Neither Sun nor Death – the volume of interviews with Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs –
still doesn’t appear to be out, despite being scheduled for November. The title comes from the claim that neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye.
There is a brief review of the book on the basis of the proofs, here.
[Update: the book is now out]
Conference session organised by Paul Harrison (paul.harrison@durham.ac.uk) and John Wylie – reposted from crit-geog-forum
Paper Session at the 4th Nordic Geographers Meeting
“Geographical Knowledge, Nature and Practice”
ENSPAC, Roskilde University, Denmark. 24.–27. May 2011Human Remains: the place of the human in a post-human world.
What remains of the human in a post-human world? Specifically, this session asks: what remains of the human in contemporary geography, after successive waves of anti- and post-humanist thinking? What has been lost and what, if anything, is worth saving? Is it possible or indeed desirable to offer a defence of ‘the human’? Or have critiques of humanist thinking not gone far enough, the figure of the modern human subject being irreconcilably bound to mechanisms of domination and the politics of exclusion?
In human geography in particular, beyond well-established debates on Marxism and humanism, structure and agency, the past decade has witnessed the establishment of strong research agendas and conceptual claims concerning avowedly non-human, more-than-human and post-human geographies. More pragmatically we have seen both institutional shifts and influential calls in which geography is understood and positioned, once again, within a more unified environmental or natural science context. And we might even ask, what will remain of the humanities as we move, in several countries, into a more nakedly marketised higher education system?
On a conceptual level, from Freud’s suspicions and Marx’s materialism at the start of the twentieth century, to Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the Enlightenment, and Foucault’s and Barthes’ death of the author, and onto the emergence of Actor-Network Theory, Non-Representational Theories and a renewed Vitalism, at the centuries’ end, not to mention the strong anti-humanisms of recent Speculative Realist writing, the figure of the human has been subject to de-centring and displacement, dethroning and flattening; its outline fading; its gestures magnetised and its consciousness little more than a synaptic symptom.
Perhaps now it is time to move on, to find different ways of framing and thinking about (and organising and cultivating) subjectivity, sociality, politics and responsibility? This is a consciously wide-ranging and open call. This session thus invites paper which reflect on the fate, figure and place of the human in the contemporary Humanities, Social Sciences and Human Geography, on topics such as, but not limited to:
- The subject and power
- Agency and creativity
- Alterity, ethics and care
- Human rights
- Techniques of the self
- Affective and emotional geographies
- Anomie and alienation
- Land, life and subjectivity
- Geographies/biographies
- Testimony and mourning
- Loss, erasure, traces
If you wish to participate in this session (or ‘track’ as they call it), you will need to submit an abstract (max. 300 words) through the conference website before 15th December 2010:
http://ruconf.ruc.dk/index.php/ngm/ngm2011/about/submissions
A generous post commenting on Terror and Territory, by Devin Shaw, can be found here. Very generous: it claims that my account of sovereignty is “more nuanced than Agamben’s”; and that for a take on the rhetoric of the neo-cons, it comes better from me “than Bob Woodward”. As Peter Gratton points out here, that’s something of an in-joke for those of us who endured one of the keynotes at the RPA, but no less kind for that (for Devin and Peter’s earlier takes on the RPA, see here and here). Devin wants to push my argument a bit further to take fuller account of the economic aspects. I don’t doubt that this can, and should, be done: as I tried to make clear in the introduction to the book, I saw my analysis as an attempt to complement the work already done by people like David Harvey, Giovanni Arrighi, and Neil Smith who had already shown these kinds of issues. On that aspect I felt I had little to add; on the question of territory I thought I had something to say.
He also offers an interesting suggestion that people might want to begin with chapter five which would provide a historical background. Of course authors are not in control of how people read their work, and though I try to make my books work as books, rather than as collections of pieces, it’s interesting to think about different orderings. I’d seen the arrangement as going through four relatively contemporary settings and then broadening the temporal span of the argument, but I can completely appreciate the different way of reading.
The reactions to Terror and Territory have been overwhelmingly positive. A more critical take can be found in this review in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research by Oskar Verkaaik, which I first saw yesterday. Much of the focus is on what I say in chapter two, with the claim that “Elden convinces as long as he writes about the war on terror… When Elden writes on terror itself, his analysis becomes much weaker.”
I don’t follow the logic of some of the arguments being made here, and don’t recognise some of the descriptions of mine, though it is a strong defence of the work of people like Faisal Devji who I use, and criticise, in the book. But I’d certainly not describe people like Devji or Olivier Roy as my “adversaries”, which is far too strong a term.
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!
