Knowledge and affect : toward an economy of unknowing ; Savoir et affect : pour une économie du non-savoir

Abstract

Rédigé en 2009. ; Few notions are as vast as that unknowing; but the imprecise nature of its definition is nonetheless accompagnied by the implication that what offers itself only negatively to the mind has a positive source. The applicability of the notion of unknowing is infinite; it swallows up all that resists the mastery indicated by statements about that which is. Unknowing encompasses all that belongs to the boiling drive of life and to the faceless moment of death. What leads human beings to murder, to genocide, to war and to revolutionnary violence is bound up with an affective content of identification that cannot be subsumed by knowledge without leaving a residue. Yet attempting to understand what exceeds the mind's grasp serves as the motor of mental reflection at the heart of knowledge production itself. In this sense, knowledge is inescapably dependent on its " other ". In light of this hypothesis drawn from the domain of psychoanalysis, this thesis aims to reexamine the conceptual underpinnings of basic sociopolitical tensions in History. The conceptual impetus driving major identity movements -- such as totalitarian or democratic revolutions and cultural disruptions or synergies -- is analysed in terms of a libidinal or drive- oriented economy which is in perpetual interaction with what this thesis characterizes as an economy of the relation between knowing and unknowing, between knowledge and its negation. ; Il est peu de notions aussi vastes que celle du non-savoir, mais le flou du caractère nécessairement négatif de sa définition s'accompagne tout de même du sentiment que la source de ce qui ne peut qu'être déterminé négativement par la pensée (non, cela n'est pas le savoir) ne peut qu'être positive. Notion à l'applicabilité infinie, parce qu'en elle vient s'abîmer tout ce qui ne peut tenir dans l'espace de la maîtrise relative à ce dont on peut dire : je sais de quoi il s'agit. Est non-savoir tout ce qui se rapporte au bouillonnement pulsionnel de la vie et à l'échéance fatale de la mort. Ce ...