Progressive Geographies

Today’s guest writer is Gastón Gordillo, professor in anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, to whom we owe the great work on Space and Politics, as well as a forthcoming book, Rubble (Duke University Press, 2014) about the narrative power contained in the figure of the ruin. In the following text, entitled “Nazi Architecture as Affective Weapon,” Gastón uses Third Reich main architect Albert Speer’s memoirs to examine Adolf Hitler’s relationship with architecture, and to which extent this relationship may have influenced his political and military strategies — Gastón goes as far as writing that the competition between Berlin’s projected People’s Hall and Moscow’s Palace of the Soviets might have had a weight in the creation of the Nazi Russian front in 1941. The text also describes Hitler’s admiration for the Baron Haussmann’s transformation — or as I often write, weaponization —…

Now that I’m well-ensconced at the fellowship here it’s part of my goal to do a bit more with the site in terms of adding content, beyond the links to stuff I find important. First up is to detail what I’ll be working on this semester.

1. First are two articles relating to Derrida’s later lectures. One will be a review for Berfois on Vol. 1 of Derrida’s 1999-2000 lectures on The Death Penalty. There already have been a number of articles on these lectures (see this 2012 special issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy–subscription requ.), many by those involved in the translation project bringing out the lectures in English. Given the forum, I’ll concentrate on the limits of Derrida’s approach (he speaks of the death penalty almost wholly in terms of the theological-political, though of course its medicalization, which may be genealogically tied to the theo-political…

Une exposition-dossier à l’université Lille 3 en mars 2014
«Michel Foucault: auteur, lecteur, archiviste »

Exposition du 11 au 27 mars 2014
Hall d’exposition de la Bibliothèque universitaire centrale de Lille 3
de 8h30 à 20h du lundi au jeudi
de 8h30 à 19h le vendredi
et de 9h à 12h le samedi

Further info
Site à l’université Lille 3

Michel Foucault a été enseignant à la Faculté des lettres de Lille de 1952 à 1955. À l’occasion du soixantième anniversaire de sa venue à Lille, du trentième anniversaire de sa mort (1984) et dans le cadre des manifestations commémorant les 40 ans de l’ouverture du campus de Lille 3 à Villeneuve d’Ascq, une exposition est consacrée au philosophe, du 11 au 27 mars 2014. Présentée dans le hall de la Bibliothèque centrale, cette exposition-dossier privilégie le thème de Michel Foucault − « archéologue du savoir » − comme auteur…