Robin Celikates (Humanities Department, Philosophy and Public Affairs Group, University of Amsterdam), will give a lecture titled:
“Epistemic Injustice, Looping Effects, and Ideology Critique”
How should we think about and criticize ideology today? In this talk, Professor Robin Celikates will first sketch three challenges— normative, methodological and explanatory—any critical theory of society has to face if it seeks to retain the concept of ideology. In a second step, he will discuss prominent recent suggestions about how to conceptualize ideology (especially in the work of Miranda Fricker, Sally Haslanger, and Jason Stanley). While providing partial answers to these challenges, as he will show, these approaches exhibit common shortcomings that make it necessary to introduce a more social-theoretical account of the structural dimension of ideology. In the final section, he will outline an understanding of ideology critique as second-order critique that acknowledges the structural dimension of ideology and is able to address the three challenges.
Sponsored by the New School for Social Research
Hannah Arendt and Rainer Schürmann Symposium in Political Philosophy Capitalism, Feminism, and Social Transformation,
Speakers:
Tithi Bhattacharya,
Sara Farris,
Kevin Floyd,
Dayo Gore,
Johanna Oksala,
Laurie Penny,
Miriam Ticktin,
Kathi Weeks
[see the linked poster on the department webpage where it says: View this semester’s departmental lecture series.]
Paul Kottman, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, gives a lecture entitled “Love as Human Freedom”.
Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, or as a reflection of reigning ideologies, this lecture presents love as a practice that changes over time, through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. Drawing on Hegel, via interpretations of literary works, Kottman argues that love generates and explains expanded possibilities for freely lived lives, and is a fundamental way that we make sense of temporal change, especially the inevitability of death and the propagation of life.
About the speaker:
Paul Kottman is the author of Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), A Politics of the Scene (Stanford University Press, 2008) and is the editor of Philosophers on Shakespeare (Stanford University Press, 2009), and The Insistence of Art: Aesthetic Philosophy and Early Modernity (Fordham UP, forthcoming). His next book is tentatively entitled Love as Human Freedom. He is also the editor of a new book series at Stanford University Press, called Square One: First-Order Questions in the Humanities.
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.
Abstract || Traditionally privacy is valued for protecting individual freedom and autonomy. Such concepts of privacy and the underlying idea of autonomy have drawn criticism from various quarters. Feminist thinkers and critical theorists have advanced such criticism on normative grounds. In the recent years, they have been joined by arguments on a pragmatic level, which show that such concepts of privacy no longer can orient life in a world permeated with new threats to privacy, in particular due to the development of information technology. In consequence, many theories have reconstructed concepts privacy in light of this criticism, often by invoking more relational concepts of autonomy. The talk proposes a different approach. Using a more socially situated concept of the subject, which is derived from Hannah Arendt’s thought, it shows that privacy plays a more fundamental value for the constitution of subjectivity, beyond autonomy.
Presented by The New School for Social Research
Tobias Matzner works in political philosophy and philosophy of technology. He is a visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research, and a member of the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities in Tübingen, Germany.
The concept of invisibility is powerful, pervasive, and multifaceted. It is paradoxically double-edged, affording the possibility of great power as well as the complete absence of power. It is both magical and a spur to scientific experimentation and exploration. It is a central concept in science—whether as something to be achieved or overcome. It is evident in the development of technologies that allow us to find new evidence of the invisibly small (e.g. the Large Hadron Collider revealing the Higgs boson) and the invisibly far-away (a new planet in the solar system); conversely, it is also evident in devices that allow us to render objects invisible, devices that may have implications for warfare and for medicine.
In addition, invisibility is present in the social sciences, as evidenced most clearly by the economic concept of the “invisible hand” and by the troubling phenomenon of social invisibility, which affects large groups of people who are ignored, underrepresented and under-served by the dominant culture. But that is not all. The concept of invisibility has also played a central role in the thinking of many philosophers, literary figures, and in theological thinking.
Thus this conference is designed to explore the multitude of ways in which invisibility figures in our intellectual and social lives, as a thread running through our human endeavors, and the ways in which the power of invisibility can lead to a quest for understanding as well as render us altogether disenfranchised. The first three sessions will address the concept of invisibility in different fields, and the concluding session will bring together experts from various fields who will seek to underscore the shared aspects of invisibility that account for the important role it has played in our lives and in our thinking in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Each session will include a Q&A in which panelists can address questions to each other and audience members can address their questions directly to speakers.
This conference will offer a unique opportunity for experts to reach across fields to better understand their own explorations of invisibility, through discussion with others, and with the public.
This conference is made possible with generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
This event is part of the Nth Degree Series with the The New School.
————–
Session of note:
3:00 – 5:30 PM
Location: Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, 55 W. 13th St, NY, NY
SESSION 2: Invisibility in Cultural Context
This session examines invisibility in the context of the humanities, economics, and philosophy. Discussion will range over the philosophical explanatory power of invisibility, e.g. Kant’s noumenon or Plato’s eidos; its role in economic theory, e.g. “the invisible hand”, its place in literature, e.g Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and in mythology, e.g. the Ring of Gyges
Adam Bradley, Associate Professor of English, University of Colorado, Boulder
Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Mark Johnston, Walt Cerf Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
William Milberg, Dean of the New School for Social Research, The New School
Moderator: Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, The New School
In this paper I draw attention to Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 distinction between negative and positive right, which, upon examination, prefigures the famous distinction between positive and negative liberty. I analyse her treatment, and I argue that she should be accorded a significant place in the discussions of the tradition(s) of reflection on the famous distinction.
First, I frame my discussion by revisiting Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture and a recent editorial by Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver; I note the presence of a paternal liberal tradition going back to Constant which gets invoked alongside the famous distinction between the two concepts of liberty. Insofar as a tradition can be conceived as a lineage or an offspring, it is striking that the matriarchs are absent from it.
Second, I discuss De Grouchy’s neo-Lockean analyses of justice and property rights, which form the context in which she introduces her distinction between positive and negative right. I illuminate her views by way of comparison with the writings of Rousseau and Adam Smith.
Third, I offer evidence and analysis of De Grouchy’s version of the distinction and show how it can be mapped onto the more famous distinction. Fourth, I close by arguing that if there is a liberal tradition worth reviving and extending, De Grouchy ought to have an honoured place in it.
Eric Schliesser (PhD, Philosophy, The University of Chicago 2002) is Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He publishes widely on early modern philosophy (especially Spinoza and Hume) and science (including political economy, especially Newton and Smith), philosophy economics, the history of feminism, and so-called meta-philosophy. He has just published Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker (OUP) and edited numerous volumes, including most recently Sympathy: A History of a Concept and Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy (both with OUP).
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
This talk focuses on two concepts that are central to discussions of minority politics and social justice: intersectionality and the epistemic privilege of the oppressed. Both concepts are often misunderstood as leading to separatism and essentialism, but this paper shows why they should be seen instead as crucial components of an adequate social theory and a cogent theory of social identity, theories that can be the basis of a progressive politics of coalition and solidarity.
Satya P. Mohanty was born in Orissa, India, and was educated in India and the United States. His work in literary criticism and theory has focused on issues that are shaped by his bi-cultural background and his commitment to a vision of culture as “a field of moral inquiry” (on this view of culture, see chapter 7 of Literary Theory and the Claims of History). In the field of literary and cultural theory, Mohanty is best known for his “post-positivist realist” theory, a position that is simultaneously a critique of postmodernist theory and an elaboration of a radical alternative to it. Postpositivist realism draws on recent analytic philosophy and has major implications for such key theoretical questions as the nature of social identity, the value of objectivity as an epistemic goal, and the epistemic status of our moral and political values. Mohanty’s theory of identity has been the subject of a major book published by the U of California Press, a collection of essays by literary scholars, intellectual historians, and philosophers that is titled Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia).
Mohanty has edited or coedited the following books: Colonialism, Modernity, Literature: A View From India; Identity Politics Reconsidered; The Future of Diversity; and the forthcoming China, India and Alternative Asian Modernities. He is completing a book titled Thinking Across Cultures, to be published by Duke Univ Press.
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
Kant tried to explain how free moral action was possible. Unfortunately, he is often interpreted as explaining free choice of action in terms of the unexplained free choice of a Gesinnung by a faculty of choice. By avoiding this mistake, we can see him as offering an informative decomposition of the task of free or moral action. Further, one of Kant’s reasons for thinking that morality could not be explained by science depended on his assumptions about then current science. Since we can now reject that view of science, it is now possible to give a plausible scientific account, and so metaphysics, for Kant’s plausible account of the necessary conditions for free or moral action.
Patricia Kitcher is Roberta and William Campbell Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is the author of two books on Kant’s conceptions of cognition and the self, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (Oxford University Press, 1990) and Kant’s Thinker (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
Many academics work on issues of social justice, and in this politically tumultuous moment, we want to ask: What is our social responsibility as academics? What does it mean to assume this responsibility?
In response to the untimely suspension of all Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature programs at Stony Brook University, the final graduate conference (co-sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy, NSSR) will be an interdisciplinary event where we aim to confront the limitations of our position as academics and conceive possibilities for moving beyond those limitations.
Schedule
9:45–10:15 Participant Registration/ Coffee & Bagels
10:15–10:30 Opening Remarks
10:30–12:00 Panel 1: Humanities & Political Insight
10:30–11:00 Amy Cook (Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English, Stony Brook University): “Disciplinary Futures and the Political Impact of Counter Casting”
11:00–11:30 Jack Wilson (PhD Student History, UCLA): “The View from the Waste Land: Poetry as Anti-Totalitarian Critique in Postwar Japan and Beyond”
11:30–12:00 Sabrina Tremblay-Huet (LLD Student Université de Sherbrooke, Visiting Research Fellow Fordham School of Law): “Human Rights and the Trap of Speaking for Others: Law in Literature as a Better Source of Resistance Discourse?”
12:00–1:30 Lunch Break
1:30–2:30 Panel 2: Institutional Critique
1:30–2:00 Jonathan Rawski (PhD Student Linguistics, Stony Brook University): “Pirates and Emperors: On Publishers, Journalists, and Academic Elites”
2:00–2:30 Forrest Deacon (PhD Student, Politics, The New School for Social Research): “Foucault’s Clinic and the Academy: Systems of Truth, Intelligibility, and Repetition”
2:30–2:45 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
2:45–3:45 Panel 3: The Praxis of Academics
2:45–3:15 Andrew Dobbyn (PhD Student Philosophy, Stony Brook): “Praxis Makes Perfect: Why Politics Isn’t like Riding a Bike”
3:15–3:45 Laura Pérez (Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Cornell University Society for the Humanities): “The Objects of Philosophical Inquiry as Public Entities”
3:45–4:00 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
4:00–5:00 Keynote: Professor Patrice Nganang (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, Visiting Professor Princeton University): Title TBA
5:00–5:15 Closing Remarks
5:15–6:30 Reception (wine and refreshments)
Presented by The New School for Social Research.
The New School for Social Research Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy
Discourse concerning the role of bridges and walls has become commonplace in our contemporary political scene. Xenophobic, racist, and nationalistic calls for the building of walls are opposed by calls to construct bridges by those seeking to form coalitions of solidarity and resistance. An example of this is given by the way in which colonialism/imperialism has repeatedly used ‘bridges’ as Trojan horses of sorts, by means of which distances were lessened and inequality worsened. Thus, this conference wishes to explore the normative consequences of the ubiquitous discourse of epistemic and geographic stratification by interrogating the way in which this metaphor is used—implicitly and explicitly—within philosophy, to the extent that the latter, as a frame of epistemological and experiential articulation, also builds its own bridges and walls.
It is with this in mind that at this year’s NSSR Graduate Student Philosophy conference we wish to provide a platform for a very particular kind of ‘philosophical investigation’ in which a vast range of approaches concerning the significance and use of spatial metaphors within philosophical debates could take place. Such an investigation of margins, bridges, walls, localization and beyond should be undertaken in a manner that makes room for ontological, ethical, epistemological, phenomenological, political and psychoanalytic discourses. To this end, we encourage full liberty and creativity with how this topic could be approached. This is because we conceive this investigation as an open, interdisciplinary kind of quest whose aim will be to rethink the way in which we conceive of boundaries, gaps, stages and common spaces for the purpose of interrogating the tensions underpinning our current political discourse, while also showing the ways in which these affect the way in which we conceive of Philosophy.
Possible Topics (This list is in no way exhaustive):
- Walls and Bridges as Philosophical Metaphor
- Migration and (In)Justice
- Decolonial Theory and the Use of Walls/Bridges
- The role of Bridges and Walls in the construction of Imagined communities
- Walls/Bridges and Political Membership
- Walls and Solidarity
- Walls/Bridges and Globalization
- Social Epistemology and Imagined Walls
- Persuasion as an Epistemological Bridge
- Political Topologies and the Role of Walls/Bridges
- Privacy, Space and the Political
- Walls/Bridges and Human Rights
- Administrative Violence
- Philosophical Topologies/Political Topologies
- Space and Violence
- Localized Violence
- Violence in Bodies
- Bridges/Walls and Cross-cultural Discourse
- Digital divisions and Digital Connections
- Technology and Changing Spatial Relations
Please submit complete papers by December 20th in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to NewSchoolOnBridgesAndWallsConf@gmail.com
Include your name, institution, and degree-program in the body of the message.
Deadline:
December 20th 2017
Word Limit: 3500