Mizení

While the center of interest of the European philosophical tradition is primarily concerned with the appearance of things, theory and philosophical media, as it is presented here, this book focuses on the tools, techniques and practices which make such appearance even possible. Media operations determine what may and also what may not be depicted or expressed. The decline of certain formations is thus logically connected with change/invention of new techniques, but also with reflection on or exceeding the given technical and material dispositions – the operations of disintegration, destabilization, termination of relationships of seemingly stable formations (for instance political regimes, which provide for institutions, control techniques, and even formal elements of artistic expression and mental concepts).
This collective monograph is the result of dialogues inspired by the international conference Dis/appearing, and observes the basic media operations of appearing and disappearing, and evaluates the multi-year Czech-German discussions on common theoretical and philosophical themes relating to the mediality. In particular, it continues in the phenomenological tradition, which historically connected German and Czech philosophy, with the goals of its criticism and finding new interpretations in relation to current issues in the research of media and cultural techniques. The authors of the individual texts come from various fields and from both the Czech (Václav Krůček, Miroslav Petříček, Martin Pokorný, Karel Thein and Josef Vojvodík) and German environments (Claudia Blümleová, Nadja Ben Khelifa, Manuela Klaut, Bettine Menke, Katharina Rein, Jörg Sternagel and Wolfgang Struck). The scholars’ contributions are delimited by their international view of this theme (Georges Didi-Huberman and Matthew Solomon), the introductory text limiting the scope of the common methods (Lorenz Engell and Bernhard Siegert) and commentary by the editors, Kateřina Svatoňová and Kateřina Krtilová.