O' Dwyer, Killian. 2025. 'Tongue-Ties: Auto-Affection in the Mouths of Hegel and Derrida'. In: Feeling Cultures/Culturing Feelings: Emotions and Affects in Cultural Practices. Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland 9 - 11 April 2025. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

The publication of Derrida’s Glas in 1974, in its highly unconventional format, can be read as an attempt to circumvent the absolute philosophical position of the father in Hegelian logic and the prevailing assumption that the human voice spontaneously facilitates the auto-affection of the subject. At its heart, Glas is a work that aims to reverses the autoinsemination of sublation by gluing the pedagogical philosophy of Hegel alongside the erotic poeticism of Genet as two distinct columns, in order to incite an outrageous complication of the dialectical method and the act of reading itself, which Bennington and Wills describe in Clang as ‘the littered space of species extinction, decay, disappearance and death.’ Auto-affection, the ability to affect oneself by the unmediated and “pure” experience of ‘hearing-oneself-speak’ by way of human speech (which corelates with Hegel’s notion of being-for-oneself) is one of the central motifs with which Glas wrestles. By attending to the phenomena of the glottal stop during speech, the “gl” or “cl” sound that is produced when the vocal cords close and reopened with force, Derrida suggests that auto-affection by way of speech is in fact an event where the body encounters the death of language itself. The gl of Glas, according to Derrida, recalls calls to mind the sound of a gagging or retching, mimicking a kind of strangulation when performed, exposing the speaking subject to the thrill or fear of a gentle choking in the moment of vocalisation. The glottal stop is not a property of the tongue, throat or subject. Rather, it is an eventful encounter between muscle, skin, flesh, fluid and mucus that hoists the tongue before the procedural work of sublating sound into meaning. In other words, gl is a gagging on Hegelian logic, where the mouthpiece that would provide the concept with meaning chokes on what remains anterior and exterior to the dialectical method: the living conditions that would cause language itself to be spoken or stopped in the first instance. Between the flaps of mucosal tissue in the throat, words are lubricated, glued, melted, spewed during auto-affection, but always mediated by the threat of meaning being suffocated by the very operation on which it relies.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Visual Cultures
Dates:	Date Event 10 April 2025 Completed
Event Location:	Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
Date range:	9 - 11 April 2025
Item ID:	38707
Date Deposited:	14 Apr 2025 08:44
Last Modified:	14 Apr 2025 08:44
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38707

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