This issue of parallax seeks to consider stupidity both as an object of political investigation as well as a rhetorical strategy and problem. Stupidity troubles the boundaries of understanding and is traditionally perceived as a pejorative judgment; however, we wish to ask what dissonances, critiques historical narratives and productive uses the politics of stupidity elicits. We invite submissions on stupidity as a philosophical and political tool. Stupidity can be defined by intent: it is identifiable when one wilfully refuses to understand. Associated with tactlessness, self-certainty and forcefulness, stupidity is consciously enacted, making it thus a category of thought. If stupidity entails refusal, could it enable new forms of political dissent? At the same time, Derrida demonstrates that stupidity is actually not so much defined by intent as being bound to involuntary acts. This would seem to disrupt stupidity’s relationship with conscious thought. Stupidity is for Derrida an inexplicable failure of judgment aligned with the unconscious. How does one take advantage of stupidity’s force without returning it to intentionality? Can stupidity be affirmed without losing its elusiveness? Is writing stupidly an impossible project? Or might understanding stupidity enable us to conceptualise political action, taking account of how the ability to act is compromised?

Through a close reading of Avital Ronell’s Stupidity, Derrida developed his theory of stupidity as an insufficient translation of the French term bętise. Locating the contingency of stupidity’s meaning he reads it as a negative judgment without a ‘univocal’ concept. Derrida believes stupidity’s ignoble stature makes it an unspeakable core within philosophy. The neglect of stupidity highlights the denigration of minoritarian subjectivites that the accusation of stupidity can demean. If the intellectual is not exempt from stupidity and if it cannot be overcome by accumulating more knowledge, how can the problem of stupidity be worked on and through?

Moreover, stupidity’s ability to punish or to give credibility derives from a hegemonic power relation. Eve Sedgwick refers to the ‘privilege of unknowing’ whereby patriarchal heteronomative culture plays ignorant and implicitly stupid to deny its dependence upon the circulation of same sex desire. Does embracing unintelligibility enable non-normative subjects to avoid complicity in discriminatory politics of identification? If stupidity is used to discredit unintelligibility, what advantages are there in this move? How might the problem of stupidity be posed in relation to the refusal of distinct sexual definitions which underwrites much of contemporary queer politics?

We invite papers that respond to stupidity by examining its marginalisation within philosophical practice whilst also encouraging contributors to take seriously the provocation of writing stupidly as a critical practice.

Submission deadline: 1 April 2012
Potential contributors are encouraged to contact the guest editors:

Paul Clinton and Andrew Hennlich
Art History and Visual Studies
Mansfield Cooper Building
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures
The University of Manchester
Manchester
M13 9PL
Email: paul.clinton@manchester.postgrad.ac.uk
andrew.hennlich@gmail.com