Ontology and Politics Workshop CFP

*MANCHESTER Workshops in Political Theory 2011 -

31 August - 2 September 2011

Call for Papers - Ontology and Politics Workshop

Convenors: Paul Rekret (Queen Mary), Simon Choat (Kingston), Clayton Chin (Queen Mary)

*Despite its pervasiveness, the question of the relation between ontology and politics continues to be a crucial one for Continental philosophy. While the place and status of the question of being in the realm of the political has occupied much of social theory in the past twenty or thirty years, we remain no closer to drawing any common ground on these themes. Post-structuralist or post-foundational political thought has insisted on the inherent contingency of any political ontology and has, from this notion, sought to draw out a framework for an emancipatory politics groundedin the concepts of difference and otherness.

However, such a stance finds itself increasingly challenged today. On the one hand, thinkers such as Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere call for the need to think a politics grounded in a conception of universality rather than alterity, while on the other hand, so-called speculative realism more fundamentally challenges the very notion of ontology as it has been conceived by the majority of Continental thinkers in recent decades.

This panel aims to explore the intersections of politics and ontology and the resulting implications for thinking both the political and the philosophical.

We invite papers addressing the following and any other related themes:-

• 
  
  Is there a place for reflection on ontology in the theorisation and study of politics?


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  Is there a necessary transitivity between the ontological and the political? How should this relation be conceived?


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  Is there a necessarily leftist or emancipatory ontology?


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  Should the politics which has generally been thought to follow from post-foundational or post-structuralist ontologies be re-evaluated in light of recent critiques?


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  Does a new and different relation between ontology and politics follow from recent speculative materialist ontologies?

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (or a full paper to Dr Paul Rekret or Dr Simon Choat by 15 June 2011.

For more information on the conference

Can Art and Politics be Thought?

The UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory and the Hammer Museum present a conference on June 4 & 5, 2011 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles:

Can Art and Politics Be Thought? Practices, Possibilities, Pitfalls

Curated by Kenneth Reinhard and Drew Daniel

Featuring talks by

Alain Badiou (Being and Event, Logics of Worlds)

Matthew Barney (Cremaster, Drawing Restraint)

Lauren Berlant (The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship)

Joshua Clover (1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About, Madonna Anno Domini: Poems)

Joan Copjec (Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists, Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation)

Drew Daniel (Throbbing Gristle's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats, A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure [Matmos])

Steve Goodman (Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, Black Sun [Kode9])

Allan Sekula (Performance under Working Conditions, Polonia And Other Fables)

And featuring performances by Ultra-Red, Kode9, and Matmos (June 4)

And a reading of scenes from two plays by Alain Badiou, Incident at Antioch and Ahmed the Philosopher (June 5)

For more information

ALL HAMMER PUBLIC PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Tickets are required, and are available at the Billy Wilder Theater Box Office one hour prior to start time. Limit one ticket per person on a first come, first served basis. Hammer members receive priority seating, subject to availability. Reservations not accepted, RSVPs not required.