ABSTRACT
The discourse of crisis, instead of truly re-introducing the contingent into theory, itself becomes a function of politics, practicing externalisation. This chapter introduces a more fundamental approach to this dilemma, one that exists outside the canon of contemporary political theory: the philosophy of presence. Like a contrast agent, it highlights externalisation – the severing of the direct link between experience and knowledge. The practices of presence seek to restore and cultivate this link. By exploring what is meant exactly by the term philosophy in this context, by ‘practice’ and ‘presence’, who the ‘philosophers of presence’ are and how their work ought to be discussed, this chapter provides the ‘methodological’ groundwork for the core of this book: the examination of four of such philosophers of presence in the following. And it clarifies: this book itself becomes part of such a practice.
