Prōlogus

Žižek – God Without the Sacred: The Book of Job, The First Critique of Ideology

Nathan — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:27:49 +0000

From New York Public Library

God Without the Sacred: The Book of Job, the First Critique of Ideology (opens link to video)

Download:

Video (205.2MB MP4, 1 hr 46 min)
Audio (48.5MB MP3, 1 hr 15 min)

H/T Kylie Minor

Film-Philosophy Conference 2011

Nathan — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 04:47:46 +0000

Film-Philosophy Conference 2011

Liverpool John Moores University

July 6, 2011 – July 8, 2011

Film-philosophy continues to grow as an important discipline within the fields of both Film Studies and Philosophy. We invite researchers in this area to submit proposals for the 2011 Film-Philosophy Conference to be held in Liverpool, UK.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Professor Gregory Currie (University of Nottingham)
Dr. David Martin-Jones (University of St Andrews)

Download Conference Poster

We are open to any topics on the subject but would particularly welcome papers in the following areas:

- Film and phenomenology

- The ontology of fiction in film

- Fictionalism and film

- Significant auteurs

- New approaches to film and philosophy

- Considerations of individual films

- The debate between continental and analytic philosophy in relation to film

- Films about philosophy or philosophers

- Animals on film

- Science and film-philosophy

- The methodology of film-philosophy

- Philosophy of film adaptation

- Film-philosophy and computer games

- Cognitivism

- Film style

- Genre

- Media convergence

- Philosophy and film economics

Abstracts should be 200 – 300 words long and papers, including clips – which we strongly encourage – should not exceed 25 minutes. We accept panel submissions with a maximum of three speakers and a length of 90 minutes.

Deadline for proposals: 18 March 2011

Both individual and panel proposals must be submitted through the conference website (no initial cost involved): http://www.film-philosophy.com/conference/index.php/conf/2011/about/submissions

You must register a free account with the conference website in order to submit a proposal.
Attendance registration now open: 90 GBP / 55 GBP (students/unwaged). Day rates available. Please note that registration does not guarantee acceptance of proposal (there is no cost attached to submitting a proposal, but the registration fee is payable if your paper is accepted).

Facebook Event Page

Conference Information

» Call for Papers (November 18, 2010 – March 18, 2011)
» Registration
» Accommodation
» Organizers and Partners
» Timeline

The Speculative Turn

Nathan — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:29:52 +0000

Here is the anticipated new book The Speculative Turn, edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, published by re.press.

h/t Graham Harman for the heads-up on the open-access version

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image Issue 1, 2010

Nathan — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:09:20 +0000

Table of Contents

Articles

EDITORIAL, 1-6, 7-13
Patrícia Silveirinha Castello Branco, Sérgio Dias Branco, Susana Viegas

A CARE FOR THE CLAIMS OF THEORY, 14-68
D. N. Rodowick

CARROLL ON THE MOVING IMAGE, 69-80
Thomas E. Wartenberg

DELEUZE: THE THINKING OF THE BRAIN, 81-94
Raymond Bellour

MUCOUS, MONSTERS AND ANGELS: IRIGARAY AND ZULAWSKI’S POSSESSION, 95-110
Patricia MacCormack

FILM THEORY MEETS ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY; OR, FILM STUDIES AND L’AFFAIRE SOKAL, 111-117
Murray Smith

Interviews

GEORGES DIDI-HUBERMAN : « …. CE QUI REND LE TEMPS LISIBLE, C`EST L´IMAGE », 118-133
Susana Nascimento Duarte, Maria Irene Aparício

Conference Reports

COGNITIVE DELEUZE: REPORT ON THE SCSMI CONFERENCE (ROANOKE, 2-5 JUNE 2010) AND THE DELEUZE STUDIES CONFERENCE (AMSTERDAM, 12-14 JULY 2010), 134-141
William Brown

*All articles can be downloaded via the website*

h/t Continental Philosophy

CFP: Thinking About Animals Conference 2011, Brock University

Nathan — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:09:54 +0000

From Brock University website:

Call for Papers

The Department of Sociology at Brock University is issuing a Call for Papers for a conference on “Thinking About Animals” to be held March 31 and April 1, 2011 at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

This two-day conference will explore a variety of issues concerning the current and historical situation of nonhuman animals and interactions with humans.

The Department is organizing this conference with the assistance of the Office of the Dean of Social Sciences, the Departments of English, Political Science, History and Visual Arts, the MA Programme in Critical Sociology, and the MA Programme in Social Justice and Equity Studies.

We are especially pleased to be hosting this conference in association with the Institute of Critical Animal Studies as the 10th annual ICAS conference.

As with past conferences, we welcome participation from both activists and academics. The conference will be completely vegan.

Please send a short proposal (2-3 paragraphs or enough details to describe your idea) to: ac2011@BrockU.CA
Deadline for submissions: January 15, 2011
We will consider proposals on any relevant topics but some suggestions include:
Animal exploitation industries (economic, environmental, ethical aspects)
Analyzing Industry Propaganda
Undercover investigations
Anarchy and animals
Animals in War
Current campaigns and issues in animal rights activism
Sanctuaries
Humane education
Horse Slaughter in Canada: Cashing in on US Legislation
Captivity: Animals in zoos and “marine parks”
Vivisection and animals in scientific research
Biotechnology and animals
Historical understandings of animals
Animal rights history
Animal rights and social justice
Wildlife conservation and animal protection
Companion animals
Veganism and Vegetarianism
Meat and gender identities
Animals, labour and the working class
Compassion, empathy, solidarity
Animals and human identities
Wildlife trade
Social construction of animals
What animals think
Images of animals and animal activists
Developing animal rights activism and creating cultures of compassion
Racism and animal rights
Colonialism, imperialism, and animal rights
Transphobia and animal rights
Posthumanism and animality
Queer theory and animal issues
Animal agency and resistance
Animal subjectivities
Animal rights and the Global South
Nationalism and animal rights
Food justice and animal rights
International animal rights campaigns
Abolitionism
Ableism and animal rights
Art and animal exploitation
Fat phobia and veganism
Feminism and animal rights

Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy Issue 10, 2010

Nathan — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:44:11 +0000

Download the whole issue

The Metaphormatted Human: Bio-Artistic Practices of the Human Nexus
Thierry Bardini & Marie-Pier Boucher

The Eternal Return and the Phantom of Difference
Catherine Malabou, translated by Arne De Boever

The Birth of Immunopolitics
Frédéric Neyrat, translated by Arne De Boever

ESSAYS

Philosophical Archeology in Kant, Foucault and Agamben
Colin McQuillan

A Taste for Life (On Some Suicides in Deleuze and Spinoza)
Jason E. Smith

Lacan’s Ethics and Foucault’s Care of the Self: Two Diagrams of the Production of Subjectivity
Simon O’Sullivan

REVIEWS

James W. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School
Eugene Thacker

Thomas Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile
Mark Tomlinson

Recognition Theory and the Question of the Animal

Nathan — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 03:48:49 +0000

This is an essay I wrote for a social philosophy unit I did the last semester of this year. The essay is focused on the work of Axel Honneth and the representation of animals in his notion of recognition theory. Due to discussions with my tutor, in which he prompted me to formulate my own question and gave me an extra 500 words with which to write it(administrative changes have altered the structure of units and subsequently essay word lengths), I left myself roughly a week to research and write this essay. There is a lot more work that can be done to this essay for it to be a polished, finished piece. I am hoping to edit it and submit it for publication in The Dualist. Comments and constructive criticism is encouraged.

*Update* I recently found out that the journal Emergent Australasian Philosophers has put its submission deadline back to Jan. 31st. With some heavy editing, this is probably my best chance of having this essay published.

View this document on Scribd

Pierre Hadot

Nathan — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:56:02 +0000

I’ve recently read via Immanence that the Classicist Pierre Hadot has passed away. I first became aware of Hadot’s work about a year ago through a friend of mine, from whom I borrowed Hadot’s book Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Since reading Hadot’s book I have gone on to take further interest in Hadot’s work, which has made an impact on the way I think about philosophy. While I have never had the opportunity to meet Pierre Hadot, nor the chance to write him, I do feel a strange sadness on hearing of his passing.

You can read some heart felt comments on the late Pierre Hadot at Hyper Tiling.

Advice Needed on Derrida

Nathan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:41:47 +0000

During my reading of Matthew Calarco’s book Zoographies, I became aware of Derrida’s notion of limitrophy. From what I understand, Derrida expounds his theory of limitrophy in his text The Animal That Therefore I Am. What I would like to find out is, where else Derrida writes about limitrophy and is anyone aware of any secondary literature out there?

I’m also interested in researching the notion of “liminal being”. Liminal being is, according to Wikipedia, a being that exists “combining two distinct states of simultaneous existence within one physical body”. For example, werewolves exist as both human and animal; cyborgs exist as both human and machine. You get the picture. In literature, liminal beings are figured largely in texts of classical mythology. Aside from reading these original texts I’m looking for any secondary literature that explores these figures that straddle the human/animal divide. My thought here is, though very underdeveloped, that these figures exist in a place where the ethical and the political is seemingly beyond that of the ordinary. The wisdom held by these figures gives them the ability to instruct and mentor. We can look at figures like Chiron, the mentor of Achilles, as figures that are beyond dogmatic anthropocentric ethics and politics and engaged in praxis that is beyond anthropocentric praxis. Again, this is something that needs to be developed further. Any thoughts?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Calarco on “The Question of the Animal”

Nathan — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:34:46 +0000

Over the past few weeks I have been reading Matthew Calarco’s Zoographies: The Quetion of the Animal From Heidegger to Derrida during my lunch breaks at work. Calarco’s book has been something of a revelation for me, having really only recently been initiated to the field of Critical Animal Studies, largely thanks to Scu and the people responsible for The Inhumanities. Wrestling with the concept of animality or “the question of the animal”, I had come to a cross-roads on how to approach this subject: In what way should the “question of the animal” instruct the way I approach the work of others and my own way of thinking. For example, if I’m addressing a social question related satisfaction and gratification gained from working life, how does the animal way in on such an inquiry if at all? Do I need to consider such a thing at all, and if not, do I simply fall into a long tradition of anthropocentrality? While this last question will plague me for some time to come, I feel as though I have found some relief to my dilemma in Calarco’s focus on Derrida in the last chapter of his book:

Comparisons of human and animal suffering can sometimes be abused when they are employed in a facile, thoughtless, and offensive manner. But, a the same time, not all such comparisons should be dismissed a priori on the grounds that human suffering is always and everywhere more important and of more value than animal suffering. The very difficult task for thought here is to bear the burden of thinking through both kinds of suffering in their respective singularity and to notice relevant similarities and parallel logics at work where they exist. To do so requires abandoning, or at least inhabiting in a hypercritical manner, the hierarchical humanist metaphysics that we have inherited from the ontotheological tradition, for it is this tradition that blocks the possibility of thinking about animals in a non- or other-than-anthropocentric manner. (p.112)

Of course, Calarco is commenting on Derrida’s message about the relation to animal slaughter houses and Nazi concentration camps, nevertheless, the most important message for me in this passage is: “thinking through both kinds of suffering in their respective singularity and to notice relevant similarities and parallel logics at work where they exist.” What this amounts to for me at least is that human and animal suffering can be thought of and written about without it falling into the tradition of anthropocentricity. At times these singularities may not overlap, thus allowing thought to develop in a purely agnostic way. The difficulty in thinking about any and all similarities, it appears, is trying to do away with the ontotheological tradition. The mistake here is to suggest that this is purely a religious tradition well outside the secular. This is certainly not the case. The ontotheological tradition is entrenched in secular culture for better or worse. To overcome this, then, is to of course rethink both the religious and the secular.

Calarco’s Zoographies has equipped me with new ways of thinking through and about the “question of the animal,” and the ways in which, (if at all), the animal pervades other areas of intellectual discourse.

You can find discussion on Calraco’s Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida here