Current Journal | Volume 33 (2025)
Being a Nothingner today
by Héctor Sevilla Godínez
This article shows the concrete implications for the individual who assumes Nothingness, the Nothingner, with regard to his own existence. On first term, it is assumed that we speak of an individual who looks to be congruent with each and every one of the previous aspects listed about the obstacles which are to be overcome upon thinking of Nothingness, and with the consequences of persisting in the conscience of them. The intention is to demonstrate, profoundly, what it means to be a Nothingner, which is a neologism that we inaugurate with this document.
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Whose Orb Is It, Anyway? Demiurgical Humanism and the Ethics of Cultural Adoption
by Myron Moses Jackson
In the ongoing debates about culture, it is more common than not to leave the underlying pretensions to ownership and heritage unquestioned. Conflating cultures with nationhood, ethnicity/race, or religion has given rise to populist movements as aggrieved “owners.” This article seeks to upend such old-fashioned, unjustifiable views of cultural hegemony on two fronts. First, employing Kwame Anthony Appiah’s critique of the flawed logic of cultural possessiveness, I will argue that cultures are personal projects of cultural adoption and not property to be protected and hoarded. Rather than being entrenched in custom and tradition, cultures function more as hybrids and develop as projects of self-fashioning. The logic of fashion is more akin to culture than that of custom. I then turn to what Peter Sloterdijk calls “demiurgical humanism,” which is our capacity to create worlds beyond predestined or naturalist endowments. For good and ill, cultures are now sheltered by humanmade arrangements and dependencies. Demiurgical humanism results from the modern explication processes that cultural conservatives or regressives criticize for encroaching upon so-called pure and original forms. Hence, demiurgical humanism has spawned a civilizational discontent, neophobia, and nostalgia for an illusory past through repossession of “one’s” culture. I propose such fantasies miss how we already create and adopt spheres of personal cultural projects.
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