Events

Events are listed from newest to oldest.

To Be Announced

11 May, 2010 – UK

Object Oriented Philosophy Conference

23 April, 2010 – Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers:

Ian Bogost

Levi Bryant

Graham Harman

Steven Shaviro

Real Objects or Material Subjects? A Conference on Continental Metaphysics

27-28 March, 2010 – University of Dundee, Scotland

The aim of this conference is to stage a debate between two dominant strands of contemporary continental thought, as represented by the object-oriented realism of Graham Harman, and by the transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity recently proposed by Adrian Johnston.

Along with the debate between Harman and Johnston, we hope to attract papers from both advanced graduate students and early career researchers on related topics. Suggested topics include:

realism v. materialism, the contemporary relevance of ‘critical realism’, materialist theories of subjectivity, object oriented ontologies, the place of the political in the realism/materialism debate, the persistence of dialectical materialism, recent continental appropriations of eliminative materialism, realism and materialism in contemporary Anglophone philosophy, continental naturalism, the role of the physical sciences in contemporary philosophical materialism, the persistence of religious themes in recent materialist philosophy, the continued importance (or lack thereof) of thinking the ontological in conjunction with the political.

Speakers:

Peter Hallward (CRMEP, Middlesex)

Graham Harman (American University, Cairo)

Adrian Johnston (University of New Mexico)

John Mullarkey (University of Dundee)

James Williams (University of Dundee)

Monads for the 21st Century

1 December, 2009 – Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL

A case could be made for Leibniz as the greatest metaphysician of all time. No one does a better job than Leibniz than integrating the Aristotelo-Scholastic tradition with the new current of modern philosophy that began with Descartes. But at the same time, few metaphysicians have been as ridiculed as Leibniz, both for his metaphysical optimism (“the best of all possible worlds”) and for his apparently wild speculations on monads and their consequences. This lecture will try to sort out what is living and what is dead in the Leibnizian metaphysics, and will end by recommending a 21st century philosophy guided by Leibniz as its hero.

Speaker:

Graham Harman

Subject and Appearance: On Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject & Logics of Worlds

20 November, 2009, 10am to 5pm – Bolivar Hall, 54 Grafton Way, London W1T 5DL

Speakers:

Ali Alizadeh (CRMEP, Middlesex)

Bruno Bosteels (Cornell)

Peter Hallward (CRMEP, Middlesex)

Nina Power (Roehampton)

Kristin Ross (NYU)

Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths)

Form and Formalism: Thinking Method, Transmission and Rupture

7-8 November, 2009 – Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL

A two day conference/workshop focused on the problematic and philosophical horizon of the problem of form and formalism at the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands:

At the center of our workshop are questions concerning: the legacy of structuralism in the concept of formalism, the intervention of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis on the limits of knowledge, truth and the real, the relation between scientific models and ontology in Deleuze, Badiou, the reinvention of Platonism and Realism in contemporary thought and the current state of the Copernican (and/or Galilean) revolution.

Is the shared concept and process of “formalism” across different fields (social and hard sciences, psychoanalysis) nothing more than an equivocation imposed by the limits of philosophical thought? Is there something of the actuality of form and formalism that calls us to the task of thinking?

Speakers:

Emmanuel Barot

Matteo Bonazzi

Gabriel Catren

Zachary Luke Fraser

Juan-Luis Gastaldi

Patrice Maniglier

Paul-Antoine Miquel

Knox Peden

Antonello Sciacchitano

Charles T. Wolfe

Speculative Realism Reading Group – Philosophy Seminar Series

First seminar will take place on 28 October, 2009, 1-2 pm, – ICAn 215, Nottingham Trent University

The Philosophy Teaching and Research Group, based in the School of Arts and Humanities, will be running a series of reading based seminars this year on the theme of Speculative Realism.  Associated with the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier and Ian Hamilton Grant, Speculative Realism is quickly becoming a new thought-style in contemporary philosophy as well as being increasingly influential in a range of other disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.

The first session, will discuss a classic paper that is often cited as one of the forerunners of this new philosophical dispensation; Wilfred Sellars’ 1963 paper ‘Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man’.  In subsequent weeks we will go on to discuss Ray Brassier’s book Nihil Unbound and Quentin Meillassoux’s recent and highly acclaimed work After Finitude –  a book where, according to Simon Critchley, ‘the rigour, clarity and passion of the argument can be breathtaking’.

These seminars should appeal to all those who want to keep abreast of conceptual innovations in contemporary philosophy.

Militant Dysphoria: What are the Politics of Disaffection?

30 September, 2009 – Goldsmiths, University of London

An event to discuss some of the issues raised by Domininc Fox’s Cold World: The aesthetics of dejection and the politics of militant dysphoria, due to be published by zer0 at the end of September. What is meant by ‘militant dysphoria’, and in what ways can the concept help us move beyond the impasses of contemporary politics? How might disaffection be converted into militancy? What political potentials are there in dysphoric music such as Black Metal? The event will also explore the relationship between politics and Speculative Realism.

Speakers:

Dominic Fox

Nathan Brown (PAPER)

Mark Fisher

Nina Power (PAPER)

Nick Srnicek (PAPER)

James Trafford

Alex Williams (PAPER)

21st Century Materialism

20-21 June, 2009 – Zagreb, Croatia

A century has passed since the 1909 publication of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a text in which Lenin responded to the supposed ‘disappearance of matter’ in physical theory by attempting to clarify the stakes of philosophical materialism. He did so by interrogating the consequences of contemporary positions on elementary philosophical questions: Is being prior to thought? Can we establish the adequacy of thought and sensation to material objects independent of thought and sensation? Is it possible to reduce the operations of thinking to material processes? Is ‘matter’ a philosophical or scientific concept? What is the relation between philosophical materialism and political praxis?

These questions continue to agitate contemporary thought, but they are no longer the ’same’ questions: their significance has been transformed by a centry of political, scientific, and philosophical interventions. This symposium is dedicated to reassessing their stakes for 21st century philosophy and politics. Dialectical. Historical. Transcendental. Non-Philosophical. Eliminative. Speculative. ………………. Something called ‘materialism’ continues to demand that we take a position. What is it?

Speakers:

Miran Božovič (PAPER)

Nathan Brown (PAPER)

Martin Hägglund (PAPER)

Peter Hallward (PAPER)

Graham Harman (PAPER)

Speculative Realism / Speculative Materialism

24 April, 2009, 12–7pm – Lecture Theatre H124, St Matthias Campus, University of the West of England, Bristol BS16 2JP

Speakers:

Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut)

Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England)

Graham Harman (American University in Cairo)

Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London) (PAPER)