Quentin Skinner in Newcastle

Posted on March 2, 2011 by stuartelden

Medieval and Early Modern Studies Keynote Lecture Series 

Quentin Skinner, ‘A Genealogy of Liberty’

University of Newcastle, UK, Tuesday 8th March, 5pm, Room G21/22 of the Devonshire Building

Abstract: Among contemporary political theorists, the idea of individual liberty is generally defined in negative terms as absence of interference.  This lecture argues that, if the concept is instead approached genealogically, this orthodoxy begins to appear in need of qualification and perhaps abandonment.  The genealogy traced in the lecture is shown to carry three specific implications, each of which is discussed in turn.  The first is that the concept of interference is of much greater complexity than is often allowed, and gives rise to a number of incommensurable theories of negative liberty.  The second is that it may be misleading to assume that liberty can be defined only in negative terms.  Finally, even if we accept that liberty is a negative concept, it remains unclear that negative liberty is best understood as absence of interference.

Posted in Conferences, Quentin Skinnner | 5 Comments

Mr Guttenberg resigns

Posted on March 2, 2011 by stuartelden

First he was stripped of his doctorate for plagiarism, now Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigns as German defence minister.

Posted in Politics, Universities | Leave a comment

E-book on Franco Moretti

Posted on March 1, 2011 by stuartelden

Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History is discussed in this new book, entitled Reading Graphs, Maps, and Trees: Responses to Franco Moretti, available as a free pdf and in other formats.

Graphs, Maps, Trees is a short, sharp book, that I found a really interesting challenge to standard ways that literature – but I think the history of ideas generally – could be studied. I’ve mentioned it to people who I thought were doing, or perhaps should be doing, similar things a couple of times and had completely blank looks. We tried to get a review done for Society and Space but it never materialised. A shame – it would be good for geographers to engage with what he is doing with mapping particularly. Here’s the blurb from the Verso website.

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of “distant reading” into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.

Moretti is also the author and editor of a range of other books, several with Verso, including Atlas of the European Novel. For a Verso author he seems to have a surprisingly low profile outside of his own discipline. Anyway, good to see his work discussed in what looks like an interesting book – in terms of content, form, and publishing model.


Posted in Franco Moretti, Publishing | Leave a comment

Blair-Giddens-LSE-Gaddafi

Posted on March 1, 2011 by stuartelden

I’d previously taken the Giddens defence of Gaddafi back in 2007 as largely connected to his ‘Third Way’ role and as an ‘intellectual’ backup to Blair’s embrace. But of course, Giddens was a previous director of the the LSE, also red-faced by recent allegations. Some of the dots have been linked up here and here. The first has some links to other discussions, including statements by LSE staff; the second sets things in a wider context.

Thanks to a reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) for the links.

Posted in Politics, Universities | Leave a comment

Fossils: Age, World, Relation

Posted on March 1, 2011 by stuartelden

This is the title of the talk I’ll be giving at ANU in four weeks time. The Humanities Research Centre theme for this year is ‘The World and World-Making in Humanities and the Arts’. The draft abstract follows:-

What do fossils have to do with the world? This talk tries to outline their importance in two registers. The first concerns debates on the implications of fossils for understanding the creation, and the age, of the world—from Aristotle to Leibniz, Voltaire and Chateaubriand. The second part of the talk takes up the challenge posed by Quentin Meillassoux in his book After Finitude. For Meillassoux, post-Kantian philosophy has been characterised by correlationism – that we have no access to the world except as it exists through our relation to it. Meillassoux articulates a radical problem with this: how to understand the problem of the arche-fossil, those radioactive traces that predate any life on earth. Correlationism is flawed, Meillassoux suggests, because arche-fossils show that there is a world of which we can have objective knowledge without there being any mediation between that and the observer. While the dating is meditated, the existence of these phenomena is not. Meillassoux suggests that correlationism, in all its variants, is a convenient way to avoid having to account for the world as it is, outside of human access. Meillassoux is problematic because he ends up returning to a mathematical foundation for the ontology of the world—based in large part on the work of Alain Badiou. But the arche-fossil poses a fundamental challenge to accounts of the world and its relations.

Posted in Conferences, Fossils, Gottfried Leibniz, Quentin Meillassoux, The Space of the World | 1 Comment

Gaddafi plagiarises Painter

Posted on February 28, 2011 by stuartelden

That Saif Gaddafi’s LSE doctoral thesis was plagiarised is slightly old news; but I’ve just been told that it included unattributed excerpts from a piece by my friend and colleague Joe Painter. Details here. There is also a wiki that attributes other sections here.

[Update: and apparently Oxford University Press were going to publish the thesis – so say the London Evening Standard. Thanks to Ben R for the link.]

Posted in Politics, Universities | Leave a comment

Libyan no-fly zone

Posted on February 28, 2011 by stuartelden

The idea of a no-fly zone in Libya has been discussed by various governments. It hasn’t yet been sanctioned by the UN security council. See resolution 1970 (2011) here. David Cameron has raised the idea more seriously now that UK citizens have been evacuated. BBC political editor Nick Robinson comments on this here.

A few thoughts: how does this square with UN claims “Reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”? Sovereignty of whom; independence of what? – the people, the state, the government? Territorial integrity of what? A no-fly zone would prevent Libya from exercising its sovereignty throughout the whole of its territory, and thereby compromise its territorial integrity. Not the latter in terms of its territorial preservation – I don’t think anyone is suggesting Libya’s borders be redrawn, and the national unity claim reinforces this – but certainly in terms of its territorial sovereignty.

Blair’s first military intervention when he was Prime Minister was to police, and then punish, Iraq over no-fly zones – this was Operation Desert Fox in 1998. It was of course followed by Kosovo in 1999; Sierra Leone; Afghanistan and Iraq. Although, as Robinson points out, Cameron’s military role has been the continuation of the Afghanistan war, this is perhaps an cautionary tale. One of the great problems of the Iraq war was the damage it caused to ideas of ‘humanitarian intervention’, and one of Blair’s greatest failings was his inability to work out where the line between that and neo-conservative arguments about ‘contingent sovereignty’ lay. I think most advocates of humanitarian intervention or the ‘responsibility to protect’ failed to articulate clearly what the differences were between those approaches, and as I’ve argued elsewhere, the logic of one was carried over into the other. This will inevitably complicate any intervention in Libya, however benign or worthy the intentions. Coupled with the colonial legacy in the region of two of the other countries discussing this – France and Italy – this is surely reason to tread very carefully. Given the UK and the West’s recent embrace of Libya – quite literally, see this picture of Blair and Gaddafi – because of a supposed turnaround in its attitude, but also because of trade, it looks terrible. And, perhaps more importantly, it risks taking away from the courage and achievement of the Libyan people themselves.

[Update: Lenin’s Tomb offers a critique of the notion of ‘humanitarian intervention in strong terms here]

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

ICA – Radical Publishing: What Are We Struggling For?

Posted on February 28, 2011 by stuartelden

In a related vein to the last post, Verso has the news of an event at the ICA in London on 19th March on protest and print.

Posted in Conferences, Politics | Leave a comment

Another e-book on student protests

Posted on February 28, 2011 by stuartelden

An und für sich notes two e-books on the student protests. I mentioned one of these before before, but not this one:

In a similar vein is the PDF version of the book Toward a Global Autonomous University produced by the trans-national collective Edu-Factory. Very much influenced by autonomous Marxist trends, the new thinking on what the politics of the common and thinkers like Hardt and Negri (Negri here provides a co-written conclusion), it is a provocative look at the current place of the university in capitalist society and the possibility of alternative formations. This book and their website, which includes reports from their very recent conference attended by education activists from across the world (including many UK occupations), are certainly worth a read.

Posted in Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Politics, Universities | Leave a comment

New journal; new book series

Posted on February 27, 2011 by stuartelden

Contributions to the History of Concepts – details here.

The journal serves as a platform for theoretical and methodological articles as well as empirical studies on the history of concepts and their social, political, and cultural contexts. It aims to promote the dialogue between the history of concepts and other disciplines, such as intellectual history, history of knowledge and science, linguistics, translation studies, history of political thought and discourse analysis.

Plus an announcement of a new book series – Punctum Books (via In the Middle)

The BABEL Working Group is excited to announce the launching of Punctum Books, a new open-access and print-on-demand book series, directed by Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) and Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY), that aims to promote radically creative modes of writing and inquiry across a whimsical para-humanities-assemblage. Spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion are encouraged. Vision statement, editorial board, forthcoming titles, and website currently under construction. Stay tuned.

Posted in Medieval Studies, Publishing | 1 Comment