Posts

The Nostalgic Referent: Photography, Simulation, and the Fate of “Cela a été”

Image
Bertillon’s police mugshots. AI image Introduction: The Return of the Real The renewed exaltation of the photographic referent, particularly in current debates around synthetic imagery, reactivates a familiar anxiety about the status of visual truth. As new technologies appear, one feature of the previous medium is usually amplified and repositioned; in the present moment, the referent has been elevated to a criterion of legitimacy. Analogue traces and digital captures are invoked as guarantors of authenticity against images produced by generative models. Yet this intensified longing for the “that-has-been” can be illuminated through a different conceptual lens: Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the simulacrum. Baudrillard describes four regimes of the image, not as a chronological history but as logical modes of relating appearance to the real. Used heuristically, these regimes clarify how photography has shifted, from its evidentiary origins to its artistic manipulations and, now, its...
Post a Comment
Read more

Seeing Language Differently: Saussure’s Personal Approach to the Linguistic System

Image
Dürer’s Saussure. Aquarelle. AI image Introduction: A Shift in Perspective One of Ferdinand de Saussure’s lasting contributions is that he alters not only linguistic theory but also the way we perceive language itself. He urges us to question what normally seems self-evident—namely, that words attach to pre-existing ideas, that speaking is a physical performance, or that communication is nothing more than the transmission of messages. Against these intuitive assumptions, Saussure offers a vision of linguistic activity that is simultaneously cognitive, social and structural. His analyses grow out of concrete experiences of speaking and hearing, yet they culminate in a conception of language as an intricate system of relations. When read carefully, his reflections on the linguistic faculty, the speech circuit and the logic of differences reveal a radically new way of seeing something as familiar as everyday discourse. The Linguistic Faculty: Beyond Physiology Saussure begins with ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Return to Saussure: A Lost Lecture from the Cours de linguistique générale

Image
Rauschenberg’s Saussure . AI image     Albert Sechehaye , a young man who had just earned his teaching licence, saw an announcement posted for Saussure’s course in Greek and Latin phonology, to start in November. Although he had done no previous study of linguistics, Sechehaye registered for the course, as well as for the other one Saussure was giving, on Sanskrit. Only later in the semester would Charles Bally , a teacher at the Collège de Genève, begin attending the lectures, without ever registering as Saussure’s student. More than twenty years afterwards, Sechehaye still vividly recalled how:   The professor entered, and we were immediately captivated by his person. He hardly seemed ‘professorial’! He looked so young, so ordinary in his bearing, yet at the same time his air of exquisite distinction and finesse, with that slightly dreamy and distant look in his clear blue eyes, gave us a foretaste of his power and originality as a thinker. Standing beside the black...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Prosthetic God: AI, Talent, and Human Anxiety

Image
The Prosthetic God. AI image Introduction A few days ago, I encountered a social-media remark that caught my attention: “I don’t interact with anyone who uses AI in writing or encourages its use. To me, using it means you’re not a real writer. If you disagree, please move on.” At first glance, such a statement reads like exaggeration, the product of rigid attitudes or personal frustration. Yet beneath the harsh tone lies a tension many people feel today: uneasiness when abilities honed through persistence collide with tools capable of producing comparable outcomes. What fuels this intensity? Why do otherwise open-minded individuals react so defensively when confronted with algorithmic creativity? A century ago, Sigmund Freud offered a striking image that helps illuminate this response: the human being as a “prosthetic god.” His phrase, drawn from  Civilization and Its Discontents , offers a lens through which current anxieties surrounding intelligent tools come into focus. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Solitude of the Critical Thinker: A History of Recurrent Rejection

Image
Note: This text was originally written in Spanish and is presented here in English translation. Introduction In recent years it has become common to describe the isolation of intellectually inquisitive individuals as a by-product of neoliberalism: the performance society, the imperative of emotional productivity, or the pressures of hyperconnectivity would have turned conversation into a superficial exchange from which many withdraw. Although this diagnosis captures certain features of our present, it falls short. The phenomenon has far deeper roots and spans very different historical periods. From antiquity to today, those who seek an interlocution that does not merely reaffirm the immediate often encounter a climate of mismatch and, frequently, a subtle form of ostracism. This article examines that process without victimhood, focusing on the psychological and social mechanisms that generate rejection, as well as the historical paradox by which the very figures once marginalized e...
Post a Comment
Read more