Event Date: 10 – 12 May 2013

Room B01

Clore Management Centre

Birkbeck, University of London

Torrington Square

London WC1E 7HX

The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities presents:

The Actuality of the Absolute: Hegel, Our Untimely Contemporary

Hegel is the ultimate bête noire of the last two centuries of philosophy:proponents of Lebensphilosophie, existentialists from Kierkegaard onwards, materialists, historicists, analytic philosophers and empiricists, Marxists, traditional liberals, religious moralists, deconstructionists and Deleuzians, they alldefine themselves through different modalities of rejecting Hegel. But when enemies start to speak the same language, it is a reliable sign that something is eluding them all. So what if something happens in Hegel, a break-through into a unique dimension of thought which was obliterated, rendered invisible, by the so-called post-metaphysical thought? What if the ridiculous image of Hegel as the absurd “absolute idealist” who “pretended to know everything” is an exemplary case of what Freud called Deck-Erinnerung (screen-memory), a fantasy-formation destined to cover up a traumatic truth? The task of the symposium will be to unearth aspects of this traumatic truth.

Programme:

Friday 10th May

Welcome and Introduction to the conference – by Slavoj Zizek.

Session 1 Chair – Slavoj Zizek

Andrew Cutrofello – Hegel and his problems

AUDIO HERE

Costas Douzinas -  Is there a right to a revolution?

AUDIO HERE

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Saturday 11th May

Introduction to day 2 – by Slavoj Zizek.

Session 2 Chair – Catherine Malabou

Rebecca Comay – The Dash (I): Vicissitudes of Absolute Knowing

AUDIO HERE

Frank Ruda – The Dash (II): Working Through Absolute Knowing

AUDIO HERE

Discussion of the two above papers

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Session 3 Chair – Slavoj Zizek

Catherine Malabou – Hegel on synthetic a priori judgments

AUDIO HERE

Alenka Zupancic – Between Aufhebung and Verneinung

AUDIO HERE

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Sunday 12th May

Introduction to day 2 – by Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizek.

Session 4 Chair – Costas Douzinas

Slavoj Zizek – The absolute recoil

AUDIO HERE

Event Date: 10 May 2013
The Wiener Library
29 Russell Square,
London WC1B 5DP

The Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and the Wiener Library London present:

Sanctioned Laughter: Humour, War and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Europe

What was the relationship between power and laughter in the fascist and communist dictatorships of the twentieth century?

This workshop will examine why European dictatorships found it so difficult to dispense with humour, even though this risked subverting claims to total political commitment made by the regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. Was official humour simply a tool for keeping the masses pliant, or was it shaped as much by the rulers as by the ruled? Was there a clear line between official, unofficial and subversive humour? Speakers will address these questions and others as they consider state-sanctioned humour in Europe, with a particular focus on Germany, Italy and Russia during the 1930s and 1940s.

Programme

Introductions and Chair: Dr Nikolaus Wachsmann (Birkbeck, University of London)

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Professor Stephen Gundle (Warwick) – Laughing under Fascism: Comedy, Jokes and Ridicule in Italy 1922-1943 

AUDIO HERE

Dr Patrick Merziger (Freie Universität Berlin) – German humour in the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: the failure of National Socialist Propaganda

AUDIO HERE

Professor Orlando Figes (Birkbeck) – The Soviet Joke: Tiny Revolutions and the Art of Survival

AUDIO HERE

Round-table discussion

Chair: Professor David Feldman (Director, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck) with:

Professor Jane Caplan (Oxford and Birkbeck)

Dr Julia Lovell (Birkbeck)

Dr Jan Rüger (Birkbeck)

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The Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism
“The relationship between antisemitism and other forms of racism and exclusion is not only a historical question. It is an urgent issue for today.” Professor David Feldman, Director.
The Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism was established by the Pears Foundation and is based at Birkbeck, University of London. It is a centre of innovative research and teaching, contributing to discussion and policy formation on antisemitism as well as other forms of racial prejudice and intolerance. It is both independent and inclusive.

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Event Date: 9 May 2013 

Royal Asiatic Society

Stephenson Way 
London NW1 2HD

The Royal Asiatic Society presents:

Professor Max Deeg (University of Cardiff) – The Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim Records

Talk:

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Questions:

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accompanying images:

Department of Philosophy

Professor Ken Gemes (Birkbeck) – Nietzsche on the Value of Truth

Nietzsche claims that the with the rejection of religious underpinning of the value of truth (the truth as God’s word) we can now raise the question of why and to what extent we should value truth.  He argues that our need for meaning conflicts with our will to truth since that will tends to destroy all mythologies including the mythology of value – our will to truth reveals that values are not in the world but are merely our projections onto the world.  This knowledge eviscerates the world of meaning.  This does not mean that Nietzsche rejects the value of truth but that he rejects the notion, inherited from the Judeo-Christian world view, that truth is an unconditional value. Such a notion of truth, destructive of all myth and meaning, is unliveable. The very claim that the truth is valuable, even if not unconditionally valuable, is itself one of those myths that help give life meaning.

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Department of Philosophy

Professor Ken Gemes (Birkbeck) – Nietzsche on Nihilism and the Death of God

This lecture introduces Nietzsche as the philosopher of the death of god. Nietzsche claims that we have not yet fully understood the ramifications of the modern rejection of belief in God.  Giving up on belief in God undermines all our values, though many cling to those values, for instance the value of compassion and the value of truth, in the absence of God or of any other justificatory basis for those values.  When we truly appreciate the meaning of the death of God we will, says Nietzsche, lapse into nihilism; the inability to find any values in the world. This Nietzsche presciently predicts as the future of Europe for the next two hundred years. Nietzsche does not endorse nihilism but seeks to move beyond it to a new affirmation of this, the one and only, world.

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Event Date: 9 May 2013
Room B34
Birkbeck Main Building
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

The Department of Psychosocial Studies presents:

Professor  Slavoj Zizek – The Event: Politics, Art, Ontology

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Event Date: 8 May 2013
Room 532, Main Building
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

The Birkbeck Institute for Social Research presents:

Using Narratives to Study Social Change

Doing Critical Social Research

This is the fourth in this seminar series.

Speaker: Molly Andrews (Professor of Political Psychology UEL , and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research)

Narratives are not only the means by which individuals breathe public life into personal experience, they are a primary tool by which individuals recognise and affirm themselves as members of a group, thereby often acting as a catalyst for the raising of political consciousness. Narratives can thus play a vital role in de-individualising that which is personal; rendering experience into a narrative form can help individuals to become more actively engaged in shaping the conditions of their lives. Stories, then, are not just within the domain of the individual, but are built upon the collective memory of a group, just as they help to create how that memory is mobilised and for what purposes. This paper will explore the relationship between micro and macro political narratives, in other words the dynamic interplay between the stories of individuals (both told and untold) and the contested stories of the communities in which they live.

Molly Andrews‘ research interests include the psychological basis of political commitment, psychological challenges posed by societies in transition to democracy, patriotism, conversations between generations, gender and aging, and counter-narratives. Her monographs include Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change (Cambridge 2007) and Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life (Oxford 2013).

Talk:

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Questions:

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Event Date 8 – 9 May 2013

Room 22/26
Senate House
University of London
London WC1E 7HU

Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy

Presents:

‘Romantic Transdisciplinarity: Art and the New’ Conference

2011–2013 (AHRC 914469)

This conference is dedicated to discussion of the transdisciplinary legacies of early German Romanticism in contemporary theory and practice in the arts and humanities, with particular reference to the construction of the concepts ‘art’ and ‘the new’. Themes to be discussed include: Romanticism and disciplinarity; aesthetics as a transdisciplinary field; transdisciplinary constructions of art, nature and the new; medium, media and transmedia as transdisciplinary concepts.

The conference is in collaboration with the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Programme:

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Introduction to the day by Peter Osborne (CRMEP, Kingston University)

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Howard Caygill (CRMEP, Kingston University) – The Fate of the “Beautiful Sciences”

AUDIO HERE

Olivier Schefer (Aesthetics, Sorbonne, University of Paris 1) – Incompleteness, Reversibility and Fragmentary Montage: On Contemporary Romanticism

AUDIO HERE

Gertrud Koch (Film Studies, Free University Berlin) - The Oldest System Programme of German Idealism and the Newest Film Theories

AUDIO HERE

Hito Steyerl (artist, Berlin) – A Presentation of the Film, Adorno’s Grey

AUDIO HERE

Thursday 9 May 2013

Introduction to the day by Éric Alliez (CRMEP, Kingston University)

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Boris Groys (Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University) – Searching for the True Self

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Claude Imbert (Philosophy, ENS, Paris) – Romanticism Abroad and French Modernism

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David Cunningham (English, University of Westminister) – Genre without Genre: Romanticism, the Novel and the New

AUDIO HERE

Peter Weibel (ZKM, Karlsruhe) – In the Name of the New: Romanticism – The Artist as Monarch

AUDIO HERE

Event Date: 3 May 2013
Jeffery Hall
Institute of Education,
20 Bedford Way,
London WC1H 0AL

The Birkeck Institute for Social Research presents:

AFTER, BEYOND THE FRAGMENTS?

with

Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal & Hilary Wainwright

&

Max Farrar, Pragna Patel, Rosie Rogers & Sasha Roseneil

chaired by Melissa Benn

A generation ago Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright wrote Beyond the Fragments. Inspired by the activism of the 1970s, and facing the imminent triumph of the right under Margaret Thatcher, they sought to apply their experiences as feminists to the project of creating stronger bonds of solidarity in a new kind of left movement. Since then the obstacles facing those struggling for radical social transformation have grown formidably: deepening recession, environmental pollution, falling real wages and savage welfare cuts. New forms of resistance have appeared, but how are they to coalesce?

In three new essays in a new edition of BEYOND THE FRAGMENTS Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright return to the fraught question of how to consolidate diverse upsurges of rebellion into effective, open, democratic Left coalitions.

To mark the publication of this new edition, the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research is hosting a discussion of the issues raised by the original book. Come along and join us for a lively discussion and a celebration of the new edition of Beyond the Fragments.

Welcome by  Sasha Roseneil (Birkbeck).

Speakers are (in the order of speaking):  Melissa Benn (chair), Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal & Hilary Wainwright:

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Audience Comments 1:

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Respondents are: Max Farrar, Pragna Patel, Rosie Rogers:

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Audience Comments 2:

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Final comments by the speakers and close:

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You can buy the new edition of ‘Beyond the Fragments’ here 

Event Date: 2 May 2013

Lecture Theatre E002, Granary Building,

Central Saint Martins,

London N1C 4AA

The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) and the London Graduate School in collaboration with Art and Philosophy at Central Saint Martins present:

Professor Catherine Malabou (Kingston) – Whither Materialism? Althusser/Darwin

I propose here to interpret the important shift in materialism announced by Althusser in his late writings. He affirms the necessity of moving from a teleological dialectical materialism (Hegel and Marx) to a “materialism of the encounter” (Epicurus, Spinoza). According to the latter, chance, “void,” absence of intention, and purpose are essential ontological conditions of possibility for a self-differentiating real. Darwin’s concept of natural selection will be analysed here as a possible example of such a movement. The question will then be: how can we transfer what works at the level of nature to the political? What is the difference between natural and social selection? Where is the “encounter” when norms, criteria, values and inequalities seem to be the only reality? Is it possible to build a new materialism which would inscribe the logic of nature in that of the community? In other terms, is social selection compatible with materialism?

Talk:

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