Progressive Geographies

There will be a virtual book launch for Jessica Dubow, In Exile: Philosophy, Geography and Judaic Thought (Bloomsbury, November 2020) on 17 March 2021, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm (UK time)

IAS Book Launch – In Exile: Geography, Philosophy and Judaic Thought – Jessica Dubow (Sheffield) with responses from Jacqueline Rose (Birkbeck) and Michael Steinberg (Brown), and chaired by Tamar Garb (UCL). Registration free, but required to get the link.

In In Exile, Jessica Dubow situates exile in a new context in which it holds both critical capacity and political potential. She not only outlines the origin of the relationship between geography and philosophy in the Judaic intellectual tradition; but also makes secular claims out of Judaism’s theological sources. 

Analysing key Jewish intellectual figures such as Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt, Dubow presents exile as a form of thought and action and reconsiders attachments of identity, history, time, and territory. In her unique combination of geography, philosophy and some of the key themes in Judaic thought, she has constructed more than a study of interdisciplinary fluidity. She delivers a striking case for understanding the critical imagination in spatial terms and traces this back to a fundamental – if forgotten – exilic pull at the heart of Judaic thought.

The Introduction can be read open access here.

The Political Imaginarium: Image, Object, Gesture

In his book Le Portrait du roi (1981), Louis Marin famously claims that “The king is only truly king, that is, monarch, in images.” To be sure, Marin’s work explicitly refers back to a premodern political theology of the image, but it arguably also inaugurates a modern genre of political iconography that brings together political theory, history, philosophy, sociology, religious studies, art and literary studies to explore the bond between the power of the image and the images of power. But what would it mean to speak of politics as a privileged place or site for making images? How far does politics consist in the power of the image or, conversely, the imageof power? To what extent do paintings, sculpture, literary texts and artifacts represent, perform, critique or resist the “reality” of political power? In short, what is the relation between the power to represent and the representation of power? In this series of webinars (March/April 2021), experts in political theory, sociology, history, philosophy, theology, art history and comparative literature explore the past and present of our “political imaginarium”.

Organisers: Arthur Bradley (Lancaster University) and Antonio Cerella (Kingston University).

For infomation, contact Arthur Bradley at: a.h.bradley@lancaster.ac.uk

Microhistory and Global History – discussion between Carlo Ginzburg and Francesca Trivellato

The French Programme: How Theory Came to London – Colm McAuliffe on the 1973 ICA festival that sparked British interest in Francophone structuralist and post-structuralist thought.

March 1973: two months after Britain joins the European Economic Community, the French historian of ideas Michel Foucault is scheduled to give a lecture in London. Foucault is one of the star attractions of the French Programme, a month-long series of lectures and screenings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Tzvetan Todorov are among the other avatars of Francophone structuralist and post-structuralist thought appearing throughout the month, described in the French newspaper Combat as “the most important French cultural event ever organised in Britain”, and one which has been almost entirely funded by the British Government, eager to foster positive cultural relations between Britain and its sister nations in the Common Market. [continues here]

Does Attention to Language Matter Anymore? Philology, Translation, Criticism – special issue of boundary 2, 2021 (requires subscription)

Paul A. Bové / Editor’s Note / 1

Jonathan Arac / Ways of Working with Language / 3

David Golumbia / The Deconstruction of Philology / 17

Howard Eiland / Language Matters / 35

Susan H. Gillespie / The Possibility of Translation / 49

Jeffrey Sacks / The Philological Thesis: Language without Ends / 65

Tanıl Bora / Excerpts from Zamanın Kelimeleri: Yeni Türkiye’nin Siyasî Dili (Words of Our Times: The Political Language of New Turkey) / 109

Joe Cleary / The English Department as Imperial Commonwealth, or The Global Past and Global Future of English Studies / 139

Marc Nichanian / Philology from the Point of View of Its Victims / 177 Andrew Warren / Between Form and Formalization: Angus Fletcher’s

The Topological Imagination / 207
Howard Eiland / The Fate of Philology / 237

Intervention

Lindsay Waters / To Become What One Is: Why I Seek the Revival of Criticism / 251

Contributors / 265

Sasha Engelmann, Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices – Routledge, September 2020

This book engages artistic interventions in the aerial elements to investigate the aesthetics and politics of atmosphere.

Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices traces the potential of artistic, community-driven experiments to amplify our sensing of atmosphere, marrying attentions to atmospheric affect with visceral awareness of the materials, institutions and processes hovering in the air. Drawing on six years of practice-led research with artistic and activist initiatives Museo Aero Solar and Aerocene, initiated by artist Tomás Saraceno, each chapter develops creative relations to atmosphere from the studio to stratospheric currents. Through narrative-led writing, the voices of artists and collaborators are situated and central. In dialogue with these aerographic stories and sites, the book develops a notion of elemental lures: the sensual and imaginative propositions of aerial, atmospheric and meteorological phenomena. The promise of elemental lures, Engelmann suggests, is to reconcile our sensing of atmosphere with the myriad social, cultural and political forces suspended in it. Through tales of floating journeys, shared envelopes of breath and surreal levitations, the book foregrounds the role of art in crafting alternative modes of perceiving, moving and imagining (in) the air.

The book ends with a call for elemental experiments in the geohumanities. It makes an important and original contribution to elemental geographies, the geohumanities and interdisciplinary scholarship on air and atmosphere.