The Politics of Poststructuralism Today Workshop

Social Imaginaries

THE POLITICS OF POST-STRUCTURALISM TODAY WORKSHOP

TheoryLab

School of Politics & International Relations

Queen Mary, University of London

Arts One, Room 1.28

10 am – 6 pm, Friday 17 April 2015

It is generally accepted that the various strands of thought associated with ‘post-structuralism’ have had an extensive impact on the study of politics in the UK and the United States over the past 30 years. However, it is also clear from a number of recent publications that there is renewed interest in the vexed questions of how to define post-structuralism and how to evaluate its overall significance. Indeed, it would be fair to say that some half-century after the publication of seminal texts such as Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, Gilles Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy and Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology, ‘post-structuralism’ remains an essentially contested concept. Both supporters and critics alike remain divided on whether or not post-structuralism represents a distinct tradition, and on the extent to which post-structuralist theory can enhance the study of politics.

We will use this workshop to take stock of the state of the art in post-structuralist political theory, while also identifying the key debates and issues that will shape the field in the future. The workshop brings together leading scholars from across the UK to address these questions, in order to provide a conceptual map of the politics of post-structuralism today. We expect the discussion to show how scholars diverge on several key points, while converging in common conviction that post-structuralism represents a distinct mode of theorizing, and one that remains crucially important for the study of political movements, practices and institutions.

 

Key themes and questions

The workshop engages substantive debates within the subfield. However, the presentations and discussions will also serve to introduce colleagues working across the disciplines of political science and international relations to a range of themes and questions about the status of post-structuralism today. These include:

 

Definitional questions:

What is post-structuralism and how does it relate to other major currents in continental philosophy such as structuralism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism and post-modernism?

How, and to what extent, does post-structuralism form part of the wider linguistic turn in 20th century philosophy?

 

Questions about distinct schools and traditions:

What have been the major contributions of (for example) the Foucauldian analysis of governmentality and disciplinary power, of the Essex School of ‘discourse theory’, of Žižek’s account of ideology, and of contemporary theories of rhetoric?

What is the significance of the recent critiques of semiotics and of discourse theory put forward by the ‘new materialist’ approaches and the ‘speculative realists’?

How, and to what extent, does post-structuralist theory overlap with and impact upon related approaches within the disciplines of political science and international relations, such as (post-)Marxism, Feminism, constructivism and the new institutionalism.

 

Conceptual questions:

How do post-structuralists address some of the major issues in the philosophy of the social sciences, such as the nature and scope of the political, the question of the construction of interest and identities, of agency and structure, and of the role of ontology and epistemology?

What are the meaning and significance of terms such ‘anti-essentialism’ and ‘post-foundationalism’?

 

Normative questions:

Can post-structuralism or post-foundationalism sustain a coherent normative theory of politics without falling into a performative contradiction?

What is the significance of the main normative approaches to emerge from post-structuralism, for example the tradition of ‘agonistic democracy’ and the revived interest in the idea of communism?

 

PROGRAMME

9.30-10.00 Registration and welcome

10.00-12.30 Session 1

Benoît Dillet (University of Loughborough): The Right to Problems: Post-Structuralism, Ontology and Politics

Gulshan Khan (University of Nottingham): Post-Structuralism, Ontology and the Political

Lasse Thomassen (Queen Mary): Post-Structuralism and Representation

Chair: Mark Wenman (University of Nottingham)

 

12.30-13.30 Lunch

 

13.30-15.30 Session 2

Iain MacKenzie (University of Kent) and Robert Porter (University of Ulster): From Occupy to Activate: Or, the (Re-)Politicization of Post-Structuralism in Everyday Life

Mark Wenman (University of Nottingham): Rethinking Freedom: Political Agency after Post-Structuralism

Chair: Lasse Thomassen (Queen Mary)

 

15.30-16.00 Tea/coffee

 

16.00-18.00 Roundtable: Poststructuralism and Political Theory Today

Simon Choat (Kingston)

Eric Heinze (Queen Mary)

Kim Hutchings (Queen Mary)

Caroline Williams (Queen Mary)

Chair: Mark Wenman

 

Register here

 

Places are limited, and registration is necessary. PSA members will be able to attend for free; non-PSA members will pay a small fee (£30/employed; £15 unemployed/students), which includes tea/coffee and lunch.

Funded by the School of Politics and International Relations

and the Political Thought Specialist Group of the PSA

——————

Dr Lasse Thomassen
School of Politics & International Relations
Queen Mary, University of London
327 Mile End Road
London E14NS
United Kingdom
Tel: 0207 882 2848
http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/staff/thomassenlasse.html

Contemporary Political Theory Annual Prize winner: ‘Political theory in the square: Protest, representation and subjectification‘

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

SUBREALISM

Vampyrica
John-Paul Van-Huysse

SUBREALISM

Subrealism:  One Day Conference on Ettingerian Studies, Friday 10 October 2014, Aula Maxima, Maynooth University, National University of Ireland

Details: http://subrealismtheworkofbrachalichtenbergettinger.wordpress.com/conference/

This one-day conference features invited presentations on recent shifts in Ettingerian studies focusing particularly on gender studies, sexuality studies, queer theory, literature, ethics, aesthetics, art practice, psychoanalytic practice, political science  and philosophy.

 

For information on the work of Bracha L. Ettinger, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracha_L._Ettinger

http://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/documents/Giffney_Mulhall_ORourke.pdf

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bracha-L-Ettinger/46707662527

 

For more on Speculative Realism see Michael O’Rourke’s introduction, Specrealisms, at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9566568/Specrealisms

 

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Session 1: 10.00-11.15am

Graham Price: ‘Deconstruction and the Art-Encounter-Event’

Moynagh Sullivan: ‘An Ear to the Earth’:Matrixial Gazing in Tim Robinson’s Walk-Art-Text Practice’

Tea Break: 11.15-11.30am

Session 2: 11.30am-12.45pm

Noirin MacNamara: ‘Matrixial Theory and la démocratie à-venir’

Michael O’Rourke: ‘Specrealisms’

Lunch: 12.45-1.45pm

Session 3: 1.45-3.15pm

Medb Ruane: ‘Writing Art, Talking Psychoanalysis: sketches from a Bracha Ettinger notebook’

Paula McCloskey: ‘Artificial intelligence, art and affect: Exploring the matrixial possibilities in Micha Cárdenas Becoming-Dragon and Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway, Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium’

Elena Marchevska: ‘The last place where we were together…’

Tea Break: 3.15-3.45pm

Session 4: 3.45-5.00pm

Dimitra Douskos: ‘Translating into French, translating into language’

Tina Kinsella: ‘Surrealism to Subrealism’

Aesthetics

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse

Knowledge

POSTDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN DISCOURSE

Call for Book Proposals – new book series from Palgrave Macmillan

Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse

Series Editors: Johannes Angermuller and Judith Baxter

Discourse Studies is a field studying the social production of meaning at the intersection of language & society. Its principal focus is upon the central role of meaning production for the construction of hierarchies and hegemonies, identities and subjectivities. The field comprises a range of approaches, strands and schools such as poststructuralist, critical, conversational, interactional, pragmatic and semiotic approaches to discourse to name but a few.

In the past, Discourse Studies have sometimes testified to a divide between theoretical and epistemological orientations on the one hand and more methodological, analytical and empirical orientations on the other. At the same time, an increasing exchange can be observed between various strands and approaches across the entire spectrum of the social sciences and humanities. The series invites contributions from different disciplines across the social sciences and encourages contributors to reflect upon the development of theoretical and methodological strands from both their own disciplinary perspective and from positions beyond their immediate discipline.

The “Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse” series invites authors to address the theory/practice divide by integrating theory, data analysis and critique within a single research work. The series is open to new developments in Discourse Studies, including postmodern, constructivist, emergent and poststructuralist approaches to discourse theory and analysis, which may cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.

In summary, we invite you to send in your book proposal if your work responds to some of the following broad criteria:

• Making an innovative, theoretical or epistemological contribution to the field of Discourse Studies
• Offering an open and reflexive dialogue among different strands within the interdisciplinary space of language & society
• Showing disciplinary self-reflexivity and making connections between different fields
• Linking theoretical, critical and empirical challenges in Discourse Studies
• Developing narratives between theory-development, empirical analysis and critique
• Reflecting on how your research is or can be applied in non-academic contexts.

If you have any queries or are interested in submitting a proposal, please contact the Commissioning Editor Rebecca Brennan on rebecca.brennan@palgrave.com, or contact the series editors directly.

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.co.uk

 

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

 

Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Refrains of Freedom

Gilles Deleuze

GILLES DELEUZE AND FELIX GUATTARI: REFRAINS OF FREEDOM

SUBMIT YOUR PAPERS!

“Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Refrains of Freedom,” an international conference to be held in Athens, is now accepting submissions.

Deadline for submissions is November 1, 2014.

 

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Refrains of Freedom

International Conference,
24-26 April, 2015, Panteion University, Athens, Greece.

 

We invite abstracts for papers and panel discussions on all aspects of Deleuze and Guattari’s work, and we particularly welcome contributions attempting to elucidate the meaning of Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that “pluralism equals monism” as well as its significance for a number of issues central to their writings:

* What are the implications of this claim for ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, language and the arts?

* Given that Deleuze is talking about absolute difference (A differs from itself) rather than comparative differenc (A differs from B), can we still speak of subjects and objects and transformative change?

* Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of difference in the face of multiculturalism, identity politics and cultural traditions.

* Between the fixity of cultural traditions and their nihilist rejection.

* Forcefields and extended spaces.

* Repetition as the maker of difference.

* “Autrement qu’ être/Autrement qu’ autre.”

* Memory, heterogeneity, the friend, the one thousand tiny sexes.

* Schizoanalysis.

* “Pluralism equals monism” and literature.

* “Pluralism equals monism” and the arts (visual arts, music, cinema, theater, dance, new and multi-disciplinary art forms, art-science-technology and society in a technological age).

* Pluralism equals monism” and the people to come.

 

Abstracts of papers and panels can be written in English, French or Greek, and must not exceed 500 words.

Submissions can be in .doc, .docx, .rtf or .pdf format and must include title, author’s name, institutional affiliation and contact information. The reading available for paper presentations is 30 minutes.

Panel abstracts must include a brief description of the panel as a whole and summaries of the individual papers. They must also include the title of the panel, the titles of the papers, the names of the participants, institutional affiliations and contact information. The length of the panel must not exceed 120 minutes (discussion included). Submissions will be made through the Easy Chair webside, which requires that the person submitting an abstract should create a simple account with Easy Chair.

 

Instructions on how to use the programme may be found by visiting:
http://www.easychair.org/

Submission deadline: November 1, 2014.

Νοtification of decision: January 15, 2015.<

For further information, please, see the conference website:

http://deleuzeandguattariathens2015.blogspot.gr/p/about.html or contact Constantin Boundas (cboundas@trentu.ca), Iannis Zannos (zannos@gmail.com) or Dana Papachristou (ntaniela@gmail.com).

 

**END**

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Approaching Posthumanism and the Posthuman

Capitorg

APPROACHING POSTHUMANISM AND THE POSTHUMAN

Conference and Doctoral Workshop

June 4-6, 2015 – St. Maurice, Switzerland

 

Keynote Speakers:

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington University

Stefan Herbrechter, Coventry University

Margrit Shildrick, Linköping University

Cary Wolfe, Rice University

 

Organizers: Deborah Madsen, Manuela Rossini, Kimberly Frohreich, and Bryn Skibo-Birney

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/57765

 

A highly topical and sometimes contentious notion, posthumanism continues to spark debates as to how it is

and should be defined, particularly in relation to humanism. One might ask whether the posthuman is merely

an imaginative, literary, and/or theoretical figure or if we are already posthuman. Is posthumanism simply

“after the human” or does it speak to a being beyond, above, within, encompassing, and surpassing what we

currently know as “the human”? Moreover, even if we recognize that posthumanism is inextricably bound to

and wound up in humanist discourse, does the posthuman figure effectively open up alternative perspectives

and positions from which to question, to destabilize, and to decenter the human?

 

These questions permeate contemporary literature, film and television, comic books, video games, social

media, philosophical and theoretical essays in which posthuman figures abound. From avatars and cyborgs to

clones and zombies, the posthuman appears continually to challenge the line dividing the human from the

nonhuman. Whether blurring the distinction between human and machine, human and animal, organic and

inorganic, or the living from the dead, whether destabilizing gender, sexuality, race, class, age, the

mind/body dichotomy, or species categorization, posthumanism points to the ways in which (the exclusion

of) the Other is necessary to the self-bounded identity of the human(ist) subject. More than a contemporary

issue, posthumanism appears whenever “humanness” or anthropocentrism is in crisis, and critics have

accordingly noted the presence of posthumanist thought, themes, and figures not only in postmodern

literature but in much earlier literary periods as well.

 

The aim of this conference is both to explore the multiple ways in which posthumanism in its various

configurations questions, complicates, destabilizes, and “haunts” humanism and the human, as well as to

discuss theoretical approaches to posthumanism and/or the posthuman. In addition to inhabiting a wide range

of literary periods, genres, and media, posthumanism can also be said to blur the seemingly well-defined

borders between humanities disciplines, lending itself to interdisciplinary approaches involving literary and

cultural studies, media studies, animal studies, and fields like the digital, medical, and environmental

humanities, as well as drawing from multiple theoretical frameworks such as feminism, gender studies, queer

theory, race theory, disability studies, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction.

 

Please send 300 word abstracts to Kimberly Frohreich (kimberly.frohreich@unige.ch) and Bryn Skibo-

Birney (bryn.skibo@unige.ch) by September 15, 2014.

 

Paper topics can address (but are not limited to) any of the above areas and themes across disciplines, periods, genres, and media.

An additional list of potential paper topics is below:

• Posthumanist discourse and/or figures in medieval, early modern, modern or contemporary literature
• Posthuman figures in film and television
• Posthuman figures in comic books and graphic novels
• Posthuman figures in contemporary media forms, e.g. video games, social media, etc.
• Posthumanism and critical animal studies
• Digital humanities and posthumanism
• Medical humanities and posthumanism
• Environmental humanities and posthumanism
• Postcolonial posthumanism
• Posthumanism and the Gothic (then and now)
• Posthumanism and fantasy, science fiction and/or speculative fiction
• Virtual versus embodied reality
• Monsters, ..freaks,.. and/or superheroes
• Metamorphoses and interspecies being/becoming
• Posthuman(ist) subjectivities
• Embodying posthumanism or the posthuman body
• The posthumous
• Language and the posthuman
• Posthumanism and gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and/or class
• Anthropomorphism
• Posthuman politics and ethics

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

 

Buddhism and Radical Theory

Marx’s Grave

BUDDHISM AND RADICAL THEORY

Dear All

This new journal The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture, and Politics may interest you.

It is a site on inquiry at the intersection of Buddhism, meditation, critical theory, and social change.

Articles in the inaugural issue by Michaele Ferguson, Adam Lobel, and myself put thinkers like Foucault, Marx, Deleuze, and Arendt into conversation with contemplative practices of the self and the social.

Give the journal a gander: http://www.arrow-journal.org/

———————-

James K. Rowe
Assistant Professor
School of Environmental Studies
University of Victoria
Coast Salish Territory
Office – Turpin Building, Rm B224
Phone – 250.853-3574
Email – jkrowe@uvic.ca

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Formalism and the Real: Ontology and the Subject

Philosophy

FORMALISM AND THE REAL: ONTOLOGY AND THE SUBJECT

Pittsburgh Summer Symposium in Contemporary Philosophy

Duquesne University

Department of Philosophy

Pittsburgh, PA

 

Call for Applications

We are pleased to announce the 2014 Pittsburgh Summer Symposium in Contemporary Philosophy, held at Duquesne University. Details for the program are as follows:

 

Formalism and the Real: Ontology, Politics, and the Subject

August 4–8, 2014

 

(Optional Participants’ Conference, August 2-3)

 

“The real can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse of formalization.”  — Jacques Lacan, Seminar XX 

 

“We need a theory of the pass of the real, in the breach opened up by formalization. Here, the real is no longeronly what can be lacking from its place, but what passes through by force.” — Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject 

 

Seminar Leaders:

Prof. Bruno Bosteels (Cornell University)Prof. Tom Eyers (Duquesne University)

Prof. Paul Livingston (University of New Mexico)

 

Course Description:

Philosophy in the twenty-first century has seen an extensive reconsideration of formalistic methodologies and theoretical structures. This is heavily influenced by the formalism developed by a number of mid-twentieth century French thinkers who rejected humanist philosophies of experience or consciousness typified by dominant forms of existentialism and phenomenology. Insights derived from Marxism, Freudianism, and philosophy of science were argued to undermine central tenets of the latter, including the priority of description and the emphasis on first-person experiences. Rather, stress was placed on the priority of construction, an emphasis on the concept, and a rethinking of the nature of knowledge and the object of science. The recent history of formalist approaches is framed in important ways by Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan. As is well known, Althusser rejected historicist and humanist readings of Marx in favor of a structuralist approach, which was amenable to the conception of science developed bythinkers like Jean Cavaillès, Gaston Bachelard, and Georges Canguilhem. Simultaneously, Lacan rejected ego-psychological readings of Freud, forming interpretive, theoretical, and clinical bases for psychoanalysis that drew on Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist linguistics and Claude Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropology. This led him to a methodological formalism, particularly when addressing the Real and the psycho-dynamics in which it is involved. The presence of Althusser and Lacan at the École Normale Supériere during this time formed the intellectual milieu in which students such as Alain Badiou, Jacques-Alain Miller, Étienne Balibar, and Jacques Rancière would begin to develop their own thought. An important forum for this was the journal the Cahiers pour l’Analyse (1966-69). The current project to translate itinto English has prompted a surge in research related to these themes. In the Cahiers, efforts were made to reconcile Marxist politics with a Lacanian account of the subject. Lacan’s notion of the Real was essential to this and, along with the other elements of his thought, came to be developed by Badiou to address political and ontological domains.

More recently, formalism in philosophy has expanded to address issues beyond these origins. For instance, formalistic reconstructions of Heideggerian and Husserlian thought have proved intensely productive and have problematized the opposition of philosophies of the concept to phenomenological philosophies. Moreover, recent efforts to address questions in aesthetics and politics with formal approaches has further expanded the boundaries of formalism’s theoretical scope. Paul Livingston’s book, The Politics of Logic: Badiou, Wittgenstein, and the Consequences of Formalism, examines the landscape of political criticism and change given the results and paradoxes of 20th century projects of formalization in mathematics and logic. Following this, his current project focuses on Heidegger’s philosophy, and will re-examine our inherited notions of sense and truth. After writing a book on Lacan’s concept of the Real, Tom

Eyers has analyzed the intellectual foundations of structuralism in 1930s and 1940s French epistemology and philosophy of science. He is presently writing a book entitled Speculative Formalism: The Poetics of Form in Literature, Science, and Philosophy which will bring that work to bear on poetics and literary theory. In addition to translating Badiou’s Theory of the Subject and Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, Bruno Bosteels has devoted numerous books to Badiou and issues in political thought. In his recentMarx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror, Bosteels investigates ways art and literature provide insight into processes of subjectification at the core of Marxist and psychoanalytic concerns. This summer symposium will bring together interested graduate students, postdoctoral students, and junior faculty for a week of discussion, lecture, and close textual study. Together, we will pursue questions regarding formalism and its relation to the Real in contemporary ontology, politics, and theories of the subject and their consequences for understanding knowledge, history, state, language, art, and literature. Lacanian and Badiouian thought will form a key theoretical backdrop. Yet, we expect our studies will include work by a number of other figures, including Plato, Marx, Nietzsche, Frege, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Lautman, Bachelard,Canguilhem, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida, Macherey, Milller, Butler, Jameson, Žižek, Hägglund, and Malabou.

All texts and discussion will be in English.

Application:

We invite current graduate students, postdoctoral students, and junior faculty in philosophy orrelated disciplines to submit an application composed of a C.V. and a short letter of intent (500words maximum) to pghsummersymposium2014@gmail.com.

The deadline for applications is Friday, April 25th, 2014.

We expect to respond with notifications regarding acceptance to the symposium by Thursday, May 1st, 2014 to help facilitate summer plans. The seminar will be limited to 30-40 participants. For more information as it becomes available, we have created a website for the symposium: http://pghsummersymposium6.wix.com/pghsummersymp2014

Participants’ Conference (August 2–3):

In order to facilitate a further exchange of ideas and research, a participants’ conference will be held the weekend before the seminar begins. Applicants who receive notice of acceptance as participants will be asked – if interested – to submit an abstract of up to 500 words on any theme related to the topic of the seminar. The participants’ conference will take place on Saturday and Sunday, August 2-3, 2014.

Financial Information:

There will be a $200 registration fee for each participant of the seminar. This money will be used for event expenses like a conference dinner, celebration, daily coffee, etc. Please note that participants will be responsible for arranging their own housing as well as financing most of theirown meals for the duration of the symposium. However, with respect to lodging, we expect alimited number of arrangements with graduate students will be available on a first come, first serve basis.

Organizers:

James Bahoh, Dept. of Philosophy, Duquesne University, bahohj@duq.edu

Martin Krahn, Dept. of Philosophy, Duquesne University, krahnm@duq.edu

Jacob Greenstine, Dept. of Philosophy, Duquesne University, greenstinea@duq.edu

Dave Mesing, Dept. of Philosophy, Villanova University, dmesing@villanova.edu

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Societies of Control

Critical Education / Education is Critical

SOCIETIES OF CONTROL

New Formations Special Issue  ‘Societies of Control’
Call for Contributions 
Deadline for paper proposals March 31st 2014

Potential contributors: please submit title, full abstract (300 words) and a short c.v. to nfsubmissions@me.com by this date. 
Contributors will be notified of acceptance by April 14th 2014
Submission of papers will be required by  September 30th 2014. 
Journal Info: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/newformations/contents.html

This issue of New Formations will address a complex set of interrelated issues in the theorisation of contemporary societies and power relations. The emergence of distributed systems, network relations and decentralised institutions has been widely observed as a key feature of social, cultural and political change for several decades, across a wide range of domains of practice and discourse. The issue will provide an opportunity to reflect upon this convergence and the diverse positions from which it has been theorised.

A key reference point in these discussions, Deleuze’s ‘Post-Script on the Societies of Control’ remains a enigmatic text on several levels. Easily dismissed as the irrelevant musings of a metaphysician on a fundamentally sociological set of questions, the essay’s theses have nonetheless proven irresistibly suggestive to many commentators. The claim that contemporary mechanisms of government, regulation and administration must be understood as operating according to different logics than the classic ‘normative’ mode of ‘disciplinary’ power seems increasingly relevant in the era of networked communications and official encouragement of cultural, social and sexual ‘diversity’, and yet Deleuze’s delineation of those mechanisms remains frustratingly abstract and cryptically suggestive.

However, Maurizio Lazzarato has persuasively linked Deleuze’s suggestive account with the general thesis that contemporary capitalism is best understood in terms of the shift from ‘Fordism’ to ‘post-Fordism’ in the 1980s. Whilst Fordism relies on a typically ‘disciplinary’ set of institutions and practices (the factory, the centralised nation state, the collectivist and conformist education system, ‘mass’ media), post-Fordism relies on quite different mechanisms and organisational forms (disaggregated networks of corporations, trans-national regulatory bodies, ‘narrowcasting’ and social media) which the notion of ‘control society’ tries to capture at the same level of abstraction as Foucault’s concept of ‘discipline’.

In fact, although Foucault’s studies of ‘disciplinary’ society have influenced understanding of both historical and contemporary societies across a swathe of disciplines and in many spheres of political thought and cultural work, his later lectures seem also to propose that the logic of ‘security’ which emerges in the 20th century is different from the logic of ‘discipline’ and in this regarid is close to Deleuze’s understanding of ‘control’. Reading Foucault’s later lecture sources with care, Lazzarato argues persuasively that it is a common but categorical mistake to believe that Foucault’s studies of disciplinary power are attempts to delineate the basic mechanisms of contemporary forms of power, rather than historical studies of institutional forms and practices which, while they may well persist, are today definitively ‘residual’ in character.

Simultaneous with and subsequent to Deleuze’s and Foucault’s work on these issues the emergence of interest in post-Fordism in the wake of the Regulation School’s theorisation of Fordism and its decline has generated interested in a similar set of issues since the 1980s, particularly on the Anglophone Left. The claim that the shift from ‘Fordism’ to ‘Post-Fordism’ or ‘the New Capitalism’ constitutes the definitive historical process of recent times has been influential on various strands of social and political theory and analysis since the early 1980s. What might be the points of resonance or dissonance between these theses and those proposed by Foucault and Deleuze and their followers?

Another element of much commentary on these issues has been the proposition that ‘the network’ now constitutes the prevalent organisational form for both corporations and political and social movements. The fact that ‘networked’ and ‘horizontal’ organisational forms were pioneered by the radical movements of the 60s and 70s – most notably the women’s movement – is well known. What is the significance of this historical fact, of the agency of the women’s movement and the desires it expresses in shifting the dynamics of advanced capitalist culture? How does the emergence of post- Fordism and the societies of security / control transform gender relations and the politics of sexuality, and how far have those shifts themselves been driven by the multiple refusals of gendered and sexual normativity which have characterised the cultural radicalism of recent decades?

This issue will explore the analytic possibilities generated by this set of issues, questions and theses with reference both to a range of possible objects of study in contemporary politics and culture and to a number of different conceptual and theoretical positions. Should we bother to develop and flesh out Deleuze’s and Foucault’s suggestions at all? If so, how might we do so and what would be the analytic gains? Are there alternative conceptions of phenomena addressed by their work which would allow for better diagnosis and more sophisticated analysis?
What phenomena of contemporary culture and politics might be best analysed in terms of the idea of ‘control society’? How could such analyses inform our broader understanding of such issues as the ‘war on terror’, new modes of sexual regulation, new forms of censorship (especially online) and ‘surveillance’ by corporate or state agencies and debates over intellectual property? What forms of democratic, libertarian or anti-capitalist politics and culture might be possible or necessary in an era of ‘control’?

Confirmed Contributors:
Andrew Goffey
Luciana Parisi
Tiziana Terranova
Angela Mitropoulos
Athina Karatzogianni
Will Davies
Alex Williams 
Tony Sampson 
Yuk Hui
Erich Hörl

 

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Artistic Lives

Aesthetics

ARTISTIC LIVES

Kirsten Forkert, Birmingham City University

Tuesday February 25th @ University of Essex
3-5PM, Room LTB B
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs/news_and_seminars/seminarDetail.aspx?e_id=6277

Kirsten Forkert will talk about her recently published book, Artistic Lives (Ashgate 2013), which is based on interview material with artists and arts professionals in London and Berlin, together with ethnographic descriptions and analyses of social and urban policy. The book examines how artists support themselves within rapidly changing urban environments – and how they contend with the effects of property bubbles, precarious employment, uncertain funding and policies that position cultural workers at the centre of economic development with little concern for they actually make ends meet. The book examines the myth that artists can create something from nothing, and engages with debates surrounding Post-Fordism, gentrification and the nature of authorship, to raise challenging questions about the function of culture and the role of artists within contemporary capitalism.

Kirsten will discuss her motivations for starting the project, share the main findings of the research (which was carried out during the first phase of the recession) and reflect on the implications in the present context.

Kirsten Forkert is a researcher and activist, and lecturer in media theory at Birmingham City University. Prior to working at BCU, she taught at a number of institutions during and after completing her PhD in the department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths. Her work is based within cultural studies, but draws on other disciplines, including sociology, urban studies and critical theory. It has been published in CITY, Third Text and various edited collections, as well as in Mute and Variant. Prior to academia, she worked in media art, new media and community media in Canada and the US, as a freelance practitioner. She is now developing new research on the cultural politics of austerity, and is involved in a collaborative, ESRC funded project mapping the controversies around Home Office campaigns.

Sponsored by the Centre for Work, Organization, and Society

This seminar is part of an ongoing workshop series on artist collectives.

Further events this spring will include the Nanopolitics group (March 5th), Max Haiven from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (March 19th), Jeremy Gilbert from the University of East London (April 29th), and others.

For more information contact Stevphen Shukaitis: sshuka@essex.ac.uk

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

 

Governing Academic Life

Teaching Marx

GOVERNING ACADEMIC LIFE

Conference at the London School of Economics and Political Science

June 25-26, 2014

June 25, 2014 is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault. Governing Academic Life marks this anniversary by providing an occasion for academics to reflect on our present situation through our reflections on Foucault’s legacy. The focus of the conference, therefore, will be on the form of governmentality that now constitutes our identities and regulates our practices as researchers and teachers. However the event will also create a space for encounters between governmentality scholars and critics of the neoliberal academy whose critiques have different intellectual roots – especially Frankfurt school critical theory, critical political economy, feminism, Bourdieuian analyses of habitus, capital and field, and autonomist Marxism.

Proposals for papers and panels are welcome until March 15, 2014. Please refer to the guidelines below.

Background and Context:

The impetus for this event is the set of changes currently sweeping across UK higher education, which include cuts in direct public funding, new financing arrangements that are calculated to bring private equity into the sector and foster competition between providers, the likely emergence of new corporate structures for HEI’s which will open the sector to commercial providers, the separation of elite from mass higher education and the globalization of ‘trade’ in HE services; but also (and relatedly) the continuing development of instruments for rendering student-teacher interactions visible and comparable, and for calculating and governing the impact, influence and value of academic research.

Governmentality research is featuring strongly in the debates around some of this. Yet though largely ‘diagnostic’ in nature, it is increasingly being enlisted as groundwork for the radical critiques and alternatives offered by autonomist Marxist theorists of cognitive capitalism and immaterial labour. Meanwhile, critical theorists who idealise a public sphere of rational-critical debate (with ‘the idea of the university’ at its heart) are struggling to re-define what makes the university (a) public and to re-think the terms of its engagement with the wider economy and society in less radical ways – often without problematising the forms of (Foucaultian) government, or of complicity with capitalism’s logic of accumulation, that are necessarily involved with these reconstructions.  This conference aims to bring together leading contemporary scholars and activists who draw on one or more of these traditions for a series of mutually challenging discussions.

In general, the conference will be oriented by the concern to think critically about the conditions of possibility of the academy today – where ‘conditions of possibility’ could mean governmental assemblages of one kind or another, capitalist production relations, the forces defining how different capitals (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) register within the academic field, or quasi-transcendental presuppositions of rational communication. Participants will ideally aim to explore how we might think across these usually distinct ways of both conceiving what the university is and contesting what it has become.

Specific foci of debate may include:

* The idea of the university: ruined or redeemable? Social criticism in the age of the normalized academic

* Beyond public v. private? Dimensions of corporatisation

* The role(s) of (contract, competition, corporate, intellectual property) law in constructing the market university

* The government of academic freedom: constituting competition as a way of life

* Markets, measurement and managerialism: rankings and ratings, rights and royalties, accounting and audit, metrics … and alternative metrics?

* Academic career-ism and casualization; discipline and de-professionalisation

* The conditions for the persistence in the university sector of relations of domination organised in particular around gender and ethnicity

* Critical political economy and varieties of communicative capitalism

* Entrepreneurial universities and enterprising academic subjects: personal branding as ‘technology of the self’?

* What is an author, now? The future of academic authorship and the academic book

* The potentials and pitfalls of ‘openness’ and ‘commons-ism’ in scholarly communication

* The ‘technicity’ of academic forms of life: the potentials and pathologies of living with/in digitised work environments

* The student as consumer – or as producer?

* The rise of para-academic ‘outstitutions’ beyond the university’s (pay)walls

* Other strategies for resisting the neoliberal academy

* Envisioning and enacting alternative futures for the university 

Additional ideas for panels and themes are welcome.

Proposal submission procedure:

Proposals should be submitted as e-mail attachments to A.Barron@lse.ac.uk or M.S.Evans@lse.ac.uk, or in hard copy form by mail to one of the conference coordinators (addresses below). The deadline for receipt of proposals is March 15, 2014.

 Proposals for papers must include the working title of the proposed paper (which should be suitable for presentation in 20 minutes) together with the author’s name, affiliation, full contact information (including address, phone, fax and email), and a brief (500 words maximum) abstract or outline. Submissions are welcome from graduate students as well as from more established scholars.

Proposals for panels (of up to 4 speakers) must include the information indicated above for all papers that are expected to be part of the panel, together with an overview of the panel theme (max 300 words) and an indication of each proposed panellist’s willingness to participate.

Timetable:  Proposals will be reviewed by the conference co-ordinators, and notice of acceptance will be given by April 15 2014.

Registration: A registration fee of £100 will be payable to cover costs. A limited number of places will be available at a concessionary rate for graduate students, adjuncts and scholars without an institutional affiliation. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for one of these places when sending your proposal.

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The New Left Book Club: https://rikowski.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/the-new-left-book-club-call-for-papers/

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski   

Education Crisis

Praktyka Teoretyczna (Theoretical Practice) – Call for Papers

Education Crisis

PRAKTYKA TEORETYCZNA (THEORETICAL PRACTICE) – CALL FOR PAPERS

Praktyka Teoretyczna: http://www.praktykateoretyczna.pl/

This Call for Papers is for the Introduction section, known as “Varia” in the fourth issue of “Theoretical Practice”. “Varia” will be concerned with unsolicited texts, interesting research topics and interventions that do not fit into the thematic nature of the issue. “Varia” will then become a permanent feature of the journal.

We encourage you to submit to the Editor scientific articles in the area of broad leftist thought and engaged research practice, in writing that is clear, and is in tune with the practical-theoretical perspective of the journal (with particular emphasis on Marxist thought, as well as, among others, biopolitics, poststructuralism, posthumanism, postcolonial studies, gender, queer, urban, animal research or higher education).

This invitation is permanent and is not associated with any particular deadline for submitting articles. The authors and the author must, however, reckon with the fact that the potential publication will depend on the normal mode of publishing in the magazine.

The volume of the article (written in Polish or English) can not exceed 40 thousand characters (including spaces and footnotes, please refer to the other guidelines in the section for authors ). Each of the texts is subject to technical editing and double-substantive editorial. Those articles that undergo the process of positive evaluation will be peer reviewed by two anonymous reviewers, independent and non-editorial, who have expertise in the field and relevant research interests. The review process will be ‘double blind’. An article that will pass through this procedure successfully will then be published in one of the numbers thematic magazines.

Call for Papers (with Polish-English translation facility): http://www.praktykateoretyczna.pl/call-for-papers/call-for-papers-varia/

 

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The New Left Book Club: https://rikowski.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/the-new-left-book-club-call-for-papers/

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses

Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory

RESILIENCE: INTERNATIONAL POLICIES, PRACTISES AND DISCOURSES

CALL FOR PAPERS

Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses Invites you to Submit your Paper

Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses (http://www.tandfonline.com/resi) creates a platform for dialogue about the processes, spaces, policies, practices and subjectivities through which resilience is seen to operate. As such, this journal draws together academic expertise from disciplines such as international sociology, geography, political theory, development studies, security studies, anthropology and law.

Find out why you should submit your paper to Resilience and read the full call for papers here:  http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/pgas/resilience-call-for-papers

You can also visit our Author Services website (http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/) for further resources and guides to the complete publication process and beyond.

To keep abreast of Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, sign up for table of contents alerts: (http://www.tandfonline.com/action/doUpdateAlertSettings?action=addJournal&journalCode=resi20) 

Best wishes and festive greetings,
David Chandler
d.chandler@wmin.ac.uk
Editor, Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses (http://www.tandfonline.com/resi) 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski