CCS Colloquium: The Responsibility of Theory: on Discursive and Immanent Rigour - Donovan Stewart

Countless problems - technofascism, for one, and its normalisation of the most grotesque forms of ethnonationalist masculinities, ever-present and evermore ‘optimised’ via AI - have gone from being ‘merely theoretical’ concerns, to ‘old news’ in the matter of what seems to be (and yet surely is not) a few opaque months and years. In circumstances characterised by: the breakdown of institutions tasked not only with theorisation but social care more generally, the disruption of the noetic and psychological means to reflect, and the sense that the time of theorisation has been replaced by the urgency of political crisis; the question of theory, of the purpose, meaning and tolerability of theory, again presents itself anew.

In response, I turn to Jacques Derrida’s work which opens a path forward for theory in this disruptive condition. There are three levels of this presentation. First, I share Derrida’s general logic of ‘responsibility’ which culminates in his ten-year seminar, questions of responsibility (1991-2001). Second, I present the responsibility particular to ‘theory’ -its (relation to) rigour—which separates it from other discourses and activities. Third, I distinguish two senses of rigour: a hyperbolic discursive attentiveness; and an immanent, worldly, demand for such attentiveness, the intolerable call that gives each (its) singular responsibility each time anew.

Language: English

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