NEW SEMINAR, NEW BLOG

 

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**The Literary and Critical Theory Seminar has been relaunched!**

For details of the current Literary and Critical Theory Seminar, please visit our new blog:

www.21stcenturytheory.blogspot.com

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Spring programme 2009

Please find below our programme for this term. Meetings take place in Senate House, North Block, NG16, on alternate Wednesdays from 6-8pm. We always go for a drink, and sometimes for dinner, after the session. All are welcome, and do encourage friends and colleagues to attend.

Please note a last-minute change of details for the forthcoming reading group. Instead of taking place on Wednesday 11th, it has been moved to Tuesday 17th.

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Tuesday March 17th – 6-8pm – NG16 – Reading Group – Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. by Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). Selected extracts available as a PDF on the Texts for Reading Groups page.

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Mar 25 – Speaker Session – David Ferris, University of Colorado at Boulder, “Agamben’s Messianic”

David Ferris is Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities, and the author of several books on critical theory and on Romanticism, including The Cambridge Introduction to Walter Benjamin (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Silent Urns:Romanticism, Hellenism, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2000); he is also editor of The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Read more about him here: http://www.colorado.edu/comparativeliterature/ferris.html

Previous meetings this term:

Jan 28 – Speaker Session – Jon Hackett, ‘On the Correct Handling of Jouissance Among the People’. Optional preparatory reading for this seminar is ‘Analyticon’ in Jacques Lacan,The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, trans. by Russell Gigg (New York: Norton, 2007), pp. 197-208; a PDF is available on the ‘Texts for Reading Groups’ page.

Jon Hackett completed a PhD on Thomas Pynchon at the University of Sussex, and his research interests include Pynchon, modernism, psychoanalysis and critical theory.
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Feb 11 – Reading Group – Jacques Derrida, ‘A Word of Welcome’ in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp.15-57; a PDF is available on the ‘Texts for Reading Groups’ page.

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Feb 25 – Speaker Session – Christopher Townsend, Royal Holloway, University of London: ‘Picasso’s Ghosts: Portraiture and the In-Fidelity of the Mistress’.

Christopher Townsend is Professor in the Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, and the author of several works on modernist photography and contemporary art, including Art and Death (I.B.Tauris, 2008), Francesca Woodman (Phaedon, 2006), New Art from London (Thames and Hudson, 2006), and Vile Bodies: Photography and the Crisis of Looking (Prestel Verlag, 1998).

Read more about him here: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Media-arts/staff/townsend.shtml

Autumn Programme 2008

Hello! A new term awaits. We have an exciting line-up to maintain our theoretical spirits during the Credit Crunch. As ever, all postgraduate students and faculty are welcome to attend. We usually go for a drink nearby afterwards, and sometimes for dinner. Reading texts will be uploaded as PDFs on the adjoining page, ‘Texts for Reading Groups’, as soon as they become available.

All sessions run from 6-8pm on Wednesday evenings, in NG15. That’s the ground floor of the North Block of Senate House, Russell Square. A map is on the adjoining page, ‘About the seminar’, and signs will be up on the day of each session to point you in the right direction.

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Weds 8th October – Speaker Session

“Time and Discontinuity: Aristotle, Bergson, Deleuze”

Nathan Widder, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London

Nathan Widder is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at Royal Holloway. He is the author of Reflections on Time and Politics (Penn State University Press, 2008), and Genealogies of Difference (University of Illinois Press, 2002). For further details of his publications and research interests please see Nathan’s home-page

Please see the ‘Texts for Reading Groups’ page for a PDF of around 40 pages from Nathan’s new book, as optional preparatory reading for his visit.

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Weds 22nd October – Reading Group (in advance of Laura Salisbury’s paper)
Extracts from Catherine Malabou’s What Should We Do with our Brain?, trans. by Sebastian Rand (forthcoming). We will make this text available on the website or by email as soon as possible. If you prefer, it’s already available in French: Que faire de notre cerveau? (Paris: Bayard, 2004)

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Weds 5th November – Speaker Session
“Language, Neurology and the Subject of Modernity”
Laura Salisbury, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College

Dr Laura Salisbury is RCUK Research Fellow in Science, Technology and Culture in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. Current projects include a monograph on Beckett, comedy and ethics, a book entitled From Late Modernism to Postmodernism, and a study of the relationship between modernity and early twentieth-century neuroscientific conceptions of language. For further details of her research, please see Laura’s home-page

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Weds 19th November – Reading Group (in advance of Stella Sandford’s paper)
Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s ‘Symposium’ (189c-193d), in any modern edition. We will make a version available as a PDF on the ‘Texts for Reading Groups’ page.

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Weds 3rd December –
“The Origin of Sex”
Stella Sandford, Middlesex University

Stella Sandford is Principal Lecturer in Modern European Philosophy, and author of Plato and Sex (forthcoming 2009, Polity Press), How to Read de Beauvoir (Granta Books, London, 2006), and The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas (Continuum, London, 2000). For details of her research interests, other publications and some online versions of her work, see Stella’s home-page

Final meetings – April 30th and May 14th

Faculty and postgraduate students are very welcome to join us at any or all of the following sessions. Meetings take place in Senate House, Russell Square, North Block, Ground floor. We go for a drink and sometimes dinner afterwards. See ‘About the seminar’ for further details including a map.

Wednesday April 30th – Reading group – 6-8pm
Reading: M. Blanchot, ‘Wittgenstein’s Problem’ in The Infinite Conversation [L’Entretien infini,

Paris, Gallimard, 1969] Univ. Minnesota Press (1993) [Chapter VIII]

See Texts for Reading Groups for a PDF that you can print off or read onscreen.

Wednesday May 14th – Speaker session – 6-8pm

Dr  Céline Surprenant, University of Sussex –  ‘Aesthetic Disproportion: On Flaubert’s Complaint that “There are Too Many Things and not enough Forms”‘

Céline is the author of Freud’s Mass Psychology: Questions of Scale (Palgrave, 2003), Freud :
A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2008), and of articles on Marcel Proust, Beckett, and
Jean-Luc Nancy among others. She has translated Jean-Luc Nancy, The Speculative Remark
(Stanford, 2001), among others. Céline is currently working on a monograph, which
examines ideas of calculative reason in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century
philosophy and literature. Her research interests are in European literature (narrative fiction),
aesthetics and literary theory; the philosophical reception of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Next meetings

On Wednesday February 6th, 6-8pm we will be discussing Kafka’s In the Penal Colony (PDF now available on ‘Texts for reading groups’). This meeting will take not in the usual room but in NG16 (ground floor, North Block), Senate House, Russell Square.

On February 20th we will have the pleasure of hearing Howard Caygill’s paper on this story. Details below. The session will take place from 4-6pm in NG14 (the usual room).

All are welcome – contact rowanboysonATgmail.com for further details, or see the additional pages on this site.

Howard Caygill, Professor of Cultural History at Goldsmiths, University of London: ‘Escaping the Penal Colony’.
Howard Caygill’s research interests lie in the fields of the history of philosophy, aesthetics and cultural history. He is currently completing a book on the philosophical and medical aspects of the body for Sage Publications, London. His publications include: Levinas and the Political (London, Routledge, 2002) Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (London, Routledge, 1998), ‘Reading Kant Historically’, Radical Philosophy (2001), and ‘Perpetual Police: Kosovo and the Elision of Police and Military Violence’, European Journal of Social Theory (2001).

Winter Programme 2007-8

We are pleased to announce our programme for November 2007 to February 2008. For more information about how the seminar works, see ‘About the seminar’. All are very welcome to attend. PDFs of the texts for reading groups will be uploaded as they become available, on the adjoining page ‘Texts for Reading Groups’, for you to read online or to print.

28 November 2007
(Wednesday)
Venue: Room NG14
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Reading Group
Extract from John Protevi Bodies Politic: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Affective Cognition in Social Context (2006), PDF available on ‘Texts for reading groups’

12 December 2007
(Wednesday)
Venue: Room NG14
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Speaker: Professor John Protevi, Department of French Studies, Louisiana State University: ‘Affect, Agency and Responsibility: The Act of Killing in the Age of Cyborgs’

John Protevi’s current research interests include geophilosophy and affective neuroscience. He is the author of Political Physics: Deleuze, Derrida and the Body Politic (Continuum / Athlone, 2001), the editor of A Dictionary of Continental Philosophy (Yale UP, 2006), and co-author of Deleuze and Geophilosophy (Edinburgh, 2004) and Between Deleuze and Derrida (Continuum, 2003). For more information see http://www.protevi.com/john/

09 January 2008
(Wednesday)
Venue: Room NG14
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Reading Group
Walter Benjamin ‘On Ships, Mine Shafts, and Cruxifixes in Bottles’, in Benjamin, Walter (1999) Selected Writings: Volume 2:2, 1931-1934, trans. Rodney Livingstone and others, Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p.554. and ‘The Rigorous Study of Art’, in the same volume, pp. 666-672.
PDF available shortly.

23 January 2008
(Wednesday)
Venue: Room NG14
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Speaker: Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics at the School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London: ‘On Touching and Not Touching Things Under Glass.’

Esther Leslie’s research focuses on Marxist theories of aesthetics and culture, especially on Benjamin and Adorno
She is the author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (Pluto 2000), and Hollywood Flatlands, Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso 2002), Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005) and Walter Benjamin (Reaktion 2007). For more information see http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/staff/LeslieEsther

06 February 2008
(Wednesday)
Venue: Room NG16
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Reading Group
Franz Kafka’s ‘Penal Colony’
PDF available shortly, or use another copy (widely available)

20 February 2008
(Wednesday)
Venue: Room NG14
Time: 18:00 – 20:00
Speaker: Howard Caygill, Professor of Cultural History at Goldsmiths, University of London: ‘Escaping the Penal Colony’.
Howard Caygill’s research interests lie in the fields of the history of philosophy, aesthetics and cultural history. He is currently completing a book on the philosophical and medical aspects of the body for Sage Publications, London. His publications include: Levinas and the Political (London, Routledge, 2002) Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (London, Routledge, 1998), ‘Reading Kant Historically’, Radical Philosophy (2001), and ‘Perpetual Police: Kosovo and the Elision of Police and Military Violence’, European Journal of Social Theory (2001).