Judith Butler 2012 Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism reviewed by Lisa Bhungalia
Bruno Latour – Some advantages of the notion of “Critical Zone” for Geopolitics
Seyla Benhabib reviews Richard J. Bernstein, Violence at NDPR
Joshua Hagen reviews The Birth of Territory in Geographical Review
Heidegger’s Black Notebooks: Philosophy, Politics, Anti-Semitism, Emory University, September 5-6, 2014
Speakers:
Peter Trawny (Bergische Universität Gesamthochschule Wuppertal)
Bettina Bergo (Université de Montréal)
Robert Bernasconi (Pennsylvania State University)
Martin Gessmann (Hochschule für Gestaltung, Offenbach am Main)
Sander Gilman (Emory University)
Peter E. Gordon (Harvard University)
Eduardo Mendieta (Stony Brook University)
Richard Polt (Xavier University)
Tom Rockmore (Duquesne University)Conference is free and open to the public.
Please join us for a conference devoted to Heidegger’s recently published Black Notebooks. These notebooks contain Heidegger’s private political ruminations from the years 1931-1944, dealing directly with his conception of National Socialism and politics more broadly. They also evince a strain of anti-Semitism, not only in passing remarks, but as incorporated into his philosophical/political thinking as well. And while the Black Notebooks are undoubtedly crucial for an assessment of Heidegger’s relation to politics, National Socialism, and anti-Semitism, they likewise provide an opportunity to reflect more broadly on topics such as the relation of philosophy to politics, the role of the intellectual in society, the problem of modernity, and the tension between the public and the private, to name only a few. The Emory conference features the editor of the notebooks, Peter Trawny, along with an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the content of these notebooks from a variety of perspectives and contexts.
The conference will be held at the Emory Conference Center. Rooms can be reserved at the Emory Conference Center Hotel, (404) 712-6000, emoryconferencecenter.com Discounted room rates may apply.
For further details or questions, please contact the conference organizer, Andrew J. Mitchell, at andrew.j.mitchell@emory.edu
This conference is made possible by the generous support of the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, the Hightower Fund, the departments of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, German Studies, and French and Italian, the Institute of Liberal Arts, and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies.
Update: Flyer here
The Birth of Territory has been reviewed in Croatian International Relations Review by Daniel Šaric (open access). Here’s the first paragraph:
Stuart Elden’s new book The Birth of Territory is a magisterial and in parts almost encyclopedic work. The book covers a diverse and broad ground, starting from political theory and international relations through geography and law to theology and history. The book’s basic presupposition is to present a genealogy of the concept of territory as we understand it today. Elden asserts that the concept of territory is taken for granted today. That is the case in political practice as well as in political theory and the social sciences more generally where territory has been under-examined. Thus, the author “seeks to offer an account of the emergence of the concept of territory in Western political thought. It does so primarily through a contextualized reading of the texts of that tradition with one key question: what is the relation between place and power?” (ibid: 10). He answers this question through a mesmerizing account divided in three parts spanning nine chapters and a coda which are supported by more than 2,700 endnotes. The book won the 2013 Association of American Geographers Meridian Book Award for “outstanding scholarly work in Geography”.
Lisa Bhungalia reviews Judith Butler’s Parting Ways at the Society and Space open site.
Urbanist and geographer Peter Hall died two days ago. There is an obituary in The Guardian and one at Building Design.
A nice review of The Birth of Territory in Geographical Review, by Joshua Hagen (requires subscription).
Here’s the concluding paragraph:
Elden is to be commended for his keen analysis that tackles rather complex issues of meaning and translation while remaining eminently readable. I also credit Elden for undertaking such an ambitious project when the incentive structures in modern academia increasingly tilt toward producing the minimal publishable unit. Upon first perusing the book, I immediately thought of Clarence Glacken’s Traces on the Rhodian Shore, an impression that was only reinforced as I read through the chapters. I was a bit frustrated the book lacked a full bibliography. The main chapters seemed to average around 250 notes, so looking up full citations was laborious. I will refrain from the rather lazy criticism that this or that should have been included in a book that covers so much ground, but I would have liked a bit more explanation about what criteria governed
the selection of source materials. Perhaps my most significant complaint would be that I do not think the title fits the book very well. The story Elden tells is less about the birth of territory than the changing relations between place and power. Elden explicitly acknowledges as much throughout the book. I believe what Elden has actually produced is much more than the birth of territory. With apologies to Glacken, I think the book would be better titled Place and Power in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Seventeenth Century. These small points do not diminish a truly impressive piece of scholarship.
The desperate situation on Gaza continues… some things worth reading, as something of a balance to the mainstream media
The Funambulist has had some excellent analysis, in word and image by Léopold Lambert – clicking the map below takes to you a high-quality image. [Plus a new post on 30/7/2014]
Derek Gregory’s blog Geographical Imaginations has had several good posts recently – Corpographies and Footnotes to Gaza 101, among them…
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment is a continually useful source of perspectives, on this and much else
Craig Jones’s War, Law, Space blog had some important pieces towards the beginning of this war, including a link to a work in progress entitled ‘Frames of law: Targeting advice and operational law in the Israeli Defense Force‘
Critical Legal Thinking has had some good pieces too
Finally, The Case for Sanctions Against Israel – Verso’s collection of essays is now available as a free e-book
[Update: ‘Isolating Gaza‘ at the Stanford University Press blog is also very good]
Seyla Benhabib reviews Richard J. Bernstein, Violence at NDPR
Ed Cohen reviews Francois Guéry and Didier Deleule’s The Productive Body and Foucault’s La société punitive in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
