Vita
Emmanuel Alloa (*1980) is Assistant Professor at the Universität St. Gallen and Senior Research Fellow at the NCCR “eikones” for iconic criticism at Universität Basel. Since 2005, he has been lecturing aesthetics at the Département d’Arts Plastiques of the Université Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis. After having studied in Germany (Freiburg, Berlin), Italy (Padova) and France (Paris), he completed a binational PhD thesis at both the Freie Universität Berlin and the Université Paris 1-Panthéon entitled “The Diaphanous Image. Sketches for a Medial Phenomenology”. He has been Visiting Reserch Scholar at Columbia University, New York, in 2010 and Visiting Professor on the Merleau-Ponty Chair at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in Morelia (México) in 2011. At the Presses du réel, he codirects the book series “Perceptions” dedicated to the history of visuality and its dispositives.
Dated from 2013
IKKM Research Project
“Where there is evidence, there is no testimony” says Derrida. But the reverse is not less true: where there is testimony, there is no evidence. Assumedly, the witness is called into the witness stand only if and only where insight is lacking; where first-hand judgment is impossible and the judgment has to be given blindly, as it were, or rather on the basis of a testimony whose authority itself remains unclear and unverifiable. Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen (P. Celan): no one testifies for the witness. No one but the witness himself who speaks up in first person, though not in his own name, but rather in the name of someone or something else of which the only thing that can be said is that it is not present. The annual theme 2012/2013 of the IKKM focuses on modes and means of “Production of the Present”. How does the witness synchronize incommensurable moments, how does the testimoniality presentify what is not present? For while it is the fact of having been present that gives the witness his or her legitimacy, that presence can only be referred to as has been, as what has now irremediably passed. Through the testimony, the event is made present which in turn authorizes the witness to speak, producing a sort of vertiginous chiasm. The testimonial performance, in referring back to what instituted the witness as witness, brings about the event which it is called to faithfully reproduce: reproduction is, unescapably, yet another form of production. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes has famously stated that the “noeme of photography” is its “ça a été”, the fact that analogic photographs suggest that the light-sensitive plate has recorded what has really been the case. Similarly, one could argue for a “noeme of the witness” in terms of a ça y a été: “it has been there” and did not remain unaffected by what happened. From a perspective of medial philosophy, images and witnesses bear striking structural analogies. The project asks what it means to consider images neither in terms of discursive signs nor in terms of material evidence, but rather as testimonials, i.e. as rearticulations of a past that has never been present but through its reprise.
Publications
Monographs
Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen Phänomenologie. Berlin/Zürich: diaphanes, 2011.
La résistance du sensible. Merleau-Ponty critique de la transparence. Paris: Kimé, 2008.
Edited Books
Ereignis und Erscheinung. Zur Zeitlichkeit des Bildes. München: Fink, 2013 (forthcoming).
with Stefan Kristensen: Témoignage et survivance, Genève : MētisPresses 2013 (forthcoming)
with Francesca Falk: BildÖkonomie. Haushalten mit Sichtbarkeiten. München: Fink, Reihe "Eikones", 2013 (forthcoming).
with Miriam Fischer: Leib und Sprache. Zur Reflexivität verkörperter Ausdrucksformen, Weilerswist: Velbrück, 2013 (forthcoming).
with Thomas Bedorf, Christian Grüny and Tobias Klass: Leiblichkeit. Geschichte und Aktualität eines Konzepts. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck/UTB, 2012.
with Adnen Jdey: Du sensible à l'œuvre. Esthétiques de Merleau-Ponty. Bruxelles: La Lettre Volée, 2012.
Bildtheorien aus Frankreich. Eine Anthologie. München: Fink, 2011.
Penser l'image. Dijon: Les presses du reel, 2010. (2nd edition 2011).
with Alice Lagaay: Nicht(s) sagen. Strategien der Sprachabwendung im 20. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld: transcript, 2008.
Articles
"Eingefleischte Gesten. Nachleben und Zeugenschaft in Claude Lanzmanns Shoah und in Rithy Panhs S 21", in: Nachleben und Rekonstruktion. Vergangenheit im Bild, eds. Michael Hagner and Peter Geimer. München: Fink, 2013 (forthcoming)
"Verktyg – skrift – element. Från en fenomenologi om medier till en medial fenomenologi", in: Fenomenologi, teknik och medier, eds. Leif Dahlberg and Hans Ruin. Stockholm: Södertörn Philosophical Studies, 2012, p. 117-142.
"Ex propria industria. Zu einer Archäologie der Zeugenvergessenheit", in: Zeugenschaft. Wissen – Geschichte – Politik, eds. Sybille Krämer, Sybille Schmidt and Ramon Voges. Bielefeld: transcript, 2011, p. 67-90.
"Seeing-as, seeing-in, seeing-with. Looking through images", in: Image and Imaging in Philosophy, Science and the Arts, Proceedings of the 33rd International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, eds. Elisabeth Nemeth, Richard Heinrich, Wolfram Pichler and Wagner David (eds.). Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2011, p. 179-190.
"Exorbitances. La folie du voir chez le dernier Merleau-Ponty", in: L'œil et l'esprit. Merleau-Ponty entre art et philosophie, Fabrice Bourlez and Lorenzo Vinciguerra. Reims: Presses Universitaires, 2011, p. 81-94.
"Darstellen, was sich in der Darstellung allererst herstellt. Bildperformanz als Sichtbarmachung", in: Bild – Performanz. Die Kraft des Visuellen, ed. Ludger Schwarte. München: Fink, 2011, p. 33-60.
"Transparenz und Störung. Vom zweifelhaften Nutzen eines kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Paradigmas für die Bildtheorie", in: Hide and Seek. Das Spiel von Transparenz und Opazität, Markus Rautzenberg and Andreas Wolfsteiner. München: Fink, 2010, p. 21-31
"Metaxu. Figures de la médialité chez Aristote", in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 63 (2009/2), p. 247-262.
Translations
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Causerien 1948. Radiovorträge, edited by. I. Knips, with a preface by B. Waldenfels. Köln: Salon Verlag, 2006. (Co-translation)
Nancy, Jean-Luc: Am Grund der Bilder. Berlin-Zürich: diaphanes, 2006.
Aufsätze von Georges Didi Huberman, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-François Lyotard, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Henri Maldiney, Hubert Damisch, Bernhard Waldenfels, Vilém Flusser u.a.m.