Continental Philosophy

Link

A great conference line-up

Thanks to David Vessey

Call for Papers

Duquesne University

4th Annual Graduate Philosophy Conference

Thinking Desire

Keynote Speaker:

Babette Babich

Fordham University

April 10, 2010

The general theme of this conference is “thinking desire.” On this topic, broadly understood, we welcome high quality submissions focusing on contemporary issues as well submissions drawing from any period in eastern or western philosophy. Comparative studies on desire from different historical periods and schools of philosophy as well as novel approaches to traditional themes are welcome.

This conference has been organized by the Duquesne Graduate Students in Philosophy (GSIP), with support from Duquesne University Philosophy, and the Dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts.

Please note: living arrangements with the graduate students in the philosophy department of Duquesne University will be organized and provided for the speakers upon request to help offset travel costs.

Submission Deadline: February 1st 2010

Submission Guidelines:

Submit papers by email to duqgradconf2010@hotmail.com
All papers must be submitted in blind review format: papers should not include the author’s name or any other identifying information. All personal and contact information (with paper title) should be included in the body of the email.
Papers should not exceed 3,000 words and should include an abstract of no more than 300 words.
Papers must be in either Word or PDF electronic formats.
For further information, questions, or problems with submissions contact Clancy Smith, at smithc4@duq.edu.

Hosted by the Research Group in Philosophical Hermeneutics, Institute of Philosophy and History of Ideas.

Philosophical hermeneutics, in the broadest sense of the term, has grown to signify a current within contemporary thinking loosely united by the insistence on the historical and linguistic nature of human existence and experience. As such, the primary object or concern of any philosophical-hermeneutical thinking seems to be the understanding and interpretative relations between man, language, and history – a concern that provides common ground for dialogue between a wide variety of thinkers, ranging at least from Nietzsche and Dilthey, through Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur to Derrida and Vattimo.

In dealing with understanding and interpretative relations, philosophical hermeneutics runs the risk of assigning unrestricted privilege to the relation itself at the expense of its individual terms. Since the advent of structural semantics, linguistics, and historiography, this risk has become even more apparent. One of the questions emerging in this regard concerns the status and role of the concept of responsibility within philosophical hermeneutics. This problematic contains at least two dimensions.

Firstly, in what sense can hermeneutical subjectivity be disclosed as being-responsible? Whether one turns to Nietzsche’s “second innocence”, Heidegger’s concept of conscience, Lévinasian substitution, or Gadamer’s and Ricoeur’s separate re-interpretations of Aristotelian phronesis, this question seems to be central to any examination of hermeneutical subjectivity – a question becoming just the more pressing by the advent of structuralism, the alleged “death” of the subject, and the unclear status and role of philosophical anthropology within hermeneutics.

Secondly, in what sense can hermeneutics itself be posited as a responsibleway of thinking? This question pertains to the status of hermeneutical thinking within the more general field and tradition of philosophy. Can hermeneutics be construed as the responsible philosophy par excellence? Here, one might focus on Heidegger’s concept of Andenken, an ethically inspired or animated concept of deconstruction, or Vattimo’s articulation of hermeneutics as a response to a certain “nihilistic vocation”. At any rate,the question of responsibility here turns back upon itself, questions itself as a responsible way of thinking the question as such. In this regard, the question also becomes the more general question of the relation between philosophy and its “other”.

Aims and Topics:

The aim of the conference is to explore the status or role responsibility within philosophical hermeneutics. Participants may do this by discussing this concept within a philosophical-hermeneutical framework, focusing on the problem of responsible subjectivity, on the problem of responsible thinking, or on the relation between the two. Questions that can be addressed include,but are not limited to:
• What is the relation between responsiveness and responsibility?
• Are we compelled to defend a strong notion of subjectivity if we want to keep on considering ourselves as responsible persons?
• In what sense is responsibility connected to the concept of freedom, and what does a hermeneutical concept of freedom entail?
• Is there such a thing as a hermeneutical ethics?
• Is responsibility necessarily connected to our behavior towards other persons? In what sense can one be responsible for institutions, traditions or languages?
• What is the contribution of, say, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Vattimo, Levinas or Derrida to our understanding of responsibility?

For further information please contact Jon Utoft Nielsen (filjun@hum.au.dk).

From the blog “How to Live”, a post by Simon Critchley.

I am terribly sorry. Health issues kept me to minimal activity for the past few weeks. I’m trying to catch up with the backlog. Site is back now.

i am sorry for the slowdown of the site. it should be back to a normal routine this week. please bear with me as i’m catching up with emails you have kindly sent.

American Philosophical Association (APA), Eastern Division

New York City, NY

Monday, December 28, 2008

11:15 a.m. – 1:15 p.m., Group Session GIII-8

Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française (SAPLF)

Topic: Recent French Feminism(s)

Chair: Pleshette DeArmitt (University of Memphis)

Brigitte Weltman-Aron (University of Florida): “La ‹‹D. S.››: Sexual Difference in the Work of Hélène Cixous.”

Mary Beth Mader (University of Memphis): “Geneviève Fraisse and the Politics of Consent.”

Kelly Oliver (Vanderbilt University): “Kristeva on Freedom, Choice and Maternity”

The University of Texas at San Antonio Department of Philosophy & Classics announces a workshop on the thought of Simon Critchley
who will be the Brackenridge Distinguished Visiting Professor. The workshop will take place on Monday February 22nd and Tuesday February 23rd 2010. Please click here for more details.

Globalized Capital: Subjects, Spaces, and Critical Responses

April 10th & 11th, 2010

Keynote Speaker: Bruno Bosteels

Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University

Questioning capitalism is no easy enterprise. Discourses interrogating capitalism have mirrored the trajectory of capitalism itself, proliferating in a variety of directions and spawning new conceptual and historical problems with each new decade of confrontation. This conference aims to open up a space of convergence and dialogue for disparate trajectories of critical reflection and practical response. Its title aims to emphasize not only capitalism’s global character—its relentless expansion beyond various geographical, cultural, and political “limits”—but at the same time its particularized and often discontinuous local effects—the subjects, practices, and increasingly micro-managed spaces it carves out en route.

We would like to solicit papers dealing with a broad range of topics including, but not limited to:

Legacies and Boundaries of Expansion: Inside, outside, and beyond the capitalist Nation-State. Alterity, subalternity, and critiques from the margins. Postcolonialism, decolonization, and anti-colonial resistance. The metropolis and the collapse of the city/countryside dialectic. Historical and conceptual origins of capitalist economic thought.

Collectivities and Communes in Resistance: Communism. From parties to groups, from crowds to constituent power. Capitalism and Internationalism. Partisanship and/or universalism. Spaces of work and labors of thought: “immaterial labor”, intellectual culture, and the marketplace of ideas.
Subjects, Selfhood and Culture: Entrepreneurialist cultures of selfhood. Consumerist ethics and the conscience market. Neo-archaisms: the role of tradition and faith under capitalism. Counter-conducts, indocility, and strategies for “de-individualizing” and “decapitalizing” the self.
Images, Representations, and Symbols: Ideology and ‘ideology critique’. Narratives and mythologies of capitalism in cinema, art, architecture, and literature. The semiotics of capital.

Power and Neoliberal Governmentality: Biopower and biopolitical economy. Marxist critique in a paradigm of perpetual crisis management. “Total Governance”: from managerial rationalities to the management of life itself. Counter-insurgency, preventative war, and the securitization of liberty.

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2009

Call for Papers
17th Annual DePaul University
Philosophy Graduate Student Conference

GLOBALIZED CAPITAL: SUBJECTS, SPACES, AND CRITICAL RESPONSES
April 10th & 11th, 2010

Keynote Speaker: Bruno Bosteels
Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University

Questioning capitalism is no easy enterprise. Discourses interrogating capitalism have mirrored the trajectory of capitalism itself, proliferating in a variety of directions and spawning new conceptual and historical problems with each new decade of confrontation. This conference aims to open up a space of convergence and dialogue for disparate trajectories of critical reflection and practical response. Its title aims to emphasize not only capitalism’s global character-its relentless expansion beyond various geographical, cultural, and political “limits”-but at the same time its particularized and often discontinuous local effects-the subjects, practices, and increasingly micro-managed spaces it carves out en route.
We would like to solicit papers dealing with a broad range of topics including, but not limited to:
Legacies and Boundaries of Expansion: Inside, outside, and beyond the capitalist Nation-State. Alterity, subalternity, and critiques from the margins. Postcolonialism, decolonization, and anti-colonial resistance. The metropolis and the collapse of the city/countryside dialectic. Historical and conceptual origins of capitalist economic thought.

Collectivities and Communes in Resistance: Communism. From parties to groups, from crowds to constituent power. Capitalism and Internationalism. Partisanship and/or universalism. Spaces of work and labors of thought: “immaterial labor”, intellectual culture, and the marketplace of ideas.

Subjects, Selfhood and Culture: Entrepreneurialist cultures of selfhood. Consumerist ethics and the conscience market. Neo-archaisms: the role of tradition and faith under capitalism. Counter-conducts, indocility, and strategies for “de-individualizing” and “decapitalizing” the self.

Images, Representations, and Symbols: Ideology and ‘ideology critique’. Narratives and mythologies of capitalism in cinema, art, architecture, and literature. The semiotics of capital.

Power and Neoliberal Governmentality: Biopower and biopolitical economy. Marxist critique in a paradigm of perpetual crisis management. “Total Governance”: from managerial rationalities to the management of life itself. Counter-insurgency, preventative war, and the securitization of liberty.
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2009

Authors should email their submissions to depaulgraduatestudents@gmail.com. Papers should not exceed 3000 words and should contain a short abstract. As all papers are subject to anonymous review, papers should not include your name or any other identifying marks. Your paper title and personal information (name, institutional affiliation, and phone contact) should be included in the body of the email.
For further information and updates on the conference, if you have any questions or problems regarding submissions, or in the event that you do not receive a confirmation email, please contact Neal Miller at zzerohourr@gmail.com

Review of Friedrich Nietzsche, Writings from the Early Notebooks

This is the tenth volume by Nietzsche in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series, giving him the most books in the series (followed by Kant with seven volumes). Like all the other Nietzsche volumes, Writings from the Early Notebooks contains an Introduction followed by suggestions for further reading, together with bibliographical notes on the texts and notes on the translation. The texts are presented in a new translation. Added to them is an impressive number of very informative footnotes that provide the biographical, historical and intellectual background without which a lot of the material would be barely comprehensible. All these features make this volume, like many others in the series, very helpful for both students and researchers.

via Friedrich Nietzsche, Raymond Geuss (ed.), Alexander Nehamas (ed.) – Writings from the Early Notebooks – Reviewed by Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt Universität – Philosophical Reviews – University of Notre Dame.

CALL FOR PAPERS

WAITING FOR THE POLITICAL MOMENT

Utrecht & Rotterdam, June 17-19, 2010

‘Hamm: What’s happening?

Clov: Something is taking its course.’

Beckett, Endgame

Over the last decades, several political and cultural theorists have argued that the domain of politics, and even the very idea of the political, has been hollowed out. Politics today appears to have lost its proper status or has been submerged in the more powerful and encompassing infrastructures of late capitalism. Instead of frantically affirming or denying the emptying-out of the political, this conference traces the appropriation of the political by apparatuses of state, church, capitalism and media in modernity to look for ways to reinvigorate it. To do so, the conference focuses on a key concept: the political moment – the moment in which political agency becomes possible, as well as the formative role of the moment in politics.

To get to grips with the political moment we not only need to understand our current moment; we need to have an idea of how it developed over time. Not considering the political moment from an exclusively contemporary point of view, this conference also calls for proposals that focus on the formation of the political in relation to its emptying-out from the late Middle Ages to the present.

Contributions in the form of a 4000 words positioning paper distributed in advance and to be discussed in a seminar setting could address (but are not limited to) the following issues: what is a political moment? What does the emptying-out of the political imply? How has the appropriation of the political by state, religion or media shaped the conditions of possibility of the political? What is the role of the moment in politics?

Confirmed speakers include: Mieke Bal, Bruno Bosteels, Rosi Braidotti, Simon Critchley, Martin van Gelderen, Olivier Marchart, Patchen Markell, Benjamin Noys, and Alberto Toscano.

If you are interested in participating, please send in a 300-words paper proposal and a short résumé of your current research by January 15 2010 to Frans-Willem Korsten, Professor of Literature and Society, Erasmus University Rotterdam, email: korsten@fhk.eur.nl; and/or to Bram Ieven, lecturer in comparative literature at Utrecht University, email: b.k.ieven@uu.nl.

For more information see: www.waitingforthepoliticalmoment.org

This week, we follow the journey of the classics as they spread from Greece to the Arab world and beyond. At a time when Europe still hadn’t got its act together philosophically speaking, Arabs were busily translating and debating the ideas of Aristotle and others. We’re joined by Professor Peter Adamson from King’s College, London, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy.

Link

SYMPOSIUM
Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy
Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale

Volume 13 Issue Number 2 Fall 2009
Volume 13 Numéro 2 Automne 2009

Table of Contents/Table des matières

Articles

Foucault et Taylor sur la vérité, la liberté et l’identité subjective. Le vouloir-dire-vrai dans la parrêsia, VALÉRIE DAOUST

Deleuze’s Post-Critical Metaphysics, ALISTAIR WELCHMAN

Nietzsche as a Reader of Wilhelm Roux, or the Physiology of History, LUKAS SODERSTROM

Hume et Bergson, une pratique de la méthode chez Deleuze. Réflexions pour une éthique de la lecture, RENÉ LEMIEUX

The Threat of Givenness in Jean-Luc Marion: Toward a New Phenomenology of Psychosis, JOSEPH CAREW

Book Panel/Table-ronde

Bernhard Radloff’s Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism: Disclosure and Gestalt, GRAEME NICHOLSON, TOM ROCKMORE AND BERNHARD RADLOFF
Étude critique/Review Essay

Michel Foucault : Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres et Le Courage de la vérité, ALAIN BEAULIEU

Sixth Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
University of Memphis
February 12-13, 2010
Submission Deadline: January 08, 2010
Keynote Speaker:
Daniel W. Smith (Purdue University)

“What is the postmodern [or contemporary philosophy]? …
It is undoubtedly part of the modern” — Jean-François Lyotard

Lyotard claims that contemporary philosophy has not gone beyond the tradition which was inaugurated by Descartes. As we stand at the beginning of a new century, we wish to inquire into the ways in which philosophy today is a confrontation with modern problems—either by providing solutions to the problems or by undoing the problems themselves. The aim of the conference is to consider the significance of grasping anew modern philosophers and/or their respective problems as they are discussed and rethought by contemporary philosophers.

We invite submissions of philosophical papers by graduate students focusing on any problem, question, concept, or figures, in which there is a clear focus on the relation between modern and contemporary philosophy. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following philosophical problems:

- Rethinking transcendental philosophy.
- The human/animal divide.
-? The question of world, the role of representation, and/or the place of the subject.
- ?The possibility of metaphysics or ontology.
- Philosophy of embodiment or the importance of the body.

Deadline for submission of papers is January 08, 2010. Papers should not exceed twelve double-spaced pages. Papers should be prepared in Word and made suitable for blind review. Also, please provide a separate cover page which includes the following information: paper title; university affiliation; email address; telephone number; abstract (200 words maximum). Title the attachment containing your paper with your paper’s title. Title the attachment containing your cover page with your last name followed by “cover page”. Email both files as separate attachments to all three members of the co-organizing and reviewing committee: Nicolás Garrera (ngarrera@memphis.edu), Arsalan Memon (amemon@memphis.edu), and Maia Nahele (mkhffwen@memphis.edu). Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact any one of the co-organizing/reviewing committee officers.

Roundtable on Marx’s Capital

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, February 24-27, 2011

Our second Roundtable will explore Volume One of Marx’s Capital (1867). We chose this text because the resurgence in references to and mentions of Marx – provoked especially by the financial crisis, but presaged by the best-seller status of Hardt and Negri’s Empire and Marx’s surprising victory in the BBC’s “greatest philosopher” poll – has only served to highlight the fact that there have not been any new interpretive or theoretical approaches to this book since Althusser’s in the 1960s.

The question that faces us is this: Does the return of Marx mean that we have been thrust into the past, such that long “obsolete” approaches have a newfound currency, or does in mean, on the contrary, that Marx has something new to say to us, and that new approaches to his text are called for?

The guiding hypothesis of this Roundtable is that if new readings of Capital are called for, then it is new readers who will produce them.

Therefore, we are calling for applications from scholars interested in approaching Marx’s magnum opus with fresh eyes, willing to open it to the first page and read it through to the end without knowing what they might find. Applicants need not be experts in Marx or in Marxism. Applicants must, however, specialize in some area of social or political philosophy. Applicants must also be interested in teaching and learning from their fellows, and in nurturing wide-ranging and diverse inquiries into the history of political thought.

If selected for participation, applicants will deliver a written, roundtable-style presentation on a specific part or theme of the text. Your approach to the text might be driven by historical or contemporary concerns, and it might issue from an interest in a theme or a figure (be it Aristotle or Foucault). Whatever your approach, however, your presentation must centrally investigate some aspect of the text of Capital. Spaces are very limited.

Applicants should send the following materials as email attachments (.doc/.rtf/.pdf) to papers@sspp.us by September 15, 2010:

1. Curriculum Vitae
2. One page statement of interest in the Roundtable. (Please include a discussion of the topics you would be willing to explore in a roundtable presentation. Please also discuss the projected significance of participation for your research and/or teaching.)

Ben Fowkes’ translation of Capital (Viking/Penguin, 1976) is the official translation for the Roundtable, and should be used for page citations. However, applicants are strongly encouraged to review either the German text of Capital (the 2nd edition of 1873 is the basis for most widely available texts) or the French translation (J. Roy, 1872-5), which was the last edition Marx himself oversaw to publication; both of these are widely available on-line.

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process via email on or before October 15, 2010. Participants will be asked to send a draft or outline of their presentation to papers@sspp.us by January 15, 2011 so that we can finalize the program.

In order to participate in the Roundtable (but not to apply or to be selected), you must be a member of the Society in good standing. You can become a member of the Society by following the membership link at: http://www.sspp.us/

Call for Papers: 4th Biennial Philosophy and Literature Conference At Purdue University

“Deleuze: Ethics and Politics”

April 9-10, 2010

Purdue University, West Lafayette

Deadline for Paper Submission: January 15, 2010

The philosopher Michel Serres once described Gilles Deleuze as “an excellent example of the dynamic movement of free and inventive thinking.” Without a doubt, Deleuze was one of the most singular and prolific philosophers of the 20th century. It is no surprise then, that the impact of Deleuze’s thought continues to reverberate throughout a host of diverse disciplines including Philosophy, Literature, Political Theory, Law, Visual Arts, Film Studies, and Education. With recognition of Deleuze’s influence in these various fields, and in the spirit of Serres’ assessment, this conference seeks to motivate an exploration of Deleuze’s inventive thinking in the particular areas of politics and ethics.

Thus, this conference will serve as a platform, bringing together graduate students and faculty interested in engaging, developing, or critically examining the political and ethical dimensions of Deleuze’s work. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: immanent vs. transcendent criteria in ethics, political theory, law and jurisprudence; the role of the State in relation to capitalism; the possibility of social forms of organization radically exterior to the State forms; the positive or productive function of desire as a creative force directly invested in the social field; the problem of micro-fascism with respect to individual and collective processes of subjectivation; the forms of resistance enabled by minor literature and other processes of becoming-minor; the conception of cartography as a critical and transformative social analytic of power relations. This two-day conference will consist of four panels, each with three to four accepted graduate students presenting, three keynote addresses, and a wine and cheese reception.

Keynote Speakers

We will host three preeminent Deleuze scholars as keynote speakers: Daniel Smith and Arkady Plotnitsky, from Purdue University, and Eugene Holland, from Ohio State University. Dr. Smith is known for national and international projects including translations of Deleuze and Klossowski and several works on Deleuze leading up to the forthcoming publication of his book on Deleuze’s philosophical system. Dr. Holland specializes in social theory and modern French literature, history, and culture. He has published widely including a 1999 volume on Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus and a forthcoming book on Nomad Citizenship. Dr. Plotnitsky has contributed numerous publications on Deleuze and on the topics of science, literature, and philosophy. He is currently working on a book entitled Space-Time-Matter-Thought: Non-Euclideanism from Riemann and Deleuze, and Beyond.

Conference Eligibility and Submission Process

We welcome submissions from graduate students of any discipline working on the political or ethical facets of Deleuze’s philosophy. Submissions will be accepted via email at phil-lit-conference@purdue.edu. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2010. Authors should attach both the paper and an abstract (500 word limit) as a Word document. The author’s name and affiliation should be omitted from the body of the paper. In addition, the author should include the text of the abstract in the body of the message. Be sure to include the following information in the email: full name, departmental affiliation, degree program, and the title of your paper. Accepted authors will receive notification no later than February 15, 2010.

Contact Information

For updates, please visit http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/idis/phil-lit/conference/. All additional questions can be directed to Erin Kealey or Rocky Clancy via email at: phil-lit-conference@purdue.edu.