World-Territory-Space

I’m leading a ‘masterclass’ workshop here at the ANU on 11 May (moved from an earlier date of 28 April), with the title of ‘World-Territory-Space’. I’m reluctant to call it a masterclass, but that’s how it’s being billed. Here’s the blurb:-

This workshop explores the interrelation of three spatial concepts – world, territory and space itself. Drawing on Stuart Elden’s earlier writings on these topics – on globalisation, the work of German philosopher Eugen Fink, debates about territory and the outline of a future book – the workshop will explore ways of thinking about these concepts. The overriding theme is that they cannot be defined in an absolute, unproblematic way, but are better approached through a series of questions that allow us to understand how they have been conceived in different times and places, and the effects these understandings have had.

The four pieces of pre-circulated reading are:-

Update – here’s the HRC webpage on this.

Posted in Conferences, Territory, The Space of the World | 1 Comment

Confronting the Global: Alternatives, Alterity, Solidarity

Call for Papers: Confronting the Global: Alternatives, Alterity, Solidarity

Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of

Warwick, 8th-9th September, 2011

Conference co-convened by the UK Political Studies Association’s Anarchist Studies Network, the BISA Poststructuralist Politics Working Group, the BISA International Political Economy Group and the BISA Marxism and International Relations Group.

Supported by: The Political Studies Association, the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, and the International Political Economy Group.

Plenary Roundtable:

Dr Gurminder Bhambra (Warwick), Dr Richard Day (Queens University, Ontario), Professor John Hobson (Sheffield), Dr Marysia Zalewski (Aberdeen)

The aim of this conference is to nourish intellectual affinities and build research synergies across a broad cross-section of critical approaches to ‘the global’. This conference follows from an ESRC supported conference on ‘Anarchism and World Politics’, held at the University of Bristol in June 2010, and the subsequent forum in Millennium: Journal of International Studies (39:2, 2010). Anarchist approaches to the global, characterised mainly by a desire for a radical, fuller democratic agency in world affairs and the eschewal of the state to this end, raise interesting questions about both how we conceive of agency in the international domain and how we conceptualise the global itself. Anarchists are not the only ones with answers to these questions, but they have hitherto been marginal to the debates. This conference seeks to build solidarities and to widen the terms of debate.

This conference will explore questions of the global from anarchist, Marxist, feminist, post-colonial, post-structuralist and other radical approaches to global politics. It seeks to bring together a wide range of scholars with the aim of exploring the affinities and differences between and within these approaches, and to consider the productive spaces for praxis which might be generated from intellectual engagement. We welcome scholars from international relations, sociology, philosophy, geography, anthropology and beyond, and we encourage contributions that reflect on questions such as: 

  • How should we understand the global?
  • What is internationalism in the 21st century?
  • How do commitments to localism intersect with a global focus?
  • What are the radical alternatives to statism at a global level?
  • Do totalising visions necessarily engender totalising polities?
  • What is the proper relationship between academic analysis and social movements?
  • How might we situate existing work on the intersections between anarchism and poststructuralism within the context of world politics?
  • What lessons can gendered approaches to world politics offer for other radical theories?
  • How have globalised resistance movements responded to changing forms of capitalism and hegemony?
  • How does a postcolonial imagination affect the nature and practice of solidarity?
  • How might we think the ethics of resistance within and beyond state forms?
  • What place do Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Butler and other poststructuralist theorists have for theorising resistance in the context of the international?
  • What relevance do Marxist theories of international relations have for anarchists, and vice versa?
  • How should anarchists approach dominant theories of anarchy in the international arena?

 The conference will take place across two days in September 2011, and will be hosted at the department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick. The conference is supported by the PSA Anarchist Studies Network (ASN), the BISA International Political Economy Group (IPEG) and the BISA Poststructural Politics Working Group (PPWG). It is funded by IPEG, the Central for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalism (CSGR) at the University of Warwick, and through the Political Studies Association specialist activities fund. Following the conference, the intention is to collect a selection of the best papers into an edited volume and we are actively seeking publishers.

Places for paper-givers will be strictly limited. Funding will be made available for paper-giving delegates, with further space provided for a number of non-presenting attendees. The conference organisers will arrange refreshments and lunch on both days, with a conference dinner for all registered attendees on the evening of the first day. Accommodation details will be provided and accommodation itself subsidised. A limited amount of travel funding will be made available, to be allocated on the basis of need. There will be a small registration fee, but substantial bursaries will also be available. 

Paper submission

We welcome paper, panel, roundtable and workshop proposals. Please send a 250 word abstract outlining the aims and scope of your proposal to Chris Rossdale (c.rossdale@warwick.ac.uk) by Monday May 2nd, 2011. Please ensure you include your name, contact details and a short academic biography (100 words) with your abstract. If you would like to be considered for a conference bursary, please indicate the amount you will need clearly.

For further information, please contact Chris Rossdale (c.rossdale@warwick.ac.uk) or Alex Prichard (w.a.prichard@lse.ac.uk).

Event organisers:

PSA Anarchist Studies Network (www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk)

Chris Rossdale, University of Warwick (c.rossdale@warwick.ac.uk)

Alex Prichard, LSE (w.a.prichard@lse.ac.uk)

BISA International Political Economy Working Group (http://www.bisa-ipeg.org/)

Stuart Shields, University of Manchester (Stuart.Shields@manchester.ac.uk)

Ian Bruff, (also Political Economy Network) University of Manchester(ianbruff@gmail.com)

BISA Poststructuralist Politics Working Group

Emily Jackson, Keele University (e.l.jackson@ilpj.keele.ac.uk)

Martin Coward, University of Newcastle (martin.coward@ncl.ac.uk)

BISA Marxism and International Relations Group

Rick Saull, Queen Mary, University of London (r.g.saull@qmul.ac.uk)

Alex Colas, Birkbeck, University of London (a.colas@bbk.ac.uk)

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A counter-history of liberalism

Verso have translated Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Foucault Effect 1991-2011

Over at Foucault News, Clare has the details of a very interesting conference coming up in London.

THE FOUCAULT EFFECT 1991-2011

A Conference at Birkbeck, University of London:

Date: Friday 3 – Saturday 4 June 2011
Venue: Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck

Participants: Fabienne Brion, Graham Burchell, Daniel Defert, Peter Fitzpatrick, Ben Golder, Colin Gordon, Patrick Hanafin, Bernard Harcourt, Peter Miller, Carolina Olarte, Giovanna Procacci, Paul Patton, Jonathan Simon.

More details here. It’s hard to think of another edited book, in areas I work in, that has had the same impact as The Foucault Effect. A great lineup, with many of the original contributors. Should be good.

Posted in Conferences, Michel Foucault | Leave a comment

Sloterdijk Now revisions submitted

The revisions to the manuscript of Sloterdijk Now, following comments from two referees and the series editor, have now been made. The book is back to the press. This has been a pretty quick turnaround – it was only submitted on 1 February (report here, along with links to brief discussions of all the chapters). It will appear in November this year. Thanks to the contributors for their chapters and revising them quickly.  The publisher’s site is still not very informative, but there are more details in their recent catalogues, such as the Philosophy one which takes this book’s cover for its own.

Before making the final revisions I was able to read the newly available English translation of Die Sonne und der Tod, Neither Sun nor Death. It’s a collection of interviews with Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, and a good read. It ranges pretty widely and is a good introduction to his work and its key themes, as they were in 2001 when the interviews were conducted. The backcover notes that the Spheres trilogy is indeed forthcoming with Semiotext(e). Neither Sun nor Death discusses the first two volumes of that in some detail, and has some discussion of the (then forthcoming) third volume.

Posted in Peter Sloterdijk | 4 Comments

AHRC – BS phase three

The petition hasn’t worked; nor have letters to the AHRC; so now Thom Brooks is mobilising for letters from professional societies and mass resignations from the AHRC peer review college. Details here.

Posted in Politics, Universities | Leave a comment

AAG supports Cronon

Resolution passed – details here.

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Miéville and Bryant

Interesting review of China Miéville’s The City and the City in The Boston Review (via Crooked Timber).

Levi Bryant discusses his next book project The Domestication of Humans: A Prolegomena to Posthumanist Sociology, here.

The link? Both touch on themes I expect to explore in my own next book, The Space of the World…

Posted in China Mieville, Levi Bryant, The Space of the World | 1 Comment

Not going to the AAG

As I’ve written in lots of personal emails recently, no, I’m not going to the AAG in Seattle. The main reason is that I wanted to make the most of Australia, which I am visiting for only the second time, rather than lose a chunk of time here to a place I go frequently. I have tended to enjoy the big conferences if I go maybe every other year. Last year’s AAG in Washington D.C. I enjoyed a lot; the previous one I went to (Boston 2008) I liked much less. I will probably miss interesting sessions, will definitely miss people, and am very sorry to miss seeing Pion and Ros Whitehead receive very much deserved awards. I plan to be at the New York one in 2012.

There have been relatively few posts on my own work recently, but rather lots of links and announcements. But I’ve been busy working on the overall contours of ‘The Space of the World’ project, planning a seminar on previous work on that theme here at the ANU later this month, and working on the final revisions of the Sloterdijk Now book.

Lots of reading alongside all of this, including Manuel deLanda’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History; some stuff on the idea of ‘fictional worlds’; more on fossils and beginning to think a bit about the next theme, which is ‘wound’. I also did a little more reading of early novels of the ‘lost world’ genre (see the earlier post on Verne and Conan Doyle), discovering James de Mille’s A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder (1860s; published 1888); and Vladimir Obruchev’s Sannikov Land (1924). Both interesting, light, reading. Also a couple of book manuscripts to review, some other review and evaluation work, and lots of Society and Space stuff.

Posted in Conferences, Fossils, Peter Sloterdijk, Society and Space, The Space of the World, Travel | Leave a comment

Procedures in search of content

A new, online, journal of philosophy has been founded (nearly). The Berlin Journal of Philosophy is “a blind-submission, double-blind, peer-reviewed, open-access journal”. Details here. ‘Blind submission’ means that even journal adminstrators don’t know who wrote the paper, unless accepted, and if it is rejected, never. We also hear that “the journal will aim to notify authors of a decision within four to eight months”. Many journals take that long, but few would admit that it is anything other than an unfortunate side-effect of recruiting willing referees, or those that say they will do it missing deadlines. Seems strange that if you are looking for willing referees to volunteer their services to the journal, who you then pay, that you give them a four month deadline to write the report. Part of the reason for that is the extremely strict, and detailed, anti-plagiarism policy.

These procedures have clearly had a lot of thought put into them. Whether the content follows is anyone’s guess. The journal is not yet even accepting submissions, and I’m not sure it ever will – it appears to be an elaborate answer to a procedural question the putative editor, Adrian Piper, set herself. You can read the announcement here on philos-list. The question, to put it simply, was how to deal with a case of alleged plagiarism in the case of a blind submission; essentially whether the two aspirations of rigorous anti-plagiarism and blind submission and review could be reconciled.

I previously posted some of my doubts about blind submission here; which is why the ultra blind submission policy – where even administrators do not know author identity – intrigued me. But I didn’t realise quite how deep the rabbit hole was going to go…

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