The Centre for Modern Thought

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!

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

“You are, are you not, a communist?”

(I just watched the Badiou interview - thanks for sharing that B. It looks like reserves of pomposity at the BBC are still at 1950’s levels.)

Relatedly I chanced upon an excellent resource with detailed notes on some of the Birkbeck conference papers. I thought these may be of interest, both for those who were there and those who weren’t. There is also a complete transcript of Alberto Toscano’s paper.

Blog with notes on papers given by Ranciere, Zizek and Michael Hardt

http://thekubrickiangaze.blogspot.com/

Toscano’s paper, entitled “Communist Power/Communist Knowledge”:

http://thekubrickiangaze.blogspot.com/2009/03/communist-powercommunist-knowledge.html

BBC HARDtalk interview by Stephen Sackur. Broadcasted a few days ago, on 24 March 2009.

Over at the stellar cartographies blog

(i) 1980-1

(ii) 1981-2

(iii) 1982-3

Part 1

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSSZqzfY9U

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-8KzD2U9J4

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaimHnhcp1Y

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnpMVsLw7T8

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U5vfICJmlE

Documentary on four mathematicians. Two of them are Georg Cantor and Kurt Godel. Dramatizes their mathematics quite clearly, I think, and some of the mathematical proofs that Badiou and Hallward talk about. 90 minutes.

Introductory texts on Paul Cohen’s proof to the Undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis. These explain a bit on his idea of the ‘generic set’ and his method of ‘forcing’. I was told that some people did not get this by email, so I post the links here:

“What is Forcing?” (the least technical text I found):

http://www.ams.org/notices/200806/tx080600692p.pdf

“Forcing for Dummies”:

http://www-math.mit.edu/~tchow/mathstuff/forcingdum

“A Beginner’s Guide to Forcing”:

http://alum.mit.edu/www/tchow/forcing.pdf

“Cheerful Introduction to Forcing and the Continuum Hypothesis”:

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~easwaran/papers/forcing.pdf