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).
