Introduction. Chimeras and spectralities: the adventures of the ordinary

Abstract

It is a question here, on the one hand, of presenting the ordinary considering its exteriority, that is to say, everything against which it is established (metaphysics, the universal, abstraction, etc.) and which the most outstanding thinkers on the subject, such as the second Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, present as chimeras; and on the other hand, it is a question of approaching it by focusing on its interiority, that is to say, what obscures and problematizes its integrity, which we will present as the spectral duplication of the ordinary. This duplication is based at the same time on Cavellian skepticism and on Freudian unheimlich, and is articulated here with the Heideggerian theory of ustensility, through which we will also consider the relationship to the mundaneity of forms and objects of popular culture.