TOC

Beyond totem and idol, the sexuate other — Luce Irigaray, Karen I. Burke

From nature in love: The problem of subjectivity in Adorno and Freudian psychoanalysis — Sara Beardsworth

The errant name: Badiou and Deleuze on individuation, causality and infinite modes in Spinoza — Jon Roffe

The practical absolute: Fichte’s hidden poetics — Anthony Curtis Adler

A ravaged site: on time and the law — Peg Birmingham

Richard Polt: The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy — Stuart Elden

Stuart Elden, Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation — Richard Polt

Alan Paskow, The Paradoxes of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation — Robert J. Dostal

Introduction: One More Effort… (i-vi)
Benjamin Noys

Articles

What is the Gift of Grace?: on Dogville (1-22)
Lorenzo Chiesa

The Politics of Gift-Giving and the Provocation of Lars Von Trier's Dogville (23-37)
Dany Nobus

Antiphusis: Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (38-51)
Benjamin Noys

The Temporality of the Real: The Path to Politics in The Constant Gardener (52-73)
Todd McGowan

'How Very Lacanian': From Fantasy to Hyperreality in Basic Instinct 2 (74-85)
Mark Fisher

Radiohead and Philosophy: Edited by Brandon Forbes and George Reisch 

The editors of Radiohead and Philosophy, forthcoming from Open Court Publishing Company, invite short abstracts describing essays for possible inclusion in this volume of Open Court’s series, Popular Culture and Philosophy.
 
Guidelines: Accepted proposals will be those that bring philosophical concepts, arguments, and/or sensibilities to bear on issues or ideas latent in, or raised by, the band Radiohead, its music, its popular success, or its various roles in popular culture.  Essays should be jargon-free and appealing to an intelligent lay reader who seeks to learn about Radiohead and its various connections to philosophical ideas and traditions.
 
Sample Topics and Titles: We especially welcome essays from phenomenological, hermeneutic, aesthetic and existentialist perspectives addressing, for example:
 
*the qualities of modern experience—fear, dread, nausea—that Radiohead capture, or attempt to capture, in music. What is Radiohead doing and how do its attempts compare to those of philosophers or other artists?
 
*The natural versus the technological, or organic versus synthetic.  Is there a conflict or contradiction here?  Or is it a creative tension? What form or forms do these relationships take in the band’s music?
 
*Critics often argue that Radiohead *says* things about the world.  Can a rock band genuinely cultivate an original and unique form of discourse?  If so, does this discourse exceed, somehow, poetry, prose or logic?
 
*Alienation.  What does the success of “Creep” say about modern alienation?  About Radiohead’s relationship to their fans?  About the contemporary self and identity?
 
*Epistemology and skepticism:  “Just cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”  What is “it”, and how can we know in the first place?
 
*Radiohead and Classical Music.  What qualities make Radiohead’s music susceptible to classical transcription (such as those of Christopher O’Reilly).  What do O’Reilly’s treatments tells us about Radiohead or classicism itself?
 
*Copyright and Copywrong: In what senses does Radiohead’s decision to let consumers ‘pay what you wish’ for “In Rainbows” subvert or challenge dominant conceptions of intellectual property or value?  
 
*Radiohead and Contemporary Politics:  As evidenced by the title “Hail to the Thief” and Thom Yorke’s endorsement of the book “No Logo”, Radiohead is overtly political and against globalization.  What exactly are the arguments or positions taken here?  Does musical expression add to these claims, or merely confer notoriety to the claimant?  How do they compare to claims made by Marxists or critical theorists?
 
*Radiohead are often compared to Pink Floyd.  Does that comparison extend to the phenomenological and existential themes in Pink Floyd’s music?  Do any similarities or differences between the two bands tell us about the development of modern culture or modern philosophy (or both) from the 1970s to the present?
 
Timeline:
 
1) Please send an expression of interest and a proposal or short abstract by Monday, January 15, 2008.  Send via email to both Brandon Forbes and George Reisch (brandon_forbes@hotmail.com and reischg@ripco.com).  Proposals accepted by March 1, 2008. 

2) First drafts for selected papers due June 15, 2008
 
3) Final drafts for selected papers due Sept. 13, 2008.

UPDATE: Brandon Forbes email has been changed 

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has the following new entry that may be of interest:

Hume on Free Will 

Resources and News

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

The Substance of Thought: Critical and Pre-Critical.
featuring keynote speakers Simon Critchley (The New School for Social Research) and Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Cornell University — Ithaca, New York
April 10th-12th, 2008
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/trg/conf2008.html

The last few decades have witnessed a struggle within continental philosophy between those thinkers who accept Immanuel Kant’s “CopernicanRevolution” and those who refuse critical philosophy in favor of a“classical” metaphysics that, in the words of Alain Badiou, “considers theKantian indictment of metaphysics…as null and void.” This conference willconsider the conflict between “critical” and “classical” or metaphysical strains in contemporary thought. Has critical philosophy run its course,as Badiou suggests? Or has Kant’s critical turn determined the horizon of all future philosophical work? Or is there an alternative path?We are interested in analyzing the contemporary division between thinkerswho prescribe a return to the pre-critical metaphysics of, for example,Spinoza, Leibniz, or Lucretius, and those who continue to take up varioustrajectories of Kant’s critical legacy. The former camp might includeDeleuze and Badiou as well as Negri and Althusser, while the latter mightinclude Adorno, Benjamin, Heidegger, and Derrida. We particularly wish toencourage work that takes a stand on the conflict between the two camps,as well as work that considers the implications of the conflict for thearts and social sciences. The wide range of our inquiry includesinterrogations of the nature of critique, the fate of aesthetics, theprivilege accorded to immanence or transcendence, and the status ofmaterialism.

Suggested paper topics include (but are not limited to):

- transcendence and immanence
- Derrida and Deleuze
- negation and affirmation
- finite and infinite
- the rebirth of rationalism
- aesthetic ideologies
- quasi-, ultra-, immanent-transcendental
- the Althusserian legacy
- the one and the multiple
- the persistence of the dialectic
- the fate of aesthetics
- the return to Kant
- the future of the linguistic turn
- the question of critique
- futures of Marxism
- philosophies of experience
- univocity, equivocity
- the limits of representation
- the historical a priori
- the genesis of subjectivity
- the possibility of materialism
- affects, passions
- the role of the negative
- the new philosophy of science
- political ontology
- the return of nature philosophy
- radical Spinoza
- rhetoric and philosophy

The deadline for submission of 250-word paper abstracts for 20-minute presentations is February 1, 2008. Please include your name, e-mailaddress, and phone number. Please email abstracts to theory@cornell.edu.
Notices of acceptance will be sent no later than February 15, 2008. For more information about the Theory Reading Group,visit http://www.arts.cornell.edu/trg.

Thank you for your patience. There are many links I need to post that were kindly email. 

Two lighthearted jokes to reboot the site:

1 - The deservedly popular anti-Kant political ad:

2- A Nietzschean menu: "Why I Am So Tasty"  (h/t: experientia docet)

I have been grading, like many other colleagues. Thank you for all the sent links; I will post them very soon. Sorry for the hiatus.

Spaceman Spiff, over at Cross-X forum, has posted Derrida' Glas.

Link