The Writing & Society Research Centre and the Philosophy Research Initiative at UWS presents following seminar on Wednesday May 16:

                                 

SPEAKER: Robyn Ferrell

School of Humanities and Communication Arts

University of Western Sydney

TITLE: Sacred Exchanges

TIME: May 16, 2-4pm

PLACE: UWS Bankstown Campus, 3.G.55

ABSTRACT: As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world,  Sacred Exchanges traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other.

The photo-essay I present in this session is a companion piece to the book, tracing a line of associations that I used as part of the method of writing. It highlights ficto-critical material that was treated more academically in the book. It explores, through my own photos taken as research aids, some of the affects and effects of images that directed my discussion on the relation between art, culture, gender and law.

BIO: Assoc. Prof. Robyn Ferrell is is a research fellow in the Gender and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Sydney and has taught at the University of Melbourne, Macquarie University, and the University of Tasmania. She has also held visiting research positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Western Sydney and is the author of Copula: Sexual Technologies, Reproductive Powers, Genres of Philosophy and Passion in Theory: Conceptions of Freud and Lacan. 

Encountering the Author: Paul Patton on "Deleuzian Concepts"

Paul Patton, University of New South Wales, discusses his new book "Deleuzian Concepts"- details below!


Encountering the Author: Paul Patton, Deleuzian Concepts
Paul Patton, Deleuzian Concepts (Stanford University Press, 2010).


Participants:

Paul Muldoon (Monash)
Simon Duffy (University of Sydney)
Anthony Uhlmann (University of Western Sydney)
Sabrina Achilles (University of Western Sydney)

Respondent:
Paul Patton (University of New South Wales)

Date: Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Time: 1.30 to 4.30, followed by nibbles and drinks
Place: University of Western Sydney, Bankstown Campus
2 Bullecourt Avenue, Milperra
Building 3, Room G.55

Patton’s Deleuzian Concepts is a series of essays that provide important interpretations and analyse critical developments of the political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. They situate his thought in the contemporary intellectual landscape by comparing him with contemporaries such as Derrida, Rorty, and Rawls and show how elements of his philosophy may be usefully applied to key contemporary issues including colonization and decolonization, the nature of liberal democracy, and the concepts and critical utopian aspirations of political philosophy. Patton discusses Deleuze’s notion of philosophy as the creation of concepts and shows how this may be helpful in understanding the nature of political concepts such as rights, justice, and democracy. Rather than merely commenting on or explaining Deleuze’s thought, Patton offers a series of attempts to think with Deleuzian concepts in relation to other philosophers and other problems.

The series “Encountering the Author” is organized by The Philosophy Research Initiative @ UWS. This series presents papers on a recently published book on philosophy. The author is invited to be present in order to respond. The series aims to draw attention to high quality scholarship and to provoke discussions and the exchange of ideas. For more information about this series, please visit http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events/encountering_the_author

RSVP by April 25 to n.lam-saw@uws.edu.au is essential for catering purposes

“‘How Can It Not Know What It Is?’ Self and Other in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner”

The UWS Democracy and Human Rights Research Initiative presents:

“‘How Can It Not Know What It Is?’ Self and Other in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner”


Date: 1st of March, 2012, 2 – 4 pm, Location: UWS, Bankstown Campus, Building 3, Room 3.G. 55

Abstract:

In this essay I provide a reading of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner that focuses upon the question of the kind of creatures the Replicants are depicted as being, and the meaning that depiction should have for us. I draw upon Stanley Cavell’s account of the problem of other minds to argue that the film’s empathy test is in fact presented as a mode of resisting the acknowledgment of others. And I draw upon Martin Heidegger’s account of authenticity and mortality to argue that this acknowledgment is crucial if one would become human. The film does not so much suggest that Replicants are, as such, human, but rather that humanity is won through the encounter with the inauthentic.

Andrew Norris is the editor of The Claim to Community (Stanford University Press, 2006), Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben's "Homo Sacer" (Duke University Press, 2005), and with Jeremy Elkins, the co-editor of Truth and Democracy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His essays have appeared in Cities: Philosophie, Politique, Histoire; Constellations; Critical Horizons, Diacritics; Film-philosophy; Journal of Law & Society, Law, Culture & the Humanities; Metaphilosophy; Philosophy and Social Criticism; Political Theory; Polity; Radical Philosophy; Telos; Theory and Event; Social Science Encyclopedia; International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences; and Encyclopedia of Political Thought. He is currently completing a book entitled Publicity and Partiality: Political Reflection in the Work of Stanley Cavell.

Philosophy @ UWS Presents: Kafka and Philosophy

Philosophy @ UWS website: http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws 

Seminar 17: Kafka and Philosophy

Seminar 17: Kafka and Philosophy

Download seminar flyer

Thursday, February 9, 2012

1.25 – 5.00 pm

University of Western Sydney

Bankstown Campus, Building 20, Room G.06

Cost: Admission Free

Please RSVP to philosophy@uws.edu.au

Franz Kafka is perhaps the most often discussed modernist author by philosophers. From Benjamin and Adorno to Blanchot, Derrida and Deleuze, to mention just some of the most prominent philosophers, Kafka has been the subject of many essays and books. What has been so alluring about Kafka so that philosophers have a compulsion to return to his writings? The “Sydney Seminar” Kafka and Philosophy provides a series of possible answers to the above question.

The “Sydney Seminar” Kafka and Philosophy provides a series of possible answers to the above question. Paul Alberts takes up the issue of legal positivism in The Trial by staging a “confrontation” between Kafka and Hans Kelsen. Dimitris Vardoulakis compares the conception of the law in The Trial to Spinoza’s Theologico-political Treatise in order to show how it is possible to salvage a sense of freedom in Kafka’s worlds. According to Chris Conti, Kafka’s Trial is important because it signals the search of a new genre, the metaphysical crime novel. Henry Sussman argues that there is a virtual element to Kafka’s compelling and memorable literary scenes because they absorb and enmesh us within their parameters with the insistence of virtual reality, comprising free-standing self-referential worlds, to which all readers have access.

Programme

1:25pm           Welcome: Prof. Peter Hutchings 

(Dean, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney)

1:30–3:00pm  Chair: Sigi Jöttkandt

Paul Alberts (University of Western Sydney)

Knowing Life Before the Law

Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney)

Kafka’s Empty Law: Laughter and Freedom in The Trial

3:00–3.30pm   Coffee Break

3:30–5:00pm   Chair: Gail Jones

Chris Conti (University of Western Sydney)

Kafka’s The Trial: In Search of the Metaphysical Crime Novel

Henry Sussman (Yale University)

The Calculable, the Incalculable, and the Rest: Kafka’s Virtual Environment

Paul Alberts teaches in philosophy at the University of Western Sydney, and is working on ways of making continental philosophy applicable to understanding nature and environment.

Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney) is the author of The Doppelgänger: Literature’s Philosophy (2010), the editor of Spinoza Now (2011) and co-editor of Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages (2011).

Henry Sussman (Yale University) is the author of numerous books, including Around the Book: Systems and Literacy – Kafka, Benjamin, Derrida (2011), The Trial: Kafka’s Unholy Trinity (1993), and Franz Kafka: Geometrician of Metaphor(1979).

Chris Conti teaches at the University of Western Sydney and is the author of Proofs: 104 Short Stories (2011) and the co-editor of Landscape, Place and Culture (2011).

The Seminar is supported by the Australian Modernist Studies Network (www.amsn.org.au).

Philosophy @ UWS

"Philosophy@UWS gathers and publicly disseminates the work and activities of scholars in the University of Western Sydney working in various sub-disciplines of philosophy, or in other disciplines in conversation with philosophy. The cross-disciplinary conversations cut across philosophy, literature, political theory, music, history, and the visual arts.

In order to foster the growth of a philosophically rich and lively intellectual community, Philosophy@UWS stages a wide range of philosophical events, such as the Thinking Out Loud lecture series, the Encountering the Author seminars, The Sydney Seminar for the Arts and Philosophy and supports specialised workshops and conferences. 

The cross-disciplinary orientation of scholars affiliated with Philosophy@UWS is anchored in, and amplified by, their institutional location in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and Writing and Society Research Centre."


http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws 


For more information about upcoming events please visit


http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/philosophy@uws/events

Masterclass on Jean-Luc Nancy: Community and Being Singular Plural

Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy, University of Western Sydney presents:

Master-class on Jean-Luc Nancy: Community and Being Singular Plural


Led by: Peter Banki (School of Humanities and Languages, UWS)

17 November 2011; Bankstown, 3.G.54, 2-5pm

Class Description

In this seminar we will explore Jean-Luc Nancy’s elaboration of the “inoperative community” (Communauté désœuvrée) in relation to his reading of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida. Through a close reading of certain key passages in The Inoperative Community, we will attempt to examine what the political and philosophical stakes are in such an elaboration. I will also attempt to situate the book The Inoperative Community in relation to Nancy’s work before and after, in particular, The Literary Absolute (written with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe) and Being Singular Plural, which is a work based a radicalization of the Heideggerian concept of Mitsein. There will be space to consider how Nancy’s thinking may help us to read and think political tasks of the past and present.

Required Readings*
(1.) Nancy, Jean-Luc: “The Inoperative Community,” Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, pp.1-42;

(2.) Blanchot, Maurice: “The Negative Community,” Maurice Blanchot, The
Unavowable Community, Barrytown: Station Hill, 1988, pp.1-26;

(3.) Derrida, Jacques: “When Our Eyes Touch…” Jacques Derrida, On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, pp.1-10;

(4.) Nancy, Jean-Luc: “Of Being Singular Plural,” Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, pp.1-100.

Secondary Readings
(1.) Nancy, Jean-Luc: “On Communism,” Critical Legal Thinking, July 2009, http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/Critical_Legal_Thinking/Critical_Legal_Thoughts/Entries/2009/7/26_Communism%2C_the_word.__(Notes_for_the_London_conference%2C_March_2009).html

(2.) James, Ian: “Community,” Ian James, The fragmentary demand: an introduction to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006, pp. 152-202.

Bio

In September 2009, Peter Banki defended his Ph.D in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at New York University under the supervision of Avital Ronell. In the course of his education, he has worked under the guidance of some of the major figures of contemporary theory within the European tradition, including Jean-Luc Nancy, Werner Hamacher and Avital Ronell. He currently publishes articles in refereed journals both in French and English on the work of figures such as Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger and Jean-François Lyotard, and has been the recipient of fellowships from the DAAD, the Leo Beack Intitute in New York and the Free University in Berlin. More information about his published and unpublished writings can be found at www.peterbanki.com

* Electronic copy of all the readings is available; please contact Magdalena Zolkos at m.zolkos at uws.edu.au

Philosophy @ UWS presents: Encountering the Author- Genevieve Lloyd

"The series “Encountering the Author” organized by “Philosophy@UWS” involves papers on a recently published book on philosophy. The author is invited to be present in order to respond. The series aims to draw attention to high quality scholarship and to provoke discussions and the exchange of ideas. Our next event will be on Genevieve Lloyd’s Providence Lost, scheduled for December 7. Put this day in your diary! (More details below).

Genevieve Lloyd, Providence Lost (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Participants: Amy Allen (Darmouth College), Chris Fleming (UWS), Norma Lam-Saw (UWS) , Nick Malpas (University of Sydney), Dimitris Vardoulakis (UWS), Allison Weir (UWS)

Respondent Genevieve Lloyd

Wednesday, December 7
Time and Place: TBC

In this provocative book, leading Australian philosopher Genevieve Lloyd proposes an alternative history of freedom. Lloyd traces how the usual distinction between necessity and freedom of the will that governs the discourse on freedom is in fact intermixed with the discourse on providence. Providence thus becomes the cipher of many of our preconceived ideas of what it means to be free.

You can hear Prof Lloyd talking about her book here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2499836.htm"

Philosophers Zone 28 February 2009 - Providence lost?

www.abc.net.au

‎'Providence' is not a word of which we make much use these days. For us, it tends to be a synonym for good fortune or perhaps a sense that somebody is watching over us. But what is providence if it isn't whatever deliveries you a prize in the lottery? To the ancient Greeks, providence was the inhe...