escapes the grasp of the sensible. As such, everything that hides in shadows and caves is not graced with the epistemological and ontological dispensation that the Sun, qua father, Pli 32 grants. 3 If metaphysics is to be understood as the desire for an undivided, undying first cause that is beyond both or either Being or being/existence, Plato's epekeina tês ousias, 4 then what are the consequences for such a desire if the very symbol of metaphysics, the Sun, is found to be conditioned by the same energetic principles as a lamp, a torch or a cooling cup of coffee? 5 Would it be possible to reformulate Plato's analogy of the 3 Throughout this paper, I have relied on Plato: Complete Works, ed. by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). I have used the Liddell-Scott-Jones abbreviations for Plato's works followed by Stephanus pagination and put the translator's name next to it for only the first reference, as the translations do not alter throughout the paper: Republic -Resp., Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve; Theaetetus -Tht., Levett, rev. Burnyeat; Phaedrus -Phdr.,

Angelaki, 2018

This article argues that Walter Benjamin’s aesthetico-political philosophy cannot be understood w... more This article argues that Walter Benjamin’s aesthetico-political philosophy cannot be understood without reconsidering Hamlet. It elucidates Benjamin’s Hamlet via his theory of Baroque “mourning” and its counter-measure, the “Saturnine Dialectic.” It likewise offers an analysis of the 1877 Herman Ulrici edition of Hamlet, the German edition Benjamin cites exclusively. This analysis reconciles the differences in the secondary literature regarding Benjamin’s Hamlet, expounding upon the edition’s singular use of the word “foreordination” (Fügung). Finally, by rereading Benjamin’s Hamlet through Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba, it argues that Fortinbras’s succession, effectuated by Hamlet’s dying voice, conditions the repetition of sovereignty in Hamlet, betraying the emergence of the new. Despite this betrayal, the revolutionary potential that is sunken into the content of Hamlet is disjunctively brought to the surface by examining the “dialectical image” of Laertes’s rebellion, rescuing what I term the revolutionary-new from the jaws of defeat.

Performance Philosophy, 2018

Isidore Isou moved to Paris in 1945 with the single purpose of founding a movement that would sur... more Isidore Isou moved to Paris in 1945 with the single purpose of founding a movement that would surpass Tristan Tzara's Dadaism and André Breton's Surrealism. Regarding these movements as exhausted of revolutionary and creative potential, Isou and his early supporters, Maurice Lemaître, Gil J Wolman, and Guy Debord set out to reinvigorate France's artistic and political avant-garde. (Wolman and Debord would later split to form the Lettrist International in 1952 before finally creating the Situationist International in 1957). Artistically, this meant 'creatively diverting' (créativité détourné) the material support of formal artworks so that new possibilities latent in the material could become manifest. Words were reduced to graphemes and phonemes and then built back up again to make 'hypergraphic' or 'lettrie' poems. Images and figures were morphed into shadowy blocks that would consume themselves, and films were 'chiselled' and scratched to which 'discrepant sounds' were added and juxtaposed (for example, Lemâitre's 1969 film Youth Uprising – May 68). While this had significant influence, via the Situationist International, on the aesthetics of '68, it is Isou's 'nuclear' political economy and his manifestos for the Youth Uprising (1949) that hold the most weight. The notion of the abolishment of 'youth-capital' found in Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Mustapha Khayat's On the Poverty of Student Life (1966) both develop the notion of a youth 'externalised' from capital's internal exchange 'circuits.' For Isou, the youth constituted the 'primary revolutionary force' of any insurrection because of their not-yet internalised but likewise exploited, socioeconomic status. Isou even complains in 1974 that his particular conception of the revolutionary youth was the 'real motor of the youth uprising in May '68,' and not the 'neo-Nazi situationists' that only knew how to plagiarise him. Translated here for the first time is a rare text published in the summer of 1968: no.5 of the second series of the Lettrist journal Youth Uprising, entitled 'Between Isou and Marcuse.' In true Lettrist style, Isou (who writes in the third person) both insults and lampoons Marcuse's 'sub-sub-Marxism,' while excessively praising his own philosophical and political rigour. Correct or not in its assessment of Marcuse's and Isou's influence on '68, this text should be read as one of the first and most explicit attempts at theoretically re-appropriating May.

Chapter for the book Afternoon: In Medias Res

Like any good twenty minute presentation, I would like to start with a sweeping statement about t... more Like any good twenty minute presentation, I would like to start with a sweeping statement about the history of Western philosophy. The aim is that this statement will help to open up the presence of a conflict inherent at the site of naming -something that I call, polemically, logomachia. The claim is that a reflection on logomachia necessarily disrupts the power of the Event, qua singular, simple and withoutrelation. The repetition of statements provide the site from within which conflict can positively open up tradition. They provide this site through their repetition and through the work of interpretation. Repetition and interpretation set the stage for conflict. Conflict is taken to mean a striving against, and necessities a plurality of conflictual and relational forces. These relational forces, being re-lational and therefore partaking of the logic of 'the again,' disrupt any possibility of the Event being timeless and selfidentical. Conflict naming, or, logomachia, is therefore likewise in a conflictual relationship with tradition. Akin to both Benjamin and Heidegger's conceptions, tradition is taken to mean the establishment qua reestablishment of the "already given," be that conceptual and categorical in Heidegger, or political and cultural in Benjamin. That is to say, the establishment or appropriation of tradition is the re-establishment of a disequilibria of power in either of these domains. This power dominants meaning and in turn names the Event. The Event is the name of tradition's appropriation -it is that which makes tradition appear selfevident. Tradition is therefore never just tradition, it is never just a handing down of the past into the present. The force of tradition at the site of naming is the force of an appropriation of the present for the sake of the future of tradition. The past that is handed down into the present is therefore never just the past, but is structured by the force of the will of tradition that attempts to re-inaugurate itself, in the present, as the self-evident for the future. The force of tradition therefore, names/ appropriates not only the past, but the present and the future. It hands them over to self-evidence, to fate. Bound fast by the logic of fate, tradition believes to be singular, changeless and determinate -immune from the dangers of conflict, immune from conflict naming, immune from logomachia. The deferred statement is as follows, this statement repeats and names the already given. It begins interpretation, reflection: The history of Western metaphysics has always repressed or abased the conflictual nature of naming in its relation to Being. This repression has been to secure ontology, epistemology and metaphysics from what they believe to be the dangers of conflict. It secures tradition's appropriation.

Antae, 2015

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: a. Authors retain copyright a... more Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Conference Presentations by Joel White

There is an old joke about a logomachy. A criminal is trying to hide from his pursuers. His frien... more There is an old joke about a logomachy. A criminal is trying to hide from his pursuers. His friends, knowing where best to hide him, inform him that there's a 'well in an unfrequented place.' 'The fellow goes orderly but perceiving the well in a decayed condition runs back to his friends and very angrily complains that they had abused him. That instead of a well, there was nothing but ruins and walls. What then? We sent you there not to quench your thirst, but to hide your carcase, for which designed is a very proper place, as you must know, if you have been there. Still the fellow would have it, that it had been a well, but now was none; and therefore they had misinformed him…The man, still persisting in his folly, was, by and by, apprehended, and Jack Ketch put an end to the controversy, detaching his head from his body.' 1 But as is said, 'laughing at logomachys may prevent them, but will never cure them.' 2 What of this cure? What of the logomachy? This paper will elucidate the philosophical repercussions of the term 'logomachy' as it is pharmacologically conceived. Pharmaco-logy, names a discourse whereby objects, both of thought and of substance, are conceived of in terms of endogenous or exogenous bio-active supplements: remedy and cure; infection and contagion. The pharmakon of pharmacology signifies the preparation of a toxin that constitutes its own antidote; in other words, solutions remain contained within the parameters of their particular problems. This containment names the logos of pharmaco-logy. It names the containment of a discourse. The parasitic hence finds itself included within the logic of the pharmakon as supplement. Already in De la grammatolgie, and then in 'La Pharmacie de Platon,' Derrida makes this claim clear, 'Le pharmakon… est un parasite supplémentaire' 3 . Whether the parasitic is endogenous, deriving its sustained origin from within, or exogenous, arriving from without, will be examined in reference to the Swiss theologian Samuel Werenfels's 1688 book, De logomachiis eruditorum. Beyond the rediscovery of this peculiar book, a book which founds logomachy's conceptual and philosophical use, this paper will open up what is significant in the coming together of the two Greeks words logos and makhia. As with any opening up qua dismantling, the subsequent realignment of the dismantled parts always retains the 1 Samuel Werenfels, De logomachiis eruditorum

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2024

Technophany, 2023

Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 2023

Open Philosophy

Open Philosophy, 2023

This article asks what an adequate philosophical response to the certainty of heat death would be... more This article asks what an adequate philosophical response to the certainty of heat death would be: the moment in the timeline of the universe when all possible energy transformations have been actualized and life, thought, and action cease to be possible. Through a reading of Hans Jonas's existential work on Gnosticism, the article begins by defining what is meant by the notions cosmotheoretical and cosmoethical as well as offering a description of what Jonas calls "cosmic nihilism." After this, the article looks at two extreme philosophical responses to heat death. The first response examined is by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose eternal return is shown to be a reactive philosophical response to the linear entropic finitude that heat death implies. The second response is by Ray Brassier. Different from Nietzsche, Brassier is shown to affirm the extinction that heat death promises. However, his insistence that heat death partakes of the transcendental and the real, but not the ideal, is demonstrated to be amphibolous. In the final part of the article, I offer what could be called a thermodynamic architectonic response to the heat death of the universe, arguing that heat death should be understood as a guiding transcendental Idea in the Kantian sense of the term.

Contingency and Plasticity in Everyday Technologies, 2022

Aesthetic Literacy

nylon and hydrochloric acid (figure. 1).

Performance Philosophy

Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 2020

Angelaki, 2018

Performance Philosophy, 2018

Chapter for the book Afternoon: In Medias Res

Antae, 2015

Parmenides, 'Apart from what-is nothing else/Either is or will be, since what-is is what Fate bou... more Parmenides, 'Apart from what-is nothing else/Either is or will be, since what-is is what Fate bound/ To be entire and changeless. Therefore all those things which mortal men/ Trusting in their true reality, have proposed, are no more than names.'

Heraclitus, 'It must be recognised that war is common to all and conflict is justice and that the all comes to be in accordance with conflict and is necessitated by it.'

Futures of Indeterminacy, 2020

This first part of this presentation will look at the entropic consequences of heat death and the... more This first part of this presentation will look at the entropic consequences of heat death and the philosophical problems that arises from a reflection with it. In the second part, I will look at life's seemingly indeterminate status as both entropic and anti-entropic. It will end with some questions related to the future of life that stem from the first two parts put into relation, that is life's part in the tendency toward energy dissipation.

Logomachy, logomachie: (late 16 th century: from Greek logomakhia, from logos 'word, account, rea... more Logomachy, logomachie: (late 16 th century: from Greek logomakhia, from logos 'word, account, reason' + makhia 'war, battle, fight').