OK, not actually on the same day… Besides appearing at the “The Changing Dynamics of Public Controversies” event, Bruno Latour will also give a public talk entitled “Globalization: Which Globe? Which Politics?” at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University on Thursday, 5 February 2009, starting at 6:15pm. Peter Sloterdijk will give a talk on how “You Must Change Your Life,” also at the Heyman Center, at 6:15pm on Thursday, 19 February 2009.
Archive for January, 2009
The Changing Dynamics of Public Controversies
29 January 2009An interesting conference coming up next week at Columbia. (Thanks to socializing finance for the link.) Places are limited, registration required. Further details here.
The Changing Dynamics of Public Controversies
With Yochai Benkler (Harvard), Bruno Latour (Sciences Po) & Paul Starr (Princeton)
Friday, Feb. 6 and Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009
At Columbia UniversityOrganized by the Columbia Communications Ph.D. program
This conference will facilitate a conversation about how public controversies play out in today’s changing media environment. What creates controversy? How do controversies “work”? How are the dynamics of controversy altered as the social, technical, and economic parameters of human communication change? Led by three keynote speakers, we will inventory and analyze major perspectives on the character of public controversy today.
On Heidegger’s tool analysis
23 January 2009We have been fortunate here at ANTHEM to be treated a number of times in recent years to Graham Harman’s uncanny ability to abstract and summarise. He has just done it again, this time summarising his own philosophical position on his Object-Oriented Philosophy blog. At the same time in this post Harman also provides a very concise summary of his unorthodox reading of Heidegger’s tool analysis, which first appeared in Tool-Being (2002), and more recently in Heidegger Explained (2008). Harman draws on Whitehead and Leibniz to reinterpret Heidegger’s famous distinction between the ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, which in a number of ways brings him very close to actor-network theory (although some fundamental differences between his position and that of Bruno Latour remain, as he makes it clear). Highly recommended to anyone intrigued by the rift between (Heideggerian) phenomenology and ANT.
The Deleuzian ‘Spatium’ and its ‘Becoming’
23 January 2009An interesting ISRF seminar coming up at ISIG, LSE on 29 January 2009, exploring the connections between Heidegger and Deleuze in relation to technology and organisations:
Information Systems Research Forum
Rethinking Technological Change in Organizations: The Deleuzian ‘Spatium’ and its ‘Becoming’
Eleni Lamprou
ISIG, LSEThursday 29 January 2009
In this presentation, I wish to address the potential contribution of the ontology provided by the French process philosopher Gilles Deleuze to the study of technological change in organizations. In the first part of the presentation, the connections of Deleuze’s work to the work of Martin Heidegger are outlined, as I explore the concept of the ‘spatium’. The ‘spatium’ enfolds Deleuze’s understanding that the physical position of people and technological artefacts within space lends only a partial understanding of the manner in which they actually relate. In the second part, I seek to theorize the manner in which such relationships actually develop through elaborating on Deleuze’s conceptualization of ‘becoming’. Emphasis is placed on what is portrayed by Deleuze as the motor of the ‘becoming’ process, namely, the ‘event’. The ideas presented in this seminar are drawn from the theoretical framework of my doctoral dissertation.
AMCIS 2009: Socio-Technical Aspects of Information Systems
17 January 2009Please see the call for papers for the 15th Americas Conference on Information systems (AMCIS 2009) on 6-9 August 2009 in San Francisco, which includes the mini-track “Socio-Technical Aspects of Information Systems” on the following topics:
- Social informatics
- The application of social theory to information systems (eg. Structuration Theory, Actor-Network Theory, StructurANTion Theory)
- Human and organisational aspects of information Systems
- Balancing of social and technical factors in ISD and IS
- Critiques of the socio-technical approach
- Case studies of socio-technical analysis of IS
- Comparative studies (ie. between sectors, countries, cultures, etc.) of socio-technical analyses of IS
- Comparative analyses of socio-technical change and IS
- Global/local (or ‘glocal’) balance of IS within a socio-technical context
Deadline for papers: 20 February 2009.
A New Theory of Causation – lecture by Graham Harman
17 January 2009Please see the abstract below for Graham Harman‘s forthcoming lecture in Paris on 26 January 2009.
Recent continental philosophy has devoted little attention to the theory of causation, which was so important in the history of metaphysics. Such philosophy remains obsessed with the relation between human and world- whether to posit an infinite gap between them, or to deny that the gap exists. The relation between inanimate objects such as cotton, fire, raindrops, and corn has been treated as a non-philosophical issue best left to the natural sciences. This lecture takes a different view. The world is not made of two distinct zones called human and world, but of countless objects inflicting blows on one another. Yet if we accept Heidegger’s insights concerning the withdrawal of beings into a dark, subterranean reality, the materialist view of causation as physical impact becomes impossible. We need a modified version of the occasionalist vision of two entities making contact only by way of a third. But instead of granting a causal monopoly to a single magical entity called God, occasional causation must be made secular and local- with all objects gaining the ghostly power to relate to others, even while remaining partly veiled from this relation. Reference will be made to kindred insights found in occasionalism, skepticism, and the late Scholastic position of Francisco Suarez.
ANTHEM 