Friday, September 29 2pm Galerie Rabus

Miglena Nikolchina
Homonymy and heterotopia: The case of Aufhebung

In his discussion of the possible link between Hegel’s term Aufhebung and Martin Luther’s translation of the Greek word katargein as used by St Paul, Giorgio Agamben points out the Russian connection – via Kojève and Koyré – and hence the connection to Russian apocalyptic thinking – in the reception of Hegelianism in France. This connection has been marked by a striking contrast in the vicissitudes of Hegel’s term in Russia and in France. Its first aspect is the invisibility of the issue of translation in the Russian case and the French hypersensitivity to this issue, resulting in a proliferation of suggested translations and discussions thereof. The second aspect becomes manifest in the transformation that the translation undergoes from Kojève to his self-professed disciple Lacan. To put it briefly, Kojève’s “taking down” becomes “raising up” with Lacan who, furthermore, inscribes this silent reversal in his theory of sexuation. My essay addresses the curious twist from apocalypse to sexual difference.


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