Can Modernity be Modernized?

On 6 June 2008 Bruno Latour will be giving a lecture entitled “Can Modernity be Modernized?” at the University of Bologna, on the occasion of receiving the ISA Medal for Science from the Institute of Advanced Studies.

What is an Organization? Materiality, Agency, and Discourse

A lot seems to be going on in Canada next week… In addition to the objectivity conference in Toronto there is also the “What is an Organization? Materiality, Agency, and Discourse” ‘preconference’ (to the ICA’s 58th annual conference) on 21-22 May 2008 at the Université de Montréal, in, you guessed it, Montreal.

Keynote Speakers:

• Barbara Czarniawska (U Göteborg, Sweden)
• Bruno Latour (Sciences Po, Paris, France)
• Haridimos Tsoukas (ALBA, Greece, University of Warwick, UK)
• Linda Putnam (U of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

The main conference page with the detailed programme is here. During the conference Bruno Latour will be awarded an Université de Montréal honorary doctorate.

Reclaiming the World: The Future of Objectivity

If you happen to be in Canada and near Toronto next weekend, you might be interested in this conference on the nature of objectivity organised at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto: “Reclaiming the World: The Future of Objectivity,” 23-25 May 2008. The keynote speaker is Bruno Latour. The programme is available here [PDF] and some abstracts and papers can be downloaded from here.

Quentin Meillassoux speaking in London on 8 May 2008

Those of you who have read Graham Harman’s manuscript Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics will know that Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of correlationism features prominently in Harman’s assessment of Latour’s philosophy. Meillassoux will be speaking in London on the topic of “Time without Becoming” on 8 May 2008, at 5:30 pm at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. Quentin Meillassoux’s book After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency is now also available in English in Ray Brassier’s translation and with Alain Badiou’s preface from Amazon UK. Further details about the event including directions available here.