More Conference Annoucements

Two events are happening in the UK for those interested in Laruelle. Of course there is the event at Nottingham, that I’ve already posted about, but two days before he is speaking at the University of Warwick. I will also be speaking there with Nick Srnicek and Reid Kotlas:

Warwick Symposium on the Non-Philosophy of Francois Laruelle

The Warwick University Philosophy Society, in association with Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, is pleased to announce a short symposium on the non-philosophy of Francois Laruelle on Wednesday the 3rd of March. This will take place in H0.52, in the humanities building, on Warwick main campus, from 3.30pm to 7.00pm.

Programme

3.30 – “Non-Philosophy in English” – Nick Srnicek (LSE), Anthony Paul Smith (Nottingham), Reid Kotlas (Dundee) – Three presentations introducing the central features of non-philosophy followed by a joint question and answer session.

5.00 – Break

5.30 – “From the First to the Second Non-Philosophy” – Francois Laruelle – Paper in French, with English translation provided by Anthony Paul Smith, followed by a question and answer session interpreted by Marjorie Gracieuse (Warwick).

Free to all, no registration required. For further enquiries contact t.k.osborne@gmail.com

I’ll also be speaking on the 24 of March at the University of Nottingham Staff Club on “What can be done with religion?: Non-Philosophy and the Future of Philosophy of Religion”. We’ll see how that goes…

Here is one for readers in the US:

Form and Genesis

The Theory Reading Group at Cornell University invites submissions for its sixth annual interdisciplinary spring conference.

Featuring keynote speakers Adrian Johnston (University of New Mexico) and Robert Kaufman (University of California, Berkeley)

Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
April 22-24, 2010

Increasingly it seems that contemporary thought is confronted with two ways of explaining its objects.  On the one hand, a formal approach seeks to analyze the necessary structures or defining qualities that make something what it is. On the other hand, a genetic or historical method aims to uncover the forces that give rise to form or structure in the first place. Do these modes of explanation disqualify one another, or are there compelling prospects for their integration? For example, is it possible to understand how thought or rationality can grasp its own determining processes? Or, on the contrary, is thought structurally unable to access a domain that is by nature exterior to reason, sense, or order?

Broadly understood, the formal approach tends to seek logical explanations, while the genetic approach looks to materialist or genealogical accounts. The relation between these two orders of explanation has wide implications. What is the connection between logical or normative form and its temporal, material, or historical genesis? Conversely, what might an analysis of the structure of genealogy or critique tell us about the latter? Does the political critique of form as an arbitrary convention mitigate its powers of normativity? What is the relationship between form and history, or form and materiality in literary and aesthetic theory? What is the status of formalism, whether literary or logical-mathematical, in contemporary theory?

Suggested topics:

Speculation and critique
Formalisms and historicisms
The transcendental and the empirical
Limits of philosophy/limits of science
Form of the political
Originality
Events of reason
Condition and cause
Sense and nonsense
Form and genre
History and form in aesthetics
Breaking form: the sublime, the unrepresentable, the iconoclastic
Formation and deformation
The finite and the infinite
Forms of the event
Structure and drive (Freud, Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari)
Form and interpretation (New Critics, Deconstruction)
History, genealogy, critique (Nietzsche, Foucault)
Marxism and form (Benjamin, Adorno, Jameson)
Forms of life (Wittgenstein, Arendt, Agamben)

Please limit the length of abstracts to no more than 250 words.  The deadline for submission of 250-word abstracts for 20-minute presentations is March 1, 2010.  Please include your name, e-mail address, and phone number.  Abstracts should be e-mailed to theory@cornell.edu.  Notices of acceptance will be sent no later than March 6, 2009.  For more information about the Cornell Theory Reading Group, visit http://www.arts.cornell.edu/trg .

Fiat voluntas tua

I’ve been kicking around this idea for a while and wanted to offer it up as a thought experiment. Spurred in particular by a series of guest posts by Edward Harrison at Naked Capitalism (here’s a good one, though not on my current topic), I’ve been thinking more about the notion of fiat currency. I’m increasingly coming to suspect that fiat currency could be one of the most powerful tools of human self-determination ever created — if it were somehow unleashed.

Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing Book Event: Announcement

Just as a kind of heads-up, we will begin our reading of Catherine Malabou’s Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction next week.  Clayton Crockett will get things started with an introductory post on Monday, Feb. 15.  The schedule from that point onward is below. We look forward to everybody participating.

February 16, 18 — Adam Kotsko (pp. 1-15)
February 23, 25 — Anthony Paul Smith (pp. 15-30)
March 2, 5 — Ryan Krahn (pp. 30-44)
March 9, 11 — Brad Johnson (pp. 44-62)
March 16, 18 — Dan Barber (pp. 71-82)

Sunday Night Jazz: Superbowl Edition

We used to have weekly jazz tracks over at the Weblog. It long ago passed away. But, with the Saints of New Orleans defeating the Colts, I thought it appropriate to breathe some life back into it.

How about a little Dixieland from Bechet & Armstrong to commemorate the occasion?

My penance

Over at Crooked Timber, I think it’s reasonable to say that I violated my rule against debating with Holbo about Zizek, though most of the debate was in fact about the past debate, etc. It’s embarrassing, but I thought I might as well do a follow-up post in which I make things up to the world by saying something substantive.

First, I am glad to find that Zizek was misquoted in an interview in which he is supposed to have said some really incomprehensible stuff about Gandhi. If you read that interview and were puzzled, there you have it — and apparently the paper in which it appeared is not well-reputed.

Second, I think that the whole long-running debate touches on an old comment thread where we discussed Jameson’s claim that interpretations should be judged by how “interesting” they are.

Adventures in Translating: Asking for Help

Can anyone who knows the literature on Levinas well tell me if they are translating altérité as “alterity” or “otherness”? What does everyone prefer anyway? I’ve been leaving it as alterity, but think otherness might be more readable.

Conference Announcement and Book Summaries: Link Post

Michael Burns has posted the schedule for the conference he’s hosting in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dundee.

‘Real Objects or Material Subjects’

Department of Philosophy, University of Dundee

March 27-28, 2010

SCHEDULE

Saturday

11am-12pm: registration

12pm-12:15pm: Introductory Remarks

12:15pm-1:30pm: James Williams (Dundee) “Contemplating Pebbles”

1:30pm-2:30pm: Lunch

2:30pm-4:00pm: Nathan Coombs (Royal Holloway, University of London) Platonism and Realism: Badiou contra Harman

Sid Littlefield (Georgia College & State University): Inflationary and Deflationary Metaphysics

Mike Olson (Villanova University) On the Dogmatic Limitations and Speculative Resources of Transcendental Idealism

4:30pm-6:00pm: Graham Harman (American University, Cairo) “I Am Also of the Opinion that Materialism Must Be Destroyed”

Sunday

10:00am-10:15am: Introductory Remarks

10:15am-11:30am: Adrian Johnston (University of New Mexico) “‘Naturalism or anti-naturalism?  No, thanks–both are worse!’:  Science, Materialism, and Slavoj Zizek.”

11:45am-1:15pm:

Austin Smidt (Nottingham) The Beyond In Our Midst: Sartre’s Robust Materialism as a Root of Revolution

Tom Eyers (Middlesex) Lacanian Materialism and the Question of the Real

Colby Dickinson (KU Leuven) Materialism as pantheistic animality: Giorgio Agamben and the silence of transcendence

1:15pm-2:00pm: Lunch Break

2:00pm-3:00pm:

John Van Houdt (KU Leuven):  The Necessity of Contingency or  Contingent Necessity?  Meillassoux, Hegel, and the Logic of Modal Necessity

Paul Ennis (University College Dublin) Phenomenology and the Ancestral

3:15pm-4:30pm: Peter Hallward (CRMEP, Middlesex) “Self-Emancipation between Hegel and Marx”

4:30pm-5:00pm: Closing Discussion

Registration is ESSENTIAL, please email mykeburns@gmail.com with Name/Address/Institutional Affiliation/Email Address by March 1st.

Cost is £10 unwaged/£20 waged. Checks can be made out to Michael Burns and sent to:

Michael Burns, Department of Philosophy, University of Dundee, Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN, Scotland, UK

Details on travel/accommodation will be posted shortly.

While we’re gearing up for our next book event, on Catherine Malabou’s recently translated Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, readers may want to take a look at two series of notes on other recent philosophy/theology books by regular AUFS commenters. Jeremy Ridenour is kicking off a series of posts on Radical Theology, starting off with two posts Clayton Crockett’s Interstices of the Sublime (1 and 2). And Dave Mesing examined Richard Kearney’s Anatheism in three posts (1, 2, and 3)

If Schleiermacher Wrote “Amazing Grace”

This is unfair to Schleiermacher, and even does not represent the way I appreciate some of his ideas, but was fun to do nevertheless, since I am tired of reading right now. The changes are italicized.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,


That saved a person capable of the infinite like me. 


I once was in a state of my absolute dependence being constrained,  now am absolutely dependent,


Was blind to my self, but now I have self-knowledge.

T’was Grace that taught my heart to intuit,


And Grace, my relative incapacity to feel the infinite relieved.


How precious did that God-consciousness appear,


The moment I first resolved to begin the process of ending the state of needing redemption …

Adventures in Translating: Agonizing over Particular Words

I’m nearing the end of the translation and my deadline is fast approaching for Future Christ and I’ve been struck by a certain phrase that is very central for the book. The phrase was the one that first hit me when I read the book two summers ago on a long bus ride from Paris to Nottingham. In French it is l’Homme-en-personne. As Ray Brassier’s project, which he describes as a transcendental nihilism, has been a singular influence on English language reception of Laruelle’s project I at first assumed there was some kind of kenotic element to this phrase. A kind of “Man-as-nobody”, emptying the concept. But this didn’t seem to really fit the tone of the book, which didn’t strike me then as sharing in the nihilistic orientation of Brassier, nor does it now (which isn’t to say that Ray’s work isn’t valuable for understanding Laruelle, it really is). Thus I played around with reading it as “Man-in-anyone”. But I didn’t know if that quite captured it either. I note that others have felt a similar confusion as evidenced by  Noëlle Vahanian’s review of the edited volume Théorie-Rébellion [warning PDF], which includes an essay by Laruelle using this concept, translates it both as  “man-as-anyone” and “man-as-nobody”. I emailed Laruelle about this question and he explained that he sees the term between the individual and the human race, a kind of species-being or proletariat or “function of humanity” that stands between the universal and the particular without mixing them. He ruled out the “nobody” idea and thought perhaps the “anyone” would work, but didn’t seem to think it was the final word on it. I’ve been translating it as “Man-in-person” but I’m still not sure this is the best way to go about it. I think it holds this radical immanence of the universal and the particular, but I’m not sure that this is so obvious to someone reading it. I thought I’d ask the readers of the blog to tell me what they think. Man-in-anyone or Man-in-person – what feels best when you read it?

Conference Announcement – 6th Annual Religion, Literature, & the Arts (Univ. of Iowa)

Malicious Intentions & Wicked Deeds: Challenging Evil in Thought & Practice
University of Iowa, April 9-11 (2010)

There’s a lot of “humanist” talk in their conference summary, but the Call for Papers is so mind-bogglingly vast that it hardly matters.  Looks like a great time to be had.  I’m hoping to make it, if finances allow.

FRIDAY, April 9:
9:00     Janeta Tansey
9:45     John Westefeld
10:30     Break
10:45     Lori Branch
11:30     Glenn Whitehouse
12:15-2:00     Lunch Roundtable: Interdisciplinary Instruction: Challenges and Approaches
2:00     Tom Altizer
2:45     David Klemm
3:30     Break
3:45     Dale Wright
4:30     Youzhaung Geng
5:15-7:00     Dinner
7:30-9:30     Keynote Presentation—David Jasper
9:30-11:00     Informal Reception

SATURDAY, April 10
9-12     Sessions 1 and 2
12-2     Lunch Panel Discussion: Apocalyptic Evil in Recent Film
2-5     Sessions 3 and 4
5     Break
5:15-6:45     Visual Presentation: Hans Breder (Becker Auditorium)
7:00-9:30     Dinner (South Room, University of Iowa)

SUNDAY, April 11
9:30     Diane Jeske
10:15     Break
10:30     Maria Antonaccio
11:15     William Schweiker
12:00-1:00     Lunch
1:00-3:00     Lunch Keynote Presentation: Susan Neiman