https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8371 2026-06-19T10:29:47Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/147434 Title: Introduction : deconstruction and twenty-first century thought, part 1 : the new realisms Authors: Lynes, Philippe; Young, Niki Abstract: In his 2018 article ‘État present: Post-Deconstructive Thought and Criticism’, Ian James identified four thinkers whose reception had produced what he called a ‘post-deconstructive naturalism’ in contemporary scholarship–François Laruelle, Jean-Luc Nancy, Catherine Malabou, and Bernard Stiegler–each of whom had ‘taken up and developed deconstruction in ways which echo Derrida’s thought but which, at the same time, emerge as distinctly un-Derridean’ (James 2018, 85). For James, the ontological, materialist, and realist concerns shared by these four had served to further open the humanities onto engagements with the natural sciences. Questions of physical materiality, energy, organic life, ecology, and artificial intelligence now dominate scholarship in animal studies, ecocriticism, new materialism, posthumanism, and speculative realism. Since 2018, however, three of these thinkers have passed away: Stiegler in 2020, Nancy in 2021, and Laruelle in 2024. [extract] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146467 Title: Bodies in motion Abstract: What might it mean to be a body, or to feel at home in one’s own body? One might begin by drawing a border or limit between oneself and another, or by tracing a perimeter that would, at once, demarcate the manner in which a given body would take up space. Might not the act of drawing a border permit the possibility of its own undoing? Through movement, a body undoes itself as soon as it is asked to be held in place. [excerpt] 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146261 Title: Passionate encounters : Alphonso Lingis on community, alterity, and politics Authors: Young, Niki Abstract: This article explores the underexamined political dimensions of Alphonso Lingis’ philosophy, with a focus on his understanding of community, alterity, and passion as a possibility for political action. I show how Lingis’ work departs from liberal individualism in order to emphasize “community” as a condition for political engagement rooted in the ethical imperative evoked by the singularity and suffering of others. I then present a speculative account of Lingisian politics which builds on the possible reasons for his admiration of revolutionary figures such as Gandhi and Ché Guevara as exemplars of a passionate, compassionate, and dynamic political praxis. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/145536 Title: Pathologies of passion Authors: Young, Niki Abstract: In this paper, I aim to clarify and expand Alphonso Lingis’ understanding of impassioned states by showing how society pathologises passion through the language of emotions, there by obscuring the excesses that are constitutive of life. I proceed by first analysing how modernity reconfigures disruptive passions into manageable emotional states that sustain regularity, utility, and calculative models of the self. Second, I elaborate six interrelated properties of passion while systematically contrasting the latter with culturally coded emotions. Finally, I briefly examine how literature, theatre, cinema, and media narratives disclose the contingent, irrational forces that shape individual lives. I conclude that pathologising passion is not a neutral diagnostic gesture but a deeply philosophical operation that props up a shallow, needs-based conception of agency, and I argue instead for a philosophical practice that attends to impassioned ruptures and shared festive intensities as indispensable revelations of the real forces that contour both individual and collective existence. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z