Ray Brassier in conversation with Thomas Metzinger

Cengiz Erdem's avatarSenselogic

A Special Form of Darkness

Picture by Alex Woodward @ Crimson Glow Photography / Arika

Ray Brassier: I am going to begin, first of all, by talking about, or asking Thomas about the concept of transparency. The title of this event A Special Form of Darkness, actually comes from, is a quotation taken from Thomas’ work. The quotation is “The transparency is a special form of darkness.” And transparency in Thomas’ work is the idea that we experience the world through various complicated representational mechanisms. But we never represent these representational mechanisms themselves. We have minimal access to the machinery that conditions our subjective experience. The simplest way to understand transparency is that if you are looking through a window, the plain of glass which frames the optical vision, the optical image that you are contemplating, is not itself registered as an object in the visual field. In other words, the physical frame and a…

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One response to “Ray Brassier in conversation with Thomas Metzinger

  1. It is interesting how all these authors propose exactly to the limit that allows them to make a living on what they say. The transparency he uses in the exact manner to deny what he proposes of the types of transparency, effectively ‘skipping’ the most problematic parts of his assertion. But he (they all do it) does it so smoothly and in concert it seems conspiracy with Ray who feeds him a platform so the audience never suspects the problem. Like two magicians; if one may recall “the Golden Bough” by Frazier, such philosophers are very much acting the role for our time of the prophets and magicians.

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