Subjunctivity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an outstanding essay. It offers a fresh and persuasive reading of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner while also presenting an original philosophical worldview, which it terms "flipped Gnosticism." Along the way, it develops a coherent argument regarding the "subjunctivity" of lived experience, which enables a playful and life-affirming sensibility to thrive even in the midst a world endangered by environmental apocalypse. 

This essay is thoughtful, reflective, and profoundly insightful. I expect it will prove to be impactful and influential within and beyond the disciplines of philosophy and literary criticism.

NOTE: I suggest that the author consider making some minor copyedits, as follows. Please consider these suggestions as entirely optional for the author.

Line 11: for "accidentally" read: accidentality

Line 40: for "infamous" use a synonym such as "well-known" to avoid the negative connotation of "infamous"

Line 169: for "623)The" read: 623). The

Line 178: delete quotation mark after: Alas" (since there is no opening quotation mark in this block quotation)

Line 194: for "super-natural" read: supernatural (no hyphen)

Lines 200-202: The sentence beginning "And with neither..." is a sentence fragment (lacks a finite verb).

Line 233: for "covid" read: Covid (use initial capital letter, consistent with NYT and Guardian style.)

Line 255: for "possibility it" read: possibility that it

Line 297: Provide a citation for the word "futurality" since it is a specialized philosophical term that I had to track down in order to understand. For example, you could cite the following article if you have Francois Laruelle's work in mind: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/chiasma/article/view/324/174

Lines 586-590: Indent the left margin of this entire paragraph (not just the first line), since it is a block quotation (from the Bible).

Author Response

Thank you very much for the comments. We are attaching a revised Word file. Just in case the comments don't come through, we made a couple: 

“accidentally” is deliberately an adverb here, in apposition to “he has admired”…so we changed it to “by accident” for clarity. 

We changed the word to “futurity” (more recognizable and more in tune with the Derridean idea we are evoking), and added a note. 

Sorry! The Bible quotations are indented in the version we are looking at. Apologies if they weren’t in the one you got.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is premised on an extended reading of two verses in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with a particular focus on glossing the implications of a ship’s bucket being described as ‘silly’. The article uses this moment as a jumping off point to consider the implications of calling people or objects ‘silly’, asking whether silliness is pejorative, playful, or something else entirely.

There may be something further to say about the connotations of the ‘silly’ in a philosophical thought that links Coleridge and Kant (Heidegger and Kristeva are tagged, too, though it was not clear to me why). However, the argument requires much more careful grounding in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century philosophy and vocabulary. Coleridge thought very carefully, and at considerable length, about the words he used, and a paper unpacking the implications of one of his terms does well to acknowledge his complexities. For instance, where else across his corpus (poetry, letters, notebooks, prose works) does Coleridge use the word ‘silly’? What functions does it serve in his works (rather than, as in this article, in the OED)? And what about in Kant – is there more to say about his understanding about silliness, and more to say about the relationship between Coleridge’s and Kant’s philosophies if so?

The article would greatly benefit from more careful and extended reading in Coleridgean criticism; Nicholas Halmi’s work on Coleridgean philosophy would be a good place to start, as would the new edition of the Cambridge Companion to Coleridge (edited by Tim Fulford). Others have talked about the implications of certain words in Coleridge’s ouvre; Peter Larkin’s gloss on the word ‘still’, for instance, would be worth looking at (see Promising Losses, 2012). More extended reading into Coleridge’s work, and research on Coleridge, will help refine these readings, and ground them more firmly in Coleridge’s texts. There are some assumptions here that are anachronistic; assertions about the Mariner’s relationship with science, for instance, or Coleridge’s stance on Imperial politics are not, at present, based on evidence from Coleridge’s work. 

Overall, there may be some promising implications behind a close reading of silliness across Coleridge’s poetics and philosophies, but if so the argument needs much more thorough and careful grounding in Coleridge’s works, and interpretations of them. Perhaps another direction for this article to go, in terms of revisions, may be to very briefly mention the silly bucket, but then move on to a broader assessment of silliness as a philosophical mode.

Author Response

Thank you for the responses. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is original in its exploration of Coleridge’s poem, interpreting it as a phenomenological description of the experience of beauty within its ethical content, portraying a form of madness intertwined with the gesture of mercy.

However, concerning its structure, the article needs to incorporate distinct sections. It should commence with an introduction that clearly outlines its objectives and conclude with a comprehensive summary. With respect to the structure, the article should feature sections delving into the various interpretations of the term “silly.”

It is imperative that the keyword “silly” be included in the chosen terms, while the terms “Heidegger,” “abjection,” and “Kristeva” should be omitted from this context.

Furthermore, the exploration of beauty in relation to Kant’s third critique is deemed superficial. The author is advised to delve into the experience of the “sublime,” incorporating more precise references that Kant addresses in this context. The author should establish a connection between the sublime and the analyzed poem.

Author Response

Thank you for the responses. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf