Insisting accident. Hegelian “moment” in several contemporary theories of subjectivity

Abstract

The article deals with several approaches to the problem of subjectivity, inspired by the philosophy of Hegel. F. Engster, K. Malabou and R. Negarestani each in their own way actualize the non-individual core of Hegel’s philosophy in order to clarify if there are any available options for moving along inhumanistic and posthumanistic paths, which are considered today as an alterative of further development. Each of these scholars fo­cuses not on the individual fragments of Hegel’s argumentation, but approaches his sys­tem in its entirety inventing key concepts for its analysis: measure, plasticity, and a pro­gram of thinking that includes the artificial, for Engster, Malabou, and Negarestani, re­spectively. The author shows that as a result, each of them actually looks for and finds analogues of “agency” in Hegelian system. Just like Hegel, each of them uses these agen­tial forms to construct a total picture of the system’s existence and interconnections, as well as its separation from environment. The author argues that it is only in the case of K. Malabou that such a picture possesses the features of temporalization as well as an in­ternal intention to change. Focusing on the fact that the logic of Hegel’s philosophy works only because of the category of negation, the author demonstrates that the sub­jectivity constructed in the described way inevitably has a destructive character.