Spring Term: Session 3

Examined Life

DVD Screening

6pm, Wednesday 15th February

Senate House,

*** Room G35 (please note room change) ***

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

—Socrates

Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets...

In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.

Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West—perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual—compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy’s power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.

Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor.

All are welcome to attend.

Spring Term: Session 1

Edward Said: The Last Interview

DVD screening

6pm, Wednesday 18 January

Senate House, room 261

Filmed within three days in 2002, just one year before his death at the age of 67, Edward Said: The Last Interview is a compelling portrait of a man who was not only a strong advocate of the Palestinian cause, but an accomplished teacher, literary critic, writer and musician. After living for more than ten years with a fatal strain of leukemia, which he was diagnosed with in 1991, Said refused interviews.

However, former student D.D. Guttenplan along with director Mike Dibb convinced him otherwise. This no-frills documentary does not include archival footage to contextualize the speaker and his life; it simply records the casual conversation between Said and British journalist Charles Glass that weaves in and out of Said’s childhood, writing, life as an academic, involvement with Yasser Arafat, and his strong opinions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (electronicintifada.net)

All welcome.

Session 2: Speaker: Professor Derek Attridge (Monday 14th February)

'What Does it Make You Feel?: Responding Affectively to Literature'

Professor Derek Attridge
(University of York)

Monday 14th February, 3-5pm Senate House, room 103 (1st floor)

Derek Attridge has published many influential books on literature and theory, most recently The Singularity of Literature (Routledge, 2004), How to Read Joyce (Granta Books, 2007), and Reading and Responsibility: Deconstruction's Traces (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), as well as the forthcoming co-edited volume Theory After 'Theory' (with Jane Elliot, Routledge, 2010). His interests centre on the language of literature, but radiate in many different directions. Much of his work reflects his long association with the philosopher Jacques Derrida, a selection of whose work he has edited. In The Singularity of Literature, he raises the question of the distinctiveness of literature as a linguistic and social practice, and argues that a crucial element is the response to otherness that characterises both the writing of an inventive literary work and the reading of it as literature. This book is also informed by recent developments in ethics arising from the writings of Emmanuel Levinas. In September 2006 he won an ESSE Book Award for this work.


This session should appeal broadly to students of literature, as well as those from other disciplines with an interest in critical theory.

All are welcome to attend. We hope to see you there!

Spring Term, Session 1: Posthumanism (Monday 31st January)

Where does the 'human' end and the 'non-human' begin? Have we entered a 'posthuman' age, or were we ever really 'human' in the first place? What implications can a questioning of the 'human' have for gender, race, age, disability and ethics?

The general theme for this term's Literary and Critical Theory Seminars is 'The Idea of the Human', and our first session will be on the topic of 'posthumanism'. It will take place from 6-8pm on Monday 31st January in Senate House, room 103 (1st Floor). The readings are as follows:

• Donna Haraway - 'A Cyborg Manifesto', in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
  

• N. Katherine Hayles - 'Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere', in Theory, Culture & Society, 2006 vol. 23: 159-166.
  

The session will begin with a paper by Louise LePage (PhD candidate and Visiting Lecturer in Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London). Louise's project aims to critically explore the identity and form of ‘the human’ in its representations as dramatic characters via an interrogation of its traditional borders with animals, machines, and the nonphysical (mind, ghosts, etc.). Her study adopts Donna Haraway’s cyborg as a trope to open up a posthumanist way of seeing and approaching identity, which re-constitutes the self as composed of multiple parts - natural and cultural - that extend beyond the borders of the skin to formulate an inherently provisional and protean identity and entity.

All are welcome to attend.

'Derrida' DVD Screening (Monday 10th January)

The Literary and Critical Theory Seminar is beginning the Spring term with a DVD screening of Derrida (2002, directors: Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman).

The screening will take place on Monday 10th January in Senate House, room G34, from 6-8pm. All are welcome to come along!

Here are some details on the film:

"This award-winning documentary gives an intimate portrait of the brilliant, controversial philosopher and intellectual French icon Jacques Derrida, whose theory of deconstruction has deeply influenced the studies of literature, philosophy, ethics, architecture and law, indelibly marking the intellectual landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries.

"Combining extremely rare private footage of Derrida with his reflections on violence, love and death, the film also investigates the concept of biography, exploring the relationship between the public and the private. Provocative, potent and entertaining, Derrida marks an inspired collaboration between philosophy scholar Amy Ziering Kofman and filmmaker Kirby Dick, the director of Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. The mesmerising score is courtesy of Ryuchi Sakamoto (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Gohatto)."

Hope to see you there!