Test Drive: La Passion De L'épreuve

by Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell, remarquable philosophe américaine dont l'oeuvre commence à être traduite très largement à l'étranger, s'attache ici à comprendre cette étrange passion le test. Pourquoi sommes-nous si enclins à nous mettre à l'épreuve, à nous y soumettre constamment, nous et nos proches, dans tous les à faire de l'épreuve, en somme, une catégorie de l'existence à part entière.
Cette histoire-là commence avec les Grecs. En effet, c'est Aristote le premier qui a critiqué le basanos (la torture), que les citoyens de la jeune démocratie athénienne autorisaient sur les esclaves pour leur extorquer la vérité. Le rapport entre vérité et épreuve (ou test) a commencé là et s'est poursuivi dans la pensée chrétienne par l'examen de conscience puis a été repris par la littérature et la philosophie jusqu'à aujourd'hui avec un succès jamais démenti. Une fois encore, Avital Ronell nous entraîne dans une fantastique aventure philosophique, exigeante certes, et rigoureuse, et qui met en lumière une passion humaine inexplorée. Ainsi, le Test Drive découvre et analyse une nouvelle facette de notre monde contemporain et fait un diagnostic qui met en question notre compulsion à être ou nous croire en permanence testés .

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Science

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Avital Ronell is Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project, and has also written as a literary critic, a feminist, and philosopher.

Ronell to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia.

She gained a B.A. from Middlebury College and studied with Jacob Taubes at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin. She received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Stanley Corngold at Princeton University in 1979, and then continued her studies with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous in Paris.

She joined the comparative literature faculty at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to NYU. She is also a core faculty member at the European Graduate School.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably testing and always challenging, Ronell's Test Drive was a profoundly personal exploration in what I'd approximate as the ethical approach to the question of the experiment. Evaluating alternate pathways which allow us to move thought forward without the hopeless problems of dialectic muddling best exemplified by Goya's Duel, Ronell establishes the conference bridge with Nietzsche and Heidegger to examine the experiment as a model for the engagement of questioning thought.

Following an extensive examination of the experiment, including a progression through scientific theorist Rheinberger's pivotal work associated with radical breakthroughs in cancer research (necessitated by a conceptual reframing of the experiment), Ronell advances the understanding of the experiment as a paradigmatic catalyst. Near the conclusion of the work, Ronell's party-line call with Husserl illuminates a perspective into her thought (and that of the potentiality pregnant within Husserl, Heidegger and Nietzsche) that is deeper than prior discussions expressed in her written work. The Test Drive finds an opening forward that traces the chalk around what become a useful modality for cautiously progressing forward in the framing of thought-as-experiment.

[Bennjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is heavy on philosophy, but is offers a better understanding of the nature of science in particular. And, as with all books from Avital: she is funny in a smart way on almost every page.

[Lynn]

got it on my ipad from kindle. dipping in. her prose is stunning.