Contralytic (est. 2023) is an indie press that publishes philosophy at the intersections of culture, art and the humanities. The team is based in Glasgow.
Philosophy is primarily concerned with the constraints, conduct and quality of human conversation. That is why, for Contralytic’s third journal issue, we have asked our contributors to explore this concern through the theme of discourse.
Whilst discourse is an on-going cultural activity, it possesses a certain indexicality; when we had initially decided on this theme, the world was in a comparatively more stable place. It suffices to say: a lot has changed. And yet, our contributors’ insights remain just as relevant to these on-going concerns.
Our poetry contributors begin by drawing on the personal dimensions of discourse, and the ways in which dialogue shapes us and our relationships with one another. Our visual artists depict the discourses of diasporic daydreams, the colonial lega-cies of cartography and museology, the transmission of knowledge via testimony, and questions of transhumanism; each as striking as the other in their use of mate-rial and conceptual clarity.
Our flash philosophy contributors have sought to elucidate the kinds of epistemic value one can reasonably expect to gain from fiction, mythology, and ChatGPT. And finally, our interviewees lend us insight into the past, present and future of phil-osophical discourse itself.
We hope this issue leaves the reader with a certain optimism regarding the potentiality of philosophy as something of a meta-discourse, helping us to see more clearly how the many domains of human conversation hang together, in the broadest possible sense.
Amy Rafferty
Will Harris
Penelope Ioannou
Ian Macartney
Alicja Kwade
Katja Farin
Mazenett Quiroga
Tatiana Kaga
Dima Srouji
Joe Slater
Michael T. Hicks
Neri Marsili
Mahee Mustafa
Rachael Wiseman
Clare MacCumhaill
M.G. Piety
D. Wiedinmyer
November 2024
ISSN: 2976-7385
ISBN: 978-1-7394445-6-3
13 x 23 cm
76pp
£12.50 / 15.00€
Contradictions hold a special place in the sport of philosophical discourse. They are typically regarded as something to avoid or resolve in the defence of an idea; otherwise, they are pursued and revealed in the offense of an idea.
The contradiction antagonises our affinity for consistency, rationality, and linearity. That some thing is and is-not, that some thing and its very negation should co- exist simultaneously and oppose one another is an ungraspable (im)possibility.
To contemplate contradiction requires a tolerance that philosophical discourse does not praise, nor incentivise. That they provoke nausea when expressed through paradox, evoke estrangement under the guise of cognitive dissonance, arouse the poet, rouse the philosopher, and amuse the artist is something to behold.
Such a task of investigation requires an attitude of tolerance for the ambiguity of conflict without resolve. What to do with these strange yet supposedly impossible possibilities is precisely what this issue hopes to achieve. In this first issue of Contralytic, our contributors investigate contradiction – some with ease, others not so much.
Flora Leask Arizpe
Alexander A. Cameron
Tim Tim Cheng
Serafina Cusack
Simon Kerola
Seva Khusid
Lucy Lauder
Lucille Mona Ling
Mahee Mustafa
Marily Papanastasatou
Graham Priest
Anniina Ruonala
Maria Sledmere
Roy Sorensen
Andrew Tamlyn
June 2023
ISSN: 2976-7385
13 x 23 cm
72pp
£9 / 10.50€
