| philosophy and critical theory group (phact),
2007-08: politics, passion and difference |
| fall schedule: November 3: "Subjects of Tolerance: Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians" (from Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire), Wendy Brown November 17: "Ghosts and Numbers" (film), Alan Klima (71 minutes; preproduction copy) (possible related reading: Alan Klima, "Spirits of 'Dark Finance' in Thailand"). Socializing: 10:00 a.m. |
| spring
schedule: February 7: "Governmentality" (from The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality), Michel Foucault March 6: "Violence, Mourning, Politics" (from Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Politics), Judith Butler April 3: "Learning to Live Finally" (in Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview), Jacques Derrida with Jean Birnbaum / "Apprendre à vivre enfin" (in Apprendre a vivre enfin: Entretien avec Jean Birnbaum) / Please secure a copy for our meeting. May 1: reading to be decided. Socializing: 7:30 p.m. |
| some ideas about this year's readings
from deborah's 10/8/07 e-mail: I'm interested in the idea expressed by Wendy Brown, Saba Mahmood and others that in our era, secularism, not Christianity, is the new face of imperialism (and we often hear, blurring various important distinctions, the term religious extremists--e.g. Abizaid at UNR). So I thought a good place to start would be with a chapter from Wendy Brown's book, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. The chapter is called "Subjects of Tolerance: Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians." (The chapter is also found in Hent de Vries' edited volume, Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World.) After that, I was thinking I would follow Wendy Brown, at this summer's Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory, or SECT (which I attended), and show a really terrific and wild film called "Ghosts and Numbers" by Alan Klima, an anthropologist at UC Davis. The film is about the cultural effects of the collapse of the Thai financial market. It is interesting for a number of reasons, one of which is to aid us in deconstructing the secular-religious distinction. Are politics and religion, the political and the theological (or, as we say in the U.S., church and state) separate? Or, instead, does one produce the other? Does a new form of politics produce new forms of religion and vice versa? Can we just rail against so-called fundamentalists, or is religion a response to the politics and economics of our age? To globalization and neo-liberalism? In Thailand, new religiosity resulted from the collapse--and, seeing that, we might be better able to think about how the same is true here in the U.S. and also in the Islamic world. The film is in progress and not yet available to the public, but Alan Klima is willing to send us a DVD. It features, among other things, a woman who channels a little, male god who speaks in a high voice advises people to stay out of debt. After that, I was thinking we might want to look at an older piece to think about the broader idea not just that the political shapes the theological and vice versa but also at the idea that political power is not just expressed in overtly political ways, but in our social life, our emotions, our ways of perceiving the world. To think about that, we could read Michel Foucault's Collège de France lecture "Governmentality" (published in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality). Then, a good recent piece to move us from politics and difference to the topic of passion would be Judith Butler's "Violence, Mourning, Politics" from Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Politics (Verso Books). It's timely to think about Butler's question from the book, "If we are interested in arresting cycles of violence to produce less violent outcomes, it is no doubt important to ask what, politically, might be made of grief besides a cry for war." Thinking about life, death and mourning, we could then read a theorist who stressed affirmation, Jacques Derrida, who conveyed these words, from a distance, at his own funeral, through the voice of his son: "Smile for me," his son read, "as I will have smiled for you until the end. Always prefer life and constantly affirm survival... I love you and am smiling at you from wherever I am." I suggest we read Derrida's last interview, now out in English translation, "Learning to Live Finally", in which he says "Deconstruction is always on the side of the yes, the affirmation of life" as well as claiming that every time I let something go, "I live my death in writing". And then.... But that gets us through February, and perhaps we ought to decide later what we would do then. If you are interested in following out issues about religion, we could read something by Saba Mahmoud or Talal Assad (critical theory in relation to Islam). If we wanted to follow out issues regarding passion, we could read Jankelevitch on forgiveness. If we want to read some philosophy/critical theory regarding Latin America, we could read something from liberation philosopher, Enrique Dussel. |