The Centre for Modern Thought.

The Centre for Modern Thought at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) is pleased to announce a conference on the topic of

Haiti and the Politics of the Universal

Friday and Saturday, March 12-13, 2010

Since 1804, Haiti has named the founding, repressed, ‘legitimate’ violence of Western Modernity in its totality: both our spectral fantasies of slavery, revolutionary violence, and the ‘failed state,’ as well as the site of an eternally disavowed egalitarianism without compromise.

After two centuries of neglect and disavowal, the Haitian Revolution has suddenly become a fundamental reference point for global emancipatory politics, a touchstone for critical philosophers such as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Susan Buck-Morss, Peter Hallward, and Hardt and Negri. Read more ...

A two-day postgraduate conference at the University of Aberdeen sponsored by the Beyond Text Programme, AHRC

Call for Papers

The long contested issue of the relationship between art and politics has lately re-emerged in critical debate, in conjunction with an explosion of interest in political theory and the exhaustion of the postmodernist model. Recent technological developments have radically transformed modes of creation, circulation, assimilation and dispersion of images, reframing perception and making the investigation of the interdependency of visual arts and politics an urgent ethical necessity. Read more ...

‘Cruel Weather’ and the exhibition ‘Identities in Motion’ by Ayah Bdeir at Peacock Visual Arts, aim to encourage a broader and incisive involvement in, and discussion of artistic responses to crisis, the place of the moving image, and the state of the Middle East today.

The festival is composed largely of documentary, experimental and mixed genre works that have never before been screened in Scotland. Read more ...

The Centre for Modern Thought is pleased to announce an upcoming lecture by Miguel de Beistegui, Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University, entitled “Foucault on Neoliberalism”.

The lecture will take place at 3:00 pm, June 11th in the Court Room of the University Office. All welcome!

Dear All, Tomorrow we’ll hold the final session for this term of the Badiou seminar, from 3-5, with a party to follow from 5 on. We’ll discuss Book III and IV of Logics of Worlds. That will take us to the end of the ‘Greater Logic,’ and so I’d like to propose a reading group for next fall to finish up the second half of the volume. Best-Nick

Friends,

This Friday and Saturday (the 15th and 16th of May, 2009), the Centre for Modern Thought and Hispanic Studies will present “Republicanism I: Marrano Views on Empire and Democracy” in Committee Room 2.

This conference is open to all, and all are encouraged to come.

I have attached the schedule as a .pdf

Conference on Film and Philosophy. 16-18 July 2009. Alain Badiou is one of the keynote speakers. It is at the University of Dundee — very near Aberdeen.

more info

Dear All, Please find attached Jean-Godefroy Bidima’s talk on Badiou and Ricoeur, which he would have discussed with us had he been able to travel last week. It’s in French, but perhaps we can summarize it in discussion this week before launching into Books II and III. Cheers-Nick

Dear All, I’ll unfortunately have to cancel and postpone tomorrrow’s seminar due to a combination of circumstances. Number one, our invited speaker, Jean-Godefroy Bidima was unable to obtain a UK travel visa for his visit for the African Philosophy seminar. I hope I can distribute his paper on Badiou and Ricoeur for discussion next week, though. Also, we do still have the African philosophy conference coming up (I’ll be presenting Bidima’s talk in his absence) and I’ll be busy with preparation for that. So can we plan to discuss books 2 and 3 of LW next Thursday, and tentatively reschedule an extra session for week 13? Cheers-Nick

Here’s the article Alberto Toscano has sent us to read in advance of his discussion in the seminar-Nick