Toward a Philosophy of the Documentarian by Dan Geva

Author:Dan Geva
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4.1.5 Práxis in the Age of Post-metaphysics: Freire, Lacan, Heidegger, and Arendt

No other thinker marks the beginning of the end of metaphysics as clearly as Heidegger does. Coincidently or not, the critical evolutionary phase of the documentary project, which peaked in more ways than one in the 1920s, as Renov argues (2004, 95–97), coincides with Heidegger’s historical and philosophically active timeline. At the risk of following a tangent, I wish to pursue the idea that further discussion of the primary processes of signification of the documentarian is, eo ipso, interlinked with Heidegger’s Geist , as I will demonstrate in Sect. 4.​2 below. To sustain such an endeavor, however, I believe it is methodologically essential to seek an understanding of Heidegger’s existential conceptions, specifically those relevant to práxis, with regard to another train of thought—one that moves from Sartre to Paulo Freire and to Jacques Lacan. I will devote the present subsection to that end.

Let us re-trace our concern with Sartre’s contribution to the development of práxis. In this context, we must bear in mind that language’s interpretation qua práxis, as well as the conception of práxis qua language-in-itself, brings to the surface the problem of Cartesian dualism, which Sartre pushed back against throughout his thinking. His attempt to break away from Descartes’s dualism is expressly stated with respect to the signification he endows any X object as discussed in Marxist thinking as, first and foremost, a product of history’s dialectical nature (Evelton 2007). Besides its evident semiotic power, this idea embodies, no less importantly, an undeniable requisite to the social sphere, in the sense that it explains, accordingly, any X human action. The binding of the object and the human action as products of dialectical historicity helps us to better understand how and why sociologist Susan Wortmann centers her attention on práxis with reference to Brazilian sociologist Paolo Freire, for whom práxis isthe act of creativity and social change achieved through the oppressed’s own experience and the creative process of education; that is, acquiring and developing literacy and reactive responses to the ruling social and political structures…. It is accomplished through a dialogic problem-posing process in which the oppressed use their experiences and education to create new understandings. 36

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