A good review of the recent edited volume on Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’
Jeff Malplas and Ingo Farin edited the collection, which contains a cast of many well-known Heidegger specialists. It is, on the whole, more sympathetic to Heidegger (or what is culled down as his real thought, rather than the anti-semitism) than I expected: Ingo Farin, Jeff Malpas (Eds.): Reading Heidegger’s Black Notebooks 1931-1941 – Phenomenological Reviews
Urban Cultural Studies: Call for abstracts – AAG in Boston April 5-9, 2017
The AAG session on Urban Cultural Studies takes an interdisciplinary approach to the culture(s) of cities.
In recent years, cities have been increasingly at the forefront of debate in both humanities and social science disciplines, but there has been relatively little real dialogue across these disciplinary boundaries. On the one hand, social science fields that use urban studies methods to look at life in cities rarely explore the cultural aspects of urban life in any depth or delve into close-readings of the representation of cities in individual novels, music albums/songs, graphic novels, films, videogames, online ‘virtual’ spaces, or other artistic and cultural products. On the other hand, while there is increasing discussion of urban topics and themes in the humanities, broadly considered, there are very few venues that are open to these new interdisciplinary directions of scholarship. Driven by a methodology that links urban geography and cultural studies work, this session features applied and theoretical papers focusing on urban spaces the world over.
Abstracts will ideally address both an individual city itself and also its cultural representation. We are particularly interested in abstracts that achieve some balance between discussing an individual (or multiple) cultural/artistic product(s) in depth and also using one of many social-science (geographical, anthropological, sociological…) urban approaches to investigate a given city. Specific topics vary, but emphasis is placed on geo-humanities approaches and representational/spatial practices. This session is also linked to the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies (http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=225/) and its accompanying blog at urbanculturalstudies.wordpress.com.
The format will be an interactive short-paper session of 10-14 brief presentations of research (5 minutes each) followed by lengthy audience discussion.
Please submit abstracts of a maximum of 250 words to Benjamin Fraser (urbanculturalstudies@gmail.com), Executive Editor of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies at East Carolina University.
Ray Milefsky, who worked with the US State Department’s Office of the Geographer and Global Issues has died. I only met Ray briefly at Durham’s International Boundaries Research Unit events. He was a regular tutor at IBRU workshops, and a strong supporter of its work. There are good tributes from Martin Pratt and Phil Steinberg.
Esther Leslie has an interesting piece in The Guardian on fictions by philosophers. Benjamin, Goethe, Marx, Nietzsche et. al. Just one woman in the list.
Leslie is one of the translators of Walter Benjamin’s The Storyteller, just out with Verso.
An important commentary at the Society and Space open site.
Michael J. Shapiro, Politics and Time, now out with Polity.
Catastrophic events like the bombing of Hiroshima, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, and drone strikes periodically achieve renewed political significance as subsequent developments summon them back to public awareness. But why and how do different conceptions of time inform and challenge these key events and the narratives they create?
In this book, Michael J. Shapiro provides an approach to politics and time that unsettles official collective histories by introducing analyses of lived experience articulated in cinematic, televisual, musical, and literary genres. His investigation is framed by questions of our responsibility to acknowledge those victims of violence and catastrophe who have failed to rise above the threshold of public recognition. Ultimately, by focusing on time as an active force shaping our conception of political life, we can deepen our understanding of complex political dynamics and improve the theories and methods we rely on to interpret them.
This bold and original book will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, cultural studies and cinema studies looking for a new perspective on the temporal aspects of political life.
Production of Inequalities: Realities and Prospects for Change in Jerusalem
Centre for Jerusalem Studies, Al-Quds University 2016Call for Abstracts
With the benevolent grant from the Ghussein Fund, Al-Quds University through the Centre for Jerusalem Studies, in partnership with the Philosophy, Political Science, and Architecture departments, would like to invite you to submit abstracts for a paper or a proposal for a panel relevant to the theme of the conference on Production of Inequalities: Realities and Prospects for Change in Jerusalem, December 3-5, 2016 (Saturday-Monday). The opening session shall be held in Jerusalem on Saturday afternoon, and the subsequent conference days (Sunday and Monday) shall be held on the AQU Main Campus in Abu Dies. We welcome the participation of researchers and scholars interested in this topic.
Further details in English and Arabic.
Today I’m beginning work on the proofs of Foucault: The Birth of Power. They look to be in a good state, so this should be reasonably straight-forward.
The book should be out in early 2017 – January or early February. There is a hold page on the Polity site, but not yet the cover, contents and description. Hopefully that will all be available soon.
Peter Gratton kindly links to my Interview with Eugene Wolters at critical-theory.com, which I shared at the weekend, and also mentions that he is currently interviewing me, along with Eduardo Mendieta and Dianna Taylor, for Symposium. The interview uses the book as a starting point, but is really a discussion of mid-late Foucault around a range of themes. Peter says “it will appear early in the fall (if not sooner if we can make it open access)”. There are also at least three reviews of the book in progress.
