Matthew R. McLennan | Université Saint-Paul University (original) (raw)
Papers by Matthew R. McLennan
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2018
This article offers a definition of medical humanism and identifies four key contemporary medical... more This article offers a definition of medical humanism and identifies four key contemporary medical humanists in France. It then makes two claims about the historical provenance of their humanism. First, they define it in opposition to a process of iatric medicalization that they trace to certain conceptual errors made by Descartes. But second, they remain more Cartesian than they seem to realize because they accept Descartes's knotting together of humanity, ethics and language. By looking at Gori and Del Volgo, Roudinesco and Ricoeur, the author is able to show how French medical humanism repeats the Cartesian gesture of locating humanity in language - thus facing the problem of the moral standing of so-called "marginal" human persons and non-human animal persons. The author concludes with a call to radicalize French medical humanism in pursuit of a more inclusive medical "personism".
Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 6 (3). Article 2, 2020
This paper explicates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of “decline” in ageing and assesses both its p... more This paper explicates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of “decline” in ageing and assesses both its plausibility and its ethical and political promise. Though I maintain that the concept is largely plausible, and that it helps us to envision social justice for the aged, I also note certain limitations, and these lead me to suggest philosophical and ethical caution as to its range of application. Briefly, both in theory and in practice, Beauvoir appears to questionably conflate the decline of the phenomenological subject with that of a younger adult version of the psychological self or structure of the personality. Through examinations of Beauvoir’s account of dementia and her paternalism towards her dying mother and the declining Jean-Paul Sartre, I suggest how her concept of decline may fall short, but also how her rich phenomenological descriptions point the way to a pluralistic approach to ageing as a social justice issue.
Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal , 2018
An unpacking and critical interpretation of Lyotard's 1969 intervention against Louis Althusser o... more An unpacking and critical interpretation of Lyotard's 1969 intervention against Louis Althusser on the topic of alienation in Marxist discourse.
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy , 2018
Revue politiqueer, 2018
Dans une certaine mesure, la théorie queer jaillit de la négativité et s'en nourrit. La négativit... more Dans une certaine mesure, la théorie queer jaillit de la négativité et s'en nourrit. La négativité en question peut être qualifiée d'affective en ce sens que la violence et l'oppression infligées aux sujets queers, ainsi que la colère et la résistance qu'elles provoquent, peuvent en général et dans un premier temps être caractérisées comme étant négatives. Mais alors quel est le statut philosophique et quelle est la fonction de cette négativité en théorie queer contemporaine ? Est-elle purement critique, purement réactive – voire autodestructrice – ou peut-elle indiquer dialectiquement le chemin d'un meilleur avenir queer ?[1] Le texte qui suit esquisse le bilan de la théorie queer contemporaine à la lumière de cette question de la négativité. Voici la position que nous défendons : il y a en théorie queer un courant ultragauchiste qui déploie la négativité d'une manière particulariste et antirévolutionnaire, tout d'abord pour des raisons de nihilisme actif – c'est-à-dire de cynisme/aventurisme – et en deuxième lieu pour des raisons d'angélisme moral. Cette étude est limitée par son caractère purement diagnostique, ainsi que par la nécessité de rassembler, d'une manière rigoureuse et systématique, des données non-anecdotiques pour concrétiser l'hypothèse qu'il y a, dans le militantisme queer, quelque chose qui ressemble à une dialectique de la liberté et de la terreur. Mais compte tenu de ces limites, il est tout à fait plausible de dire que les queers qui cherchent à se rallier au radicalisme politique font face à la question suivante : comment échapper au dilemme ultragauchiste, c'est-à-dire à l'alternative entre, d'une part, le nihilisme, et de l'autre, une sorte de libéralisme fondamentaliste ? Il n'est pas question ici d'éliminer la négativité des ouvrages et des interventions queers, mais plutôt d'examiner la manière dont cette négativité se manifeste aujourd'hui, ainsi que la manière dont les queers pourraient déployer une certaine négativité politique. Dans la mesure où cet essai offre un diagnostic du problème, il constitue un premier pas dans cette direction. Pour conclure, je proposerai certaines pistes s'appuyant sur les perspectives politiques ouvertes par Monique Wittig pour sortir de l'impasse. Je considère la négativité de ce texte même comme du mortier que nous pourrons utiliser pour bâtir la suite.
Ethics, Politics & Society: A Journal in Moral and Political Philosophy, 2018
This article builds upon Avishai Margalit's distinction between ethical and moral norms of rememb... more This article builds upon Avishai Margalit's distinction between ethical and moral norms of remembrance. While Margalit is limited by his broadly Kantian framework and restricts his arguments to the remembrance of human beings, the author will argue that the resources exist both in his account and in the particularities of Canadian public life to a) account philosophically for what minimal public ethical norms are in place for the remembrance of nonhuman animals, and b) point towards a more robust, properly moral account of nonhuman animal remembrance. The author will take a recent Canadian case study in the public remembrance of nonhuman animals– the 2012 Animals in War Dedication – to show how existing norms are inherently unstable, pointing beyond themselves to a more species-inclusive, properly moral public perspective.
French Journal For Media Research, 2018
This paper unpacks Lyotard’s notion of “differend” and shows how it sheds light on a “post-truth”... more This paper unpacks Lyotard’s notion of “differend” and shows how it sheds light on a “post-truth” socio-political climate. The differend is explored through its linked themes of heterogeneity, victimization, and the challenges of minority voices in the dominant idiom. The paper argues further that Lyotard’s account is descriptively rich but insufficient as a normative approach to the current crisis, though it may nonetheless serve to inspire a political response.
This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Bad... more This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Badiou’s category of ‘antiphilosophy’. We make four movements: firstly, a description of what antiphilosophy is; secondly, an explanation of why the category of antiphilosophy is important to a reading of Levinas; thirdly, an exposition of the antiphilosophical elements of the Carnets and Écrits on captivity; and fourthly, we situate our reading of the notebooks within the larger context of Levinas’s post-captivity work.
Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy , Nov 2013
"Rereading Jean-François Lyotard: Essays on His Later Works", Ashgate Publishing Company, Jan 2013
"Lumpen City: Discourses of Marginality / Marginalizing Discourses," Red Quill Books, 2011
Background: The most well known privacy law case in North American occurred because of the inven... more Background:
The most well known privacy law case in North American occurred because of the invention of photojournalism. Big Data suggests invasion of privacy. Social networks on the Internet are an invention. If online social networks produce Big Data and both Big Data and online social networks suggest invasion of privacy to the popular mind, how do the courts see this? The framework of privacy in law involves the concept of the individual and their right to control personal information. Can there be a new framework for online social groupings or networks, Big Data or very powerful surveillance such as occurs from the NSA?
Objective:
The poster aims to explain the law around individuals and privacy and explore the concepts of the individual in law and philosophy. Looking at an individual Internet user and cases in the law that involve individuals, privacy and the Internet the poster hopes to sketch out a basic legal framework by building on jurisprudence as it is occurring in cases in English common law jurisdictions and connecting this with the exploration of the place of the individual in law and philosophy.
Methods:
This is a theoretical poster although one source is case law. Searches of case law were performed for keywords in our theories such as “Internet, privacy and Individual”. The websites of courts and the Canadian version of Lexis-Nexis called Quick Law were all used to find these cases. These cases were then searched or read for judges’ views on privacy on the Internet. Both authors also used theories of the individual from philosophy and law to develop the exploration. As is the method in legal studies, legislation concerning privacy and the Internet also guided the writing.
Results
One case will be presented that was decided as the poster was being written. The Supreme Court of Canada decided a case that concerns tracking down an Internet user sharing child pornography with Lime Wire file sharing software. Police obtained the name and address from the user’s Internet service provider by using the user’s IP address without a warrant and the court made a statement that Internet users have an expectation of privacy which may also affect research data gathering. This was the case R. v. Spencer 2014 SCC 43 2014-06-13.
Books by Matthew R. McLennan
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021
Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion's writing, from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and scr... more Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion's writing, from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and screen plays, it may appear that there is no unifying thread, but Matthew R. McLennan argues that 'the ethics of memory' – the question of which norms should guide public and private remembrance – offers a promising vision of what is most characteristic and salient in Didion's works.
By framing her universe as indifferent and essentially precarious, McLennan demonstrates how this outlook guides Didion's reflections on key themes linked to memory: namely witnessing and grieving, nostalgia, and the paradoxically amnesiac qualities of our increasingly archived public life that she explored in famous texts like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking and Salvador. McLennan moves beyond the interpretive value of such an approach and frames Didion as a serious, iconoclastic philosopher of time and memory.
Through her encounters with the past, the writer is shown to offer lessons for the future in an increasingly perilous and unsettled world.
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019
Issues surrounding precarity, debility and vulnerability are now of central concern to philosophe... more Issues surrounding precarity, debility and vulnerability are now of central concern to philosophers as we try and navigate an increasingly uncertain world. Matthew R. McLennan delves into these subjects enthusiastically and sensitively, presenting a vision of the discipline of philosophy which is grounded in real, lived experience.
Developing an invigorating, if at times painful, sense of the finitude and fragility of human life, Philosophy and Vulnerability provocatively marshals three disciplinary “nonphilosophers” to make its argument: French filmmaker and novelist Catherine Breillat, journalist and masterful cultural commentator Joan Didion and feminist poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Through this encounter, this book suggests ways in which rigorous attention to difference and diversity must nourish a militant philosophical universalism in the future.
Book Reviews by Matthew R. McLennan
H-France Review, 2018
Book review for H-France Review, Volume 18 (2018)
Book review for Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy
Review of Devin Zane Shaw's "Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière" published in Sympos... more Review of Devin Zane Shaw's "Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière" published in Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, July 2016
Review of Martin Breaugh's "The Plebeian Experience" Published in Symposium: The Canadian Journal... more Review of Martin Breaugh's "The Plebeian Experience" Published in Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, May 2016
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2018
This article offers a definition of medical humanism and identifies four key contemporary medical... more This article offers a definition of medical humanism and identifies four key contemporary medical humanists in France. It then makes two claims about the historical provenance of their humanism. First, they define it in opposition to a process of iatric medicalization that they trace to certain conceptual errors made by Descartes. But second, they remain more Cartesian than they seem to realize because they accept Descartes's knotting together of humanity, ethics and language. By looking at Gori and Del Volgo, Roudinesco and Ricoeur, the author is able to show how French medical humanism repeats the Cartesian gesture of locating humanity in language - thus facing the problem of the moral standing of so-called "marginal" human persons and non-human animal persons. The author concludes with a call to radicalize French medical humanism in pursuit of a more inclusive medical "personism".
Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 6 (3). Article 2, 2020
This paper explicates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of “decline” in ageing and assesses both its p... more This paper explicates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of “decline” in ageing and assesses both its plausibility and its ethical and political promise. Though I maintain that the concept is largely plausible, and that it helps us to envision social justice for the aged, I also note certain limitations, and these lead me to suggest philosophical and ethical caution as to its range of application. Briefly, both in theory and in practice, Beauvoir appears to questionably conflate the decline of the phenomenological subject with that of a younger adult version of the psychological self or structure of the personality. Through examinations of Beauvoir’s account of dementia and her paternalism towards her dying mother and the declining Jean-Paul Sartre, I suggest how her concept of decline may fall short, but also how her rich phenomenological descriptions point the way to a pluralistic approach to ageing as a social justice issue.
Décalages: An Althusser Studies Journal , 2018
An unpacking and critical interpretation of Lyotard's 1969 intervention against Louis Althusser o... more An unpacking and critical interpretation of Lyotard's 1969 intervention against Louis Althusser on the topic of alienation in Marxist discourse.
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy , 2018
Revue politiqueer, 2018
Dans une certaine mesure, la théorie queer jaillit de la négativité et s'en nourrit. La négativit... more Dans une certaine mesure, la théorie queer jaillit de la négativité et s'en nourrit. La négativité en question peut être qualifiée d'affective en ce sens que la violence et l'oppression infligées aux sujets queers, ainsi que la colère et la résistance qu'elles provoquent, peuvent en général et dans un premier temps être caractérisées comme étant négatives. Mais alors quel est le statut philosophique et quelle est la fonction de cette négativité en théorie queer contemporaine ? Est-elle purement critique, purement réactive – voire autodestructrice – ou peut-elle indiquer dialectiquement le chemin d'un meilleur avenir queer ?[1] Le texte qui suit esquisse le bilan de la théorie queer contemporaine à la lumière de cette question de la négativité. Voici la position que nous défendons : il y a en théorie queer un courant ultragauchiste qui déploie la négativité d'une manière particulariste et antirévolutionnaire, tout d'abord pour des raisons de nihilisme actif – c'est-à-dire de cynisme/aventurisme – et en deuxième lieu pour des raisons d'angélisme moral. Cette étude est limitée par son caractère purement diagnostique, ainsi que par la nécessité de rassembler, d'une manière rigoureuse et systématique, des données non-anecdotiques pour concrétiser l'hypothèse qu'il y a, dans le militantisme queer, quelque chose qui ressemble à une dialectique de la liberté et de la terreur. Mais compte tenu de ces limites, il est tout à fait plausible de dire que les queers qui cherchent à se rallier au radicalisme politique font face à la question suivante : comment échapper au dilemme ultragauchiste, c'est-à-dire à l'alternative entre, d'une part, le nihilisme, et de l'autre, une sorte de libéralisme fondamentaliste ? Il n'est pas question ici d'éliminer la négativité des ouvrages et des interventions queers, mais plutôt d'examiner la manière dont cette négativité se manifeste aujourd'hui, ainsi que la manière dont les queers pourraient déployer une certaine négativité politique. Dans la mesure où cet essai offre un diagnostic du problème, il constitue un premier pas dans cette direction. Pour conclure, je proposerai certaines pistes s'appuyant sur les perspectives politiques ouvertes par Monique Wittig pour sortir de l'impasse. Je considère la négativité de ce texte même comme du mortier que nous pourrons utiliser pour bâtir la suite.
Ethics, Politics & Society: A Journal in Moral and Political Philosophy, 2018
This article builds upon Avishai Margalit's distinction between ethical and moral norms of rememb... more This article builds upon Avishai Margalit's distinction between ethical and moral norms of remembrance. While Margalit is limited by his broadly Kantian framework and restricts his arguments to the remembrance of human beings, the author will argue that the resources exist both in his account and in the particularities of Canadian public life to a) account philosophically for what minimal public ethical norms are in place for the remembrance of nonhuman animals, and b) point towards a more robust, properly moral account of nonhuman animal remembrance. The author will take a recent Canadian case study in the public remembrance of nonhuman animals– the 2012 Animals in War Dedication – to show how existing norms are inherently unstable, pointing beyond themselves to a more species-inclusive, properly moral public perspective.
French Journal For Media Research, 2018
This paper unpacks Lyotard’s notion of “differend” and shows how it sheds light on a “post-truth”... more This paper unpacks Lyotard’s notion of “differend” and shows how it sheds light on a “post-truth” socio-political climate. The differend is explored through its linked themes of heterogeneity, victimization, and the challenges of minority voices in the dominant idiom. The paper argues further that Lyotard’s account is descriptively rich but insufficient as a normative approach to the current crisis, though it may nonetheless serve to inspire a political response.
This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Bad... more This paper explores Levinas’s Carnets de captivité and Écrits sur la captivité in light of Badiou’s category of ‘antiphilosophy’. We make four movements: firstly, a description of what antiphilosophy is; secondly, an explanation of why the category of antiphilosophy is important to a reading of Levinas; thirdly, an exposition of the antiphilosophical elements of the Carnets and Écrits on captivity; and fourthly, we situate our reading of the notebooks within the larger context of Levinas’s post-captivity work.
Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy , Nov 2013
"Rereading Jean-François Lyotard: Essays on His Later Works", Ashgate Publishing Company, Jan 2013
"Lumpen City: Discourses of Marginality / Marginalizing Discourses," Red Quill Books, 2011
Background: The most well known privacy law case in North American occurred because of the inven... more Background:
The most well known privacy law case in North American occurred because of the invention of photojournalism. Big Data suggests invasion of privacy. Social networks on the Internet are an invention. If online social networks produce Big Data and both Big Data and online social networks suggest invasion of privacy to the popular mind, how do the courts see this? The framework of privacy in law involves the concept of the individual and their right to control personal information. Can there be a new framework for online social groupings or networks, Big Data or very powerful surveillance such as occurs from the NSA?
Objective:
The poster aims to explain the law around individuals and privacy and explore the concepts of the individual in law and philosophy. Looking at an individual Internet user and cases in the law that involve individuals, privacy and the Internet the poster hopes to sketch out a basic legal framework by building on jurisprudence as it is occurring in cases in English common law jurisdictions and connecting this with the exploration of the place of the individual in law and philosophy.
Methods:
This is a theoretical poster although one source is case law. Searches of case law were performed for keywords in our theories such as “Internet, privacy and Individual”. The websites of courts and the Canadian version of Lexis-Nexis called Quick Law were all used to find these cases. These cases were then searched or read for judges’ views on privacy on the Internet. Both authors also used theories of the individual from philosophy and law to develop the exploration. As is the method in legal studies, legislation concerning privacy and the Internet also guided the writing.
Results
One case will be presented that was decided as the poster was being written. The Supreme Court of Canada decided a case that concerns tracking down an Internet user sharing child pornography with Lime Wire file sharing software. Police obtained the name and address from the user’s Internet service provider by using the user’s IP address without a warrant and the court made a statement that Internet users have an expectation of privacy which may also affect research data gathering. This was the case R. v. Spencer 2014 SCC 43 2014-06-13.
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021
Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion's writing, from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and scr... more Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion's writing, from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and screen plays, it may appear that there is no unifying thread, but Matthew R. McLennan argues that 'the ethics of memory' – the question of which norms should guide public and private remembrance – offers a promising vision of what is most characteristic and salient in Didion's works.
By framing her universe as indifferent and essentially precarious, McLennan demonstrates how this outlook guides Didion's reflections on key themes linked to memory: namely witnessing and grieving, nostalgia, and the paradoxically amnesiac qualities of our increasingly archived public life that she explored in famous texts like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking and Salvador. McLennan moves beyond the interpretive value of such an approach and frames Didion as a serious, iconoclastic philosopher of time and memory.
Through her encounters with the past, the writer is shown to offer lessons for the future in an increasingly perilous and unsettled world.
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019
Issues surrounding precarity, debility and vulnerability are now of central concern to philosophe... more Issues surrounding precarity, debility and vulnerability are now of central concern to philosophers as we try and navigate an increasingly uncertain world. Matthew R. McLennan delves into these subjects enthusiastically and sensitively, presenting a vision of the discipline of philosophy which is grounded in real, lived experience.
Developing an invigorating, if at times painful, sense of the finitude and fragility of human life, Philosophy and Vulnerability provocatively marshals three disciplinary “nonphilosophers” to make its argument: French filmmaker and novelist Catherine Breillat, journalist and masterful cultural commentator Joan Didion and feminist poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Through this encounter, this book suggests ways in which rigorous attention to difference and diversity must nourish a militant philosophical universalism in the future.
H-France Review, 2018
Book review for H-France Review, Volume 18 (2018)
Book review for Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy
Review of Devin Zane Shaw's "Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière" published in Sympos... more Review of Devin Zane Shaw's "Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière" published in Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, July 2016
Review of Martin Breaugh's "The Plebeian Experience" Published in Symposium: The Canadian Journal... more Review of Martin Breaugh's "The Plebeian Experience" Published in Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, May 2016
Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy , Jun 10, 2015
Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, Feb 5, 2014
Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, Issue 03, Sep 2013
Symposium: The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, Nov 2012
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2012
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2012
De Philosophia XIX No.2, 2006
"Environmental Aesthetics: Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground", eds. Martin Drenthen, and Jozef Keulartz. Fordham University Press, 2014
H-France Review, 2018
Kiff Bamford's Jean-François Lyotard is a high quality, concise and tastefully illustrated intell... more Kiff Bamford's Jean-François Lyotard is a high quality, concise and tastefully illustrated intellectual biography of an important French thinker whose legacy is undergoing a constructive critical reappraisal. It is a text I wish had existed over a decade ago, and I have no doubt that the global community of Lyotard scholars would concur that a book of this kind is long overdue. Bamford's text is likely on order if it is not already in the hands of his fellow Lyotard scholars. In writing an intellectual biography of Lyotard for Reaktion's " Critical Lives " series, Bamford certainly had his work cut out for him. Though most commonly associated with the concepts of postmodernity and postmodernism, Lyotard is a notoriously heterogeneous thinker who is so difficult to approach precisely because he offers so many possible avenues of approach. When I was a doctoral student with an interest in the global drift and meaning of Lyotard's thought-a thought that strains precisely against summation and totalization-I could have benefited immensely from a brisk but high-caliber intellectual and biographical overview of the type Bamford provides. Though several good introductions to Lyotard existed, it was left to the scholar to piece together something of the highly compelling and historically rich biographical story from primary and secondary sources. Bamford has demonstrated an impressive ability to approach Lyotard both with sympathy and with something approaching a bird's eye view, and has contributed to filling the gap in the literature through access to documents and first-hand accounts that have been previously rare or unavailable. In terms of what Bamford's text provides to the curious reader, I have few if any criticisms. I would go further and praise him on two counts; first, for his tasteful and understated impressions of the private life of the man; second, for his emphasis on comparatively under-studied and underappreciated entries in Lyotard's corpus. Regarding the first point, through the access and good will he evidently gained from Lyotard's family and friends, Bamford is able to provide previously unpublished details about the philosopher's childhood and youth, his family, his two marriages, his early political convictions, and the extent of the risks he took for Algerian independence. He weaves these details gracefully into the broader story of intellectual development and drift he is telling, painting a compelling picture of Lyotard the man as a curious blend of absolute devotedness, playfulness, and aloofness. Regarding the second point, i.e. Bamford's use of comparatively " minor " materials in exploring the drift of Lyotard's trajectory, the book is clearly to be lauded; competent consideration of such materials can only enrich the secondary literature, and attentiveness to the minor or the remainder is, after all, a hallmark of