Peter Ludlow has written an analysis of Assange, available through the Leiter Reports blog:
I’ve organized my summary of his position into three parts. First, I’ll look at his view of what conspiracies are and how they are formed. Second, I’ll examine his views about why conspiracies are necessarily harmful. Third, I’ll turn to his reason for thinking that leaks are optimal weapons for the dismantling of conspiracies…
More books received recently…
Jeppe Strandsbjerg, Territory, Globalisation and International Relations: The Cartographic Reality of Space – I wrote an endorsement for this, and it’s good to see it out. Needless to say it is highly recommended.
Nathan Widder, Reflections on Time and Politics – I need to write a short piece on this for the Political Studies Review. Looks interesting.
Michael della Rocca, Spinoza and Nicholas Jolley, Leibniz – recompense for review work
Political Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche – I missed this when it first came out. There are some non-obvious texts in here, which are not in modern English translations. It appears they are using the translations from the very early collected works of Nietzsche in English, with modifications. They don’t appear to be using the Kaufmann or Hollingdale versions.
Harm de Blij, The Power of Place – promotional copy from the publisher
Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty – good to now have a copy of this
Enrique Dussel, Twenty Theses on Politics – after seeing him at the RPA I’m interested to read some of his work
And a clutch of new/newish Heidegger translations – I’ve not been keeping up on these since I finished Speaking Against Number, so they include Being and Truth, Introduction to Phenomenological Research, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, Country Path Conversations, Logic: The Question of Truth, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy and Phenomenology of Intuition and Expression.
Speaking of Connolly, he is the keynote speaker at this conference – I spoke at the one earlier this yearand it’s highly recommended as an interesting intellectual space.
The 9th Aberystwyth-Lancaster Graduate Colloquium
2nd- 4th June 2011
Department of International Politics
Aberystwyth University
Proudly hosted by the Critical and Cultural Politics Research Group, ALGC aims to bring together students who are engaged in research inspired by the broadly drawn and overlapping approaches of post-structural, postcolonial and cultural politics.
Post-colonialism * Critical Third World Studies *Feminism *Gender Studies * Queer Theory *Subjectivity * Identity *Psychoanalytic Approaches * Discourse Analysis * Citizenship * Migration *Diaspora * Environmentalism * Ecology * The Post-human * Critical Legal Studies * Critical Humanitarianism and Human Rights *Spatiality * Territory * Bordering Practices * Power, Domination and Resistance * Political Violence, Militarization, and Protest * Ethics * Memory * Trauma * Governmentality * Sovereign Power *Biopolitics *Anti-politics * Depoliticisation * Technologisation * Political Significance of Film, Image, Drama and Performance Art
**Keynote Speaker**
Professor William E. Connolly
John Hopkins University
“Steps Toward an Ecology of Late Capitalism”
To submit a paper for the 9th ALGC, send an abstract of 150-200 words maximum by 5pm on Friday 28th January 2011. Please send all abstracts and/or enquiries to Gillian McFadyen, ALGC Organiser (gmm09@aber.ac.uk).
An exciting looking new book by William E. Connolly, A World of Becoming, is forthcoming, apparently this month. Full details here, but here’s the description.
In A World of Becoming William E. Connolly outlines a political philosophy suited to a world whose powers of creative evolution include and exceed the human estate. This is a world composed of multiple, interacting systems, including those of climate change, biological evolution, economic practices, and geological formations. Such open systems, set on different temporal registers of stability and instability, periodically resonate together to secrete profound, unpredictable changes. To engage such a world reflectively is to feel pressure to alter established practices of politics, ethics, and spirituality. In pursuing such a course, Connolly draws inspiration from philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alfred North Whitehead, and Gilles Deleuze, as well as the complexity theorist of biology Stuart Kauffman and the theologian Catherine Keller.
Attunement to a world of becoming, Connolly argues, may also help us address dangerous resonances between global finance capital, cross-regional religious resentments, neoconservative ideology, and the 24-hour mass media. Coming to terms with subliminal changes in the contemporary experience of time that challenge traditional images can help us grasp how these movements have arisen and perhaps even inspire creative counter-movements. The book closes with the chapter “The Theorist and the Seer,” in which Connolly draws insights from early Greek ideas of the Seer and a Jerry Lewis film, The Nutty Professor, to inform the theory enterprise today.
I’ve just finished reading the manuscript of Scott Kirsch & Colin Flint (eds.), Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies forthcoming with Ashgate in 2011. I was asked to write an endorsement which I was pleased to do. It has a number of great contributors including the editors, James Tyner, Rachel Woodward, Jennifer Hyndman, Trevor Barnes and Jeremy Crampton, and Don Mitchell.
Reconstructing Conflict is a powerful examination of the violence that remains in place after the bombs have stopped falling or the guns have been silenced. What makes the book work so well is that the detailed empirical studies always have broader questions in mind while remaining faithful to the particularity of sites.
Speculations, a journal for speculative realist thought, invites submissions for its second volume.
Given the intrinsically open and unconstrained nature of the arena for speculative thought which Speculations aims at embodying — and in view of the favourable reception of the inaugural issue — our aim in the second volume is to broaden the range and ambition of the journal. In accordance with speculative realism’s mandate to open philosophy to the richness of reality, we particularly encourage scholars to engage with speculative realism from disciplines beyond philosophy. We therefore welcome papers discussing speculative realism’s renewed philosophical concern with the non-human world from a wide array of disciplines.
Speculations is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal that hopes to provide a forum for the exploration of speculative realism and post-continental philosophy. Our aim is to facilitate discussion about ongoing developments within and around speculative realism. We accept short position papers, full length articles and book reviews. Potential authors should make sure to go through the ‘Submission Checklist’ before submitting which can be found at: http://speculationsjournal.org
Articles should be no longer than 8,000 words and follow the Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).
The deadline for submission is the 8th of January 2011. Submissions can be sent to speculationsjournal@gmail.com
Editors: Paul J. Ennis; Michael Austin; Fabio Gironi; Thomas Gokey
Thom Brooks offers some advice on how to referee here. It is a followup to his earlier guidelines for graduate students on publishing (here). Lots of really helpful suggestions – tell your students!
One of the things about being away is the mountain of post to deal with on my return.
These are the books received while away… some were bought, some were gifts, some were payment for reviews
Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos
Andrew Mitchell, Heidegger Among the Sculptors: Body, Space, and the Art of Dwelling
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time – the Dennis Schmidt revision of the Stambaugh translation
Dominique Janicaud, Powers of Rational – after Peter Gratton recommended it at the RPA (had to get this second hand)
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, L’esprit du nihilisme: Une ontologique de l’Histoire
Daniel Heller-Roazen – The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations
Franco Farinelli, De la raison cartographique – thanks Pasquale!
Claudine Cohen, The Fate of the Mammoth
Benjamin Hoys, The Persistence of the Negative – recompense for a report on a book series for Edinburgh UP
Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond; Elliott, Contemporary Social Theory; Staeheli & Mitchell, The People’s Property; Graham (ed.), Disrupted Cities ; Woods, Rural – all recompense for review work. The last is in an interesting series and has some good titles. I particularly enjoyed John Wylie’s Landscape.
It’s pretty clear to me, looking at this list, that mentally I’m already moving onto the next project…
Alain Badiou – new translation of his book Five Lessons on Wagner is out with Verso. Also has an afterward by Slavoj Žižek.
You can download Verso’s translation of Wu Ming’s most recent book, Manituana, free here.
