Why is Lefebvre sometimes Lefèbvre?

Posted on March 25, 2012 by stuartelden

I’ve just seen this again – where does the spelling Lefèbvre for Henri Lefebvre come from? I have all but three of his books in French, and it’s not on them. His biographer Rémi Hess doesn’t use it. Lefebvre himself didn’t sign his name that way. So why does it appear in English writing on Lefebvre? I’ve seen it more than a few times…

(On the signature front, when I was a PhD student, I found a copy of the Lefebvre and Guterman collection of Hegel’s writings dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre from Lefebvre. At the time I didn’t have €100… I suspect the price was more to do with Sartre than Lefebvre. The book on the left cost me about €7 some years later, so I don’t feel too bad.)

Posted in Henri Lefebvre, Jean-Paul Sartre | 4 Comments

Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power

Posted on March 24, 2012 by stuartelden

For the past several days I’ve been writing – and almost as importantly, working with the images for – my lecture for Kentucky. At the moment it looks like it will cover…

Area, Volume, Territory, Boundedness, the Volumetric, Political Technology, Nisha Shah, the Territorial Trap, Peter Sloterdijk, atmoterrorism, Eyal Weizman, the pre-1967 Israel-Jordan border,  the Museum on the Seam, the Israel-Lebanon border at Rosh Hanikra, Settlements, Walls, the Wall, area E1, Hebron, archaeology, Stephen Graham, Derek Gregory, Alison Williams, Peter Adey, Mark Whitehead, Ryan Bishop, Matthew Gandy, William Cronon, Splintering Urbanism, Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, The Function of the Oblique, bunker busting bombs, tunnels, fat, sewage, urban exploration, Bradley Garrett, the tunnels at Rosh Hanikra, the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, Michel Foucault, Paul Rebeyrolle, The Space of the World.

Posted in Boundaries, Conferences, Derek Gregory, Michel Foucault, Paul Virilio, Politics, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Space of the World | 5 Comments

Kentucky poster

Posted on March 23, 2012 by stuartelden

Nice poster for my talk in Kentucky next week – you can see the earlier ones for Michael Hardt and Russ Castronovo, and the series as a whole, here.

Posted in Conferences, Michael Hardt, The Space of the World | Leave a comment

materiali foucaultiani – first issue

Posted on March 23, 2012 by stuartelden

Italian journal materiali foucaultiani is now published. The issue has a theme section on ‘Geographies of power: space and heterotopias’. A pdf is available here; you can view it in issuu here. French and English texts are promised for the future. Thanks to Clare O’Farrell’s Foucault News blog for the link.

Posted in Michel Foucault, Publishing | Leave a comment

Oliver Belcher blog renamed

Posted on March 23, 2012 by stuartelden

You can find it here. A post explaining the name change, focus etc. is here. A brief excerpt:

In the spirit of Benjamin, I have decided to narrow the focus of this blog to the nexus between “nature,” science, technology, aesthetics, and war. Too often, war is interrogated through the lens of geopolitics, state relations, military history, and, of course, the existential framings popularized by Jünger’s writings in the 1930s, and which continue to the present day. The mystical qualities of “fate” and “heroism” occupy a central place in discussing war. Like Benjamin, I view these “passionate eulogies” as a dangerous aestheticization of politics.

This blog intends to do the opposite by focusing on the conditions of possibility for such fantasies and aesthetics within the U.S. military apparatus, and the far-out sci-fi imagination at work in certain branches, like DARPA — What I call, and have named this blog: Darpa Dreaming.

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Millennium conference – date correction

Posted on March 22, 2012 by stuartelden

Please note the date 20-21 October 2012 is correct – not as previously advertised.

Posted in Alberto Toscano, Conferences, John Protevi, William E Connolly | Leave a comment

Typology of Scholars

Posted on March 22, 2012 by stuartelden

Roland Boer’s Typology of Scholars – an informal series on the types of people you might meet or work with in a University, now has a page that gathers the entries to date.

Posted in Universities | Leave a comment

Neither Capitalism nor Communism, but Decolonization: An Interview with Walter Mignolo

Posted on March 22, 2012 by stuartelden

At Critical Legal Thinking

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Alex Hartley and Tim Cresswell – Nowhere Island

Posted on March 21, 2012 by stuartelden
Alex Hartley in Conversation with Tim Cresswell

Alex Hartley, These Days Can’t Last Forever, 2011

The artist behind Nowhereisland, Alex Hartley, is in conversation with Tim Cresswell, at the ICA, London, on Friday 23 March. Details here.

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Greenblatt on Shakespeare and Absolutism

Posted on March 20, 2012 by stuartelden

What is striking is that his work, alert to every human fantasy and longing, is allergic to the absolutist strain so prevalent in his world, from the metaphysical to the mundane. His kings repeatedly discover the constraints within which they must function if they hope to survive. His generals draw lines on maps and issue peremptory commands, only to find that the reality on the ground defies their designs. So too his proud churchmen are mocked for pretensions, while religious visionaries, who claim to be in direct communication with the divine, are exposed as frauds.

Above all, perhaps, it is Shakespeare’s lovers who encounter again and again the boundaries that society or nature sets to the most exalted and seemingly unconfined passions.

Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare’s Freedom, p. 3.
Posted in Stephen Greenblatt, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment