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蘇秋華副教授發表最新期刊論文

Phytophallogocentrism: Developing a Posthuman Aesthetics through Barthes, Bose, and Woolf

作者：蘇秋華

Ex-Position

卷：40

頁碼：137-162

出版日期：2018年12月(THCI、外語學門獎勵名單)

摘要：

In The Philosopher’s Plant, Michael Marder describes Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of the plant as “phytophallogocentrism.” Appropriating Derrida’s logic of the sup- plement, Marder adds the affix “phyto” to phallogocentrism to designate a think- ing pattern that grows like a plant on the margin of the rigid edifice of Western metaphysics. In this article, I extend this concept of phytophallogocentrism to fos- ter an aesthetics of posthumanism through an interfolding of photography and plants. Both associated with light, photography and plants respond to light me- chanically, unlike the humanist tradition which has long associated light with rea- son. Both the mechanicality involved in photo-making and a plant’s life point to an “optical unconscious,” which we may say offers a handful of dirt for the seed of a posthuman aesthetics to grow. In this article, I draw on Roland Barthes’s view of photography and Jagadis Chunder Bose’s studies of plants to bring to light the zig- zagging conceptual bond between the two prefixes, “photo-” and “phyto-,” and the three affixes, “-graph,” “-trope,” and “-troph.” I then read Virginia Woolf’s The Waves in light of what I consider to be her phytophallogocentric move. I argue that the phenomena of life presented in the novel are phototrophic and that the text itself is photo-tropic.

(研究事務組小提醒)教師如有最新發表於AHCI、SSCI、SCI、EI、TSSCI、THCI、「東吳大學外語學門獎勵名單」之期刊論文，歡迎將相關資訊e-mail至rad@scu.edu.tw，研究發展處將會公告於校園頭條，以廣交流。

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