Archive for June, 2013

Ray Brassier – The Pure and Empty Form of Death: Deleuze and Heidegger

30 June 2013

In Difference and Repetition, the third synthesis of time is the privileged locus for an apocalyptic individuation whereby, in a striking inversion of Heidegger, the future ‘ungrounds’ the past and death become the subject of a time that splits the Self. For Deleuze, contra Heidegger, time, like death, is never ‘mine’: it is no-one’s. The affirmation of eternal recurrence effects a mode of psychic individuation which transforms thought into a sign of impersonal death. (1/6)

Ecological Perception, J.J.Gibson

29 June 2013

James Gibson – Ohio – 1974 – Part 1
The Ohio State University, 23 May, 1974.
-A rare and unique opportunity to hear James Gibson describe his approach to perception. See Part 2 for Q & A.

Living With Complexity, Don Norman

28 June 2013

Don Norman speaks about complexity in everyday life and how design helps us understand and cope with complexity. Norman gives many examples of complexity and design working together to create understanding for the consumer and asks, “Why do we need complexity? Because what we really want is understanding, so, it’s about design.”
http://www.jnd.org/

Alphonso Lingis “Communication and Silence”

26 June 2013

International conference “Life and Phenomenology: Celebrating Algis Mickūnas at 80”, June 13-15, 2013, Vytautas Magnus University.

ON BRUNO LATOUR AND PRAGMATOGONY, Jean-Pierre de la Porte

24 June 2013

Dr. de la Porte, director of research at institute for advanced studies in architecture and infrastructure, introduces the ideas of Bruno Latour as a way of dealing with the dilemmas previously highlighted in the series. He explicates Latour’s view that human and non-human agents equally form one another.

The Resistance of Things, Patrick Lynch

23 June 2013

The Architecture Exchange: Series I
Architecture on Harman,
Harman on Architecture
http://www.lyncharchitects.com/

Touching Cyberspace:the Physicalisation of the Net, Nick Harkaway

22 June 2013

Cyberspace is a world without laws or boundaries, and touch-screen technologies have made digital ideas tangible. Nick Harkaway asks where the physicalisation of the net is taking us. For more talks on science and technology, visit:
http://iai.tv/category/science-and-technology

Jan Verwoert: From Identities to Adjacencies

21 June 2013

Shifts the role of the critic from the after the fact giver of meaning to one who traces out models, practices, and adjacencies of working processes and assemblages.

AAR panel on Latour’s Gifford Lectures

20 June 2013

AAR panel on Latour’s Gifford Lectures

he AAR panel responding to 2013 Holberg Prize winner Bruno Latour’s Gifford Lectures has now been scheduled. Information is as follows.

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QUERYING NATURAL RELIGION: IMMANENCE, GAIA, & THE PARLIAMENT OF LIVELY THINGS

Session A23-203

(Co-sponsors: Social Theory & Religion Cluster and Religion & Ecology Group)

Saturday November 23 – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM

Baltimore Convention Center (room TBA)

Presider: Sarah M. Pike, California State University, Chico

Panelists:

  • Adrian Ivakhiv, University of Vermont (organizer)
  • Bron Taylor, University of Florida
  • Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University
  • William Connolly, Johns Hopkins University
  • Daniel Deudney, Johns Hopkins University
  • Timothy Morton, Rice University

Responding: Bruno Latour, Science Po Paris

This roundtable session will explore and respond to the themes of the 2013 Gifford Lectures, delivered by anthropologist of science and philosopher Bruno Latour on the topic of “Facing Gaia: A New Inquiry into Natural Religion.”

 

Full description:

The facets of Bruno Latour’s scholarship span a diverse breadth and depth: the sociology of science and technology, the formulation and development of actor-network theory, the theorization of agency in a more-than-human world, and the anthropology of modernity, including changing relations between science, politics, and the secular and sacred. In his 2013 Gifford Lectures, Latour probed the theme of “Facing Gaia: A New Inquiry into Natural Religion.” Nature, Latour posited, can be seen as a theological construct that ought to be “secularized,” but this should enable us to renew our attention to the “agencies” and “collectives” we composit in our interaction with the world. The Gaia hypothesis, like the term “anthropocene,” presents for Latour an enigmatic set of features that redistribute agencies in all possible ways, raising the question of how to develop a “diplomacy” for a post-humanocentric world, a Gaian “political theology” by which we might develop new collective rituals – “works of art and experiments able to explore in sufficient detail the scientific and political composition of the common world.”

Latour’s arguments touch on several vital strands of theoretical debate within the study of religion, including the historical construction of the very category “religion” and its interaction with changing ideas about science and nature, modernity and postmodernity, relativism, pluralism, globalization, and the possibility of critique. This roundtable will encompass a range of responses to Latour’s challenge from leading scholars at the intersections of nature, science, religion, cultural theory, popular spirituality, and the micro and macro politics of an ever more global society. Confirmed panelists include scholars of religion and nature (Bron Taylor), immanence and secularism (William Connolly), ecology and enchantment (Jane Bennett), ecological cultural critique (Timothy Morton), and global geopolitics and identity (political scientist Daniel Deudney). Between them, the panelists will query Latour’s “cosmopolitical” proposals and respond to the questions his lectures raised from a variety of scholarly and applied perspectives.

The panel is being organized in parallel with a special issue of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (JSRNC) dedicated to Latour and his Gifford Lectures on “natural religion.”

Robert Brandom: Reason Genealogy and the Hermeneutics of Magnanimity

19 June 2013

Robert Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, argues that genealogies (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault) present the revenge of naturalism on rationalism. Hegel teaches us how to replace the genealogical hermeneutics of suspicion with a hermeneutics of magnanimity that allows us to see naturalism and rationalism as complementing rather than competing with one another.