Mute Launch event - 9 December

Further details here

9 December 2010

Speculative Aesthetics / Drifting Seminar

This seminar is running at Duke on 'speculative aesthetics', and usefully has some of the text available should you wish to engage from afar. I'd quite like to have been included in the reading for accelerationism... oh well

Also, bearing in mind the weather, I'm tempted to attend this 'drifting seminar' in Brighton, organised by the publishers of our communization collection, Minor Compositions. Again reading available. Hopefully more politically attuned than my last 'psychogeographic' outing in Brighton, to see Iain Sinclair and Aidan Dun (who was publicising Vale Royal, so that must make it 1992?) years ago, when the 'discussion' descended into recriminations of a King Cross squat and off-key remarks about the 'spiritual desolation' of the estates (like Moulsecomb) that surround Brighton - psychogeographic snobbery.

Cutting the "Not"

Cutting the “Not”: Workshop on Negativity and Reflexivity
September 10-12, 2010
Jan Van Eyck Academie
Maastricht, Netherlands

Organizers: Mladen Dolar, Avigail Moss, Eli Noé, Kerstin Stakemeier and Tzuchien Tho
Please see our website for schedule and updates.


Cutting the “Not”
The question of the negative has been one of the fundamental concerns, if not the central problem, of modern and postmodern philosophy. If, since Descartes (and more explicitly since Kant), philosophy is understood as an inherently self-reflexive practice - no longer an inquiry into the essence of things, but the reflection of thought onto its own conditions and limitations - the question of the negative has risen as the necessary counterpoint to this self-reflexivity: negativity as the non-identity between subject and object, the differential correlation between thought and what is external to (and yet conditioned by) thought.

Perhaps the strongest historical example of the coincidence between the problem of reflexivity and negation is the Hegelian concept of negativity, the dynamic process of self-differentiation as self-identity. No doubt, its tremendous impact on contemporary thought can be seen as itself a negative one. In various ways, much of contemporary philosophy ranging from the work of Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida and Badiou has been posed in specific opposition, modification or reinvention of this negative/reflexive dynamic. By inventing forms of negativity that do not involve dialectic reversals and over-comings, by rejecting the fundamental structure of contradiction outright, or by de-globalizing the scope of any dialectic system, contemporary forms of thought have either rejected negativity outright or have re-inscribed or readjusted the power of negativity in local, that is, non-totalizing functions.

In this context of "thinking beyond the negative", the concept of negativity is often treated as a theoretical shibboleth, a conceptual "password" that serves to divide conflicting doctrinal tendencies, separating allies from foes. In so far as this logic involves the demarcation of a homogeneous theoretical field to be rejected (e.g. Deleuze's critique of "post-Kantian Hegelianism"), it not only involves a rude simplification, presupposing a unambiguous dividing line where there is in fact a complex knot, but also attests to the fact that in polemically opposing the negative, one inevitably takes part in it. Hence, a fresh, actualized take on negativity does not only involve new ways of affirming the negative, but also has to take note of the "persistence of the negative" (B. Noys) in any thought and practice that claims to have surpassed negativity.

The aim of this workshop is to cut the (k)not of the negative, not to offer any easy way out of the problem, but to reconsider, with the polemical strings cut, the question in its complexity. This means, above all, to appreciate the field of negativity as a "garden of forking paths", a tissue of folded and interwoven philosophical lineages, with branches extending to extra-philosophical domains. We propose to investigate the problem both forwards and backwards, both looking at the origins of the problem in modern (transcendental and dialectical) philosophy, as well as to the vicissitudes of the negative in contemporary thinking. Our focus will also extend "laterally", by directing the attention to figures of negativity in art, politics, psychoanalysis and science.

Participants include: (alphabetically)
Mark Van Atten
Jean-Yves Beziau
Ray Brassier
Mladen Dolar
Sven Lüttiken
Catherine Malabou
Gregor Moder
Avigail Moss
Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt
Eli Noé
Benjamin Noys
Frank Ruda
Kerstin Stakemeier
Tzuchien Tho
Jan Völker
Susanne M Winterling

Events

First, I will be presenting at the JVE (Maastricht) at the Versus Laboratory event 'Cutting the 'Not': Negativity and Reflexivity', with Ray Brassier, Catherine Malabou, and others (including people who actually understand paraconsistent logics and intuitionism) on 10-12 September.

Kindly arranged by Mark, we have the Accelerationism event, on 14th September at Goldsmiths where, no doubt, I'll be the odd one out, but it should be fascinating.

For the pithiest definition, here is Nick Land:

Machinic revolution must therefore go in the opposite direction to socialistic regulation; pressing towards ever more uninhibited marketization of the pro­cesses that are tearing down the social field, ‘still further’ with ‘the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization’ and ‘one can never go far enough in the direction of deterritori­alization: you haven’t seen anything yet’.

I will post my papers for each post festum, probably here/ or on academia.edu.

Apocalypse Again

Another chance to read my piece on Eurozine; unremixed I'm afraid. Currently working on my paper for Rotterdam, which will focus on political disorientation as self-serving motif, the concrete v. the abstract, and the relation of politics and philosophy, all via Kant, Heidegger and Schmitt, with perhaps some Badiou/Jameson thrown in (as the bifurcation of 'political' Marxism and 'economist' Marxism). Then on to the planning for HM 2010 and, volcano willing, a holiday...

Saturday chairing a panel at this internal event if you're on the south coast and the weather isn't good... Starts at 1pm, registration shortly before

TRG event next week (x-advertised)

It's here, you are welcome, and if you don't know the place contact me via here.

Commonism

COMMONISM:
DEAN KENNING
01.05.10 > 16.05.10
GALLERY OPEN: SATURDAY > SUNDAY 1PM - 6PM
PREVIEW: FRIDAY 30.04.10 6PM - 9PM
.........................................
Be the revolution of you
- Nike Ad
The individual, in truth, is nothing ... the nothing that must be dissolved into a we-subject
- Alain Badiou


Metallurgy of the Subject is an attempt to present philosophical re-conceptions of community and communism allegorically as an alchemical process of sacrificial transmutation.


Animation. Accompanied by:
Kinetic rubber sculptures jerk and flap about. Spastic decor. A chorus of idiots.

Fanaticism at Chichester

Cross-advertising, but it's worth it!

The Theory Research Group is proud to welcome Alberto Toscano, presenting on 'Fanaticism', 1-3pm, The University of Chichester, March 30 2010. For further details please contact Benjamin Noys, all welcome.

new blog

This is the (currently symbolically empty) new blog for the Theory Research Group, which will be holding events at my university, as well as now the site I'll use for advertising all other relevant events.

Eliminate yourself

A new blog, Nights of Labour, with a first post on research into the discourse of actual workers, and an interesting reflection on negation / self-elimination as structural rupture with the (literal) heights of bourgeois ideology. In relation to the dialectic of negation, I'll be taking about the dictatorship of truth contra the dictatorship of the lens in Pontecorvo's Queimada with Alberto Toscano and Peter Hallward on 12 February at Goldsmiths, InC. Before this event you can also see K-Punk on nu-bureaucracy as well, hosted by the hardest working man in academia - Alberto Toscano.

HM NYC

The programme looks excellent as well for HM in NYC; I'm cold enough here, however, and dislike flying (physical discomfort more than the fear of plunging to fiery death), and so won't be making it. Instead I'll be suffering from the morbid symptoms of pre-teaching, which currently involves (on top of icy feet): headaches, fiddly planning of seminar tasks, berating myself/others, failing to proceed with urgent research, and the feeling that all my capacity for rational thought has become fundamentally impaired.

UCLA seminar

This looks suitably impressive (should everyone turn up of course) and the fascinating full course syllabus is here. On a very much smaller scale I'm starting to run a programme of theory seminars at my place, in between the teaching and the ever increasing number of meetings. I'll also probably be starting a separate blog for this (and for advertising all events), although after seeing this my puny efforts feel puny.

The topic of the UCLA seminar on Experimental Critical Theory this year is “the Subject”; winter quarter will focus on Hegel and Badiou, and spring quarter will examine Freud and Lacan.

The seminar will be lead by Kenneth Reinhard, and guest seminar leaders will include:

Winter:
Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels and ECT Committee members John McCumber, Eleanor Kaufman, and Jason Smith.

Spring: Slavoj Zizek, Mladen Dolar, Graham Hammill, Catherine Malabou, Jean Wyatt, Eric Santner, and Alain Badiou.

In the winter, the following public lectures, linked to the seminar, will be offered:

Feb. 23: Bruno Bosteels, “Badiou and Hegel”

Feb. 24: Bruno Bosteels, “Marx and Marti: Logics of the Disencounter”(rooms and time TBA)

In the spring, the following conferences, lectures, and debates linked to the seminar will be offered:

April 7 & 8: “Recovered Voices” conference (featuring Slavoj Zizek, Mladen Dolar, and others)

May 28: Badiou/Zizek debate: “Saving Wagner – A Communist Perspective” (2:00, Schoenberg Hall)

June 1 & 2: Conference on “Wagner in LA: The Opera of the 21st Century?” (featuring Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Fredric Jameson, and others)

Hurry Up Please It's Time

CALL FOR PAPERS

WAITING FOR THE POLITICAL MOMENT

Utrecht & Rotterdam, June 17-19, 2010

‘Hamm: What’s happening?
Clov: Something is taking its course.’
Beckett, Endgame

Over the last decades, several political and cultural theorists have argued that the domain of politics, and even the very idea of the political, has been hollowed out. Politics today appears to have lost its proper status or has been submerged in the more powerful and encompassing infrastructures of late capitalism. Instead of frantically affirming or denying the emptying-out of the political, this conference traces the appropriation of the political by apparatuses of state, church, capitalism and media in modernity to look for ways to reinvigorate it. To do so, the conference focuses on a key concept: the political moment – the moment in which political agency becomes possible, as well as the formative role of the moment in politics.

To get to grips with the political moment we not only need to understand our current moment; we need to have an idea of how it developed over time. Not considering the political moment from an exclusively contemporary point of view, this conference also calls for proposals that focus on the formation of the political in relation to its emptying-out from the late Middle Ages to the present.

Contributions in the form of a 4000 words positioning paper distributed in advance and to be discussed in a seminar setting could address (but are not limited to) the following issues: what is a political moment? What does the emptying-out of the political imply? How has the appropriation of the political by state, religion or media shaped the conditions of possibility of the political? What is the role of the moment in politics?

Confirmed speakers include: Mieke Bal, Bruno Bosteels, Rosi Braidotti, Simon Critchley, Martin van Gelderen, Olivier Marchart, Patchen Markell, Benjamin Noys, and Alberto Toscano.

If you are interested in participating, please send in a 300-words paper proposal and a short résumé of your current research by January 15 2010 to Frans-Willem Korsten, Professor of Literature and Society, Erasmus University Rotterdam, email: korsten@fhk.eur.nl; and/or to Bram Ieven, lecturer in comparative literature at Utrecht University, email: b.k.ieven@uu.nl.

For more information see: www.waitingforthepoliticalmoment.org

wirklichkeit

The book launch for various zero books is on 2 December - details here. I should say I really enjoyed both Nina and Mark's books and really hope they get a wide readership. I especially thought my students would benefit from reading them as they are both acute and engaging political analyses of the present and because they make me feel old and out of touch (which is true). I can't go because we have a PG student evening that night, ironically.

Thanks to Owen I find I look like Ludwig Hilberseimer, but still he's a famously nihilist architect and urban planner...

Historical Materialism 09: be there, or be not Marxist

SIXTH HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ANNUAL CONFERENCEAnother World is Necessary: Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives27 - 29 November 2009Birkbeck College and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)Thornhaugh Street, London XC1H OXG

REGISTER NOW

REGISTRATION CLOSES 24 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME now available

Speakers include:

Gilbert Achcar * Robert Albritton * Kevin Anderson *Jairus Banaji * Wendy Brown * Alex Callinicos * Vivek Chibber * Hester Eisenstein * Ben Fine * Ferruccio Gambino * Lindsey German * Peter Hallward * John Holloway * Fredric Jameson * Bob Jessop * David McNally * China Mieville * Kim Moody * Leo Panitch * Moishe Postone *Sheila Rowbotham * Julian Stallabrass * Hillel Ticktin * Kees Van Der Pijl *Hilary Wainright

(and Benjamin Noys...)

Panels include: APOCALYPSE MARXISM * ART AGAINST CAPITALISM *CLASS AND POLITICS IN THE 'GLOBAL SOUTH' * COGNITIVE MAPPING, TOTALITY AND THE REALIST TURN * COMMODIFYING HEALTH CARE IN THE UK * CUBAN REVOLUTION AND CUBAN SOCIETY * DERIVATIVES *DIMENSIONS OF THE FOOD CRISIS * ECOLOGICAL CRISIS * EMPIRE AND IMPERIALISM * ENERGY, WASTE AND CAPITALISM * FINANCE, THE HOUSING QUESTION AND URBAN POLITICS * GLOBAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS * GRAMSCI RELOADED * INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CRISIS * LABOUR BEYOND THE FACTORY * LATIN AMERICAN WORKING CLASSES * LINEAGES OF NEOLIBERALISM * MARXISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE * MIGRATION * PHILOSOPHY AND COMMUNISM IN THE EARLY MARX * POSTNEOLIBERALISM * RACE, NATION AND ORIENTALISM *RED PLANETS: MARXISM AND SCIENCE FICTION * REMEMBERING PETER GOWAN AND CHRIS HARMAN * REVOLUTIONARY THEORY, AUTONOMIST MARXISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY *SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM IN THE US SOUTH * STUDENT MOVEMENTS AND YOUTH REVOLTS * THE CRITIQUE OF RELIGION AND THE CRITIQUEOF CAPITALISM * UTOPIAS, DYSTOPIAS AND SOCIALIST BIOPOLITICS

Savoy Disturb

Savoy mircofiction competition at the Ballardian for the truly disturbed amongst you... (deadline 5 December)
Also, an interview with Michael Butterworth (of Savoy)

Appearance

Workshop Announcement

Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University

Subject and Appearance:

On Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject & Logics of Worlds

Friday 20 November, 10am to 5pm (followed by a drinks reception).

Confirmed speakers include: Ali Alizadeh (CRMEP, Middlesex) Bruno Bosteels (Cornell) Peter Hallward (CRMEP, Middlesex). Nina Power (Roehampton) Kristin Ross (NYU) Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths)

The workshop will take place in Bolivar Hall, 54 Grafton Way, London W1T 5DL

Further details and the schedule are posted here

Brief extracts from Badiou's books, intended for particular attention during the workshop, will be posted shortly via this link, also you can register via the link, which is 'essential'.

The Future

[I am speaking at this, on an image from JG Ballard (to be revealed, and the talk will be posted here after). No one, as far as I know, is speaking on the above image. I just chose it in contemplation of Ballard's remarks about the space race lacking the ability to excite the imagination / or any 'manifest insanity'.]

Accompanying the exhibitions The Sculpture of the Space Age and The Object of the Attack (2/10/09-19/12/09) at the David Roberts Art Foundation


The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at University of Westminster, in association with the David Roberts Art Foundation, presents:

THE FUTURE
Thursday 5 November 6:30
Location: The David Roberts Art Foundation Fitzrovia, 111 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 6RY

Presenting images of the future with:

Tom Corby is an artist and writer whose research is concerned with relocating digital imaging processes within wider aesthetic and social frameworks. He is the deputy Director of CREAM at Westminster and coordinates the digital art research cluster in the school of arts and media. His experimental digital artworks (produced in collaboration with Gavin Baily) have been internationally exhibited and have won numerous awards.

Benjamin Noys is Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester. He is author of, among other works, The Culture of Death (2005) and Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction (2000), and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Film-Philosophy. He has a forthcoming book entitled The Persistence of the Negative due in 2010.

Kester Rattenbury is an architectural journalist, critic and writer, whose many publications include the edited collection This is Not Architecture. She is a consulting editor for the Architects Journal, series editor for the SuperCrit series with Routledge, and leads the ExP research group at the University of Westminster.

John Timberlake is a photographer and writer, who also leads the BA in Fine Art at Middlesex University. He has exhibited widely in Europe and North America and is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Programme. A former editor of Everything Magazine, his most recent publication is the book Bussard Ramjet (Artwords 2008) and he is currently exhibiting work at the Pittoresk: Neue Perspektiven auf das Landschaftsbild group show at MARTa in Germany.

David Cunningham is Principal Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster. He is an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy, co-editor of the book Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century (2005), and has published widely on modernism, aesthetics, architectural theory and urbanism.

Black Metal

HIDEOUS GNOSIS
Black Metal Theory Symposium
December 12, 2009
The Public Assembly
70 North 6th St
Brooklyn, NY
1:00-7:00 p.m.

I: 1:00-2:15
The Light that Illuminates Itself, the Dark that Soils itself: Blackened Notes from Schelling’s Underground
Steven Shakespeare

The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances
Erik Butler

BAsileus philosoPHOrum METaloricum
Scott Wilson
(moderator: Niall Scott)

II: 2:20-3:30
Transcendental Black Metal
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix

Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya
Nicola Masciandaro

Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration
Joseph Russo
(moderator: Steven Shakespeare)

Interlude: 3:30-4:30
Nader Sadek, Baptism in Black (Phase II)
Sym-posium (together-drinking)

III: 4:30-5:45
‘Remain true to the earth!’: Remarks on the Politics of Black Metal
Benjamin Noys (in absentia)

The Headless Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Evan Calder Williams

Black Confessions and Absu-lution
Niall Scott

Meaningful Leaning Mess
Brandon Stosuy
(moderator: Scott Wilson)

IV: 5:50-7:00
Black Metal and Evil
Aspasia Stephanou

Red in a World of Black: A Discussion of Blood in Black Metal
Murray Resinski

‘Goatsteps behind my steps’: Black Metal and Ritual Renewal
Anthony Sciscione
(moderator: Erik Butler)

Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum

Scare in the Community
------ONE NIGHT ART EVENT------
Saturday, 24th October 2009, 6-9pm

A one night art event at Core Arts in Homerton showcasing video, performance, 2D and 3D works by artists addressing issues relating to community care and institutional critique both inside and outside the context of art.

Core Arts
109 Homerton High Street
London E9 6DL

train: Homerton

(London Overground)

buses: 236 / 242 / 276 / 394 / W15


Frank Bangay, George Barber, David Blandy, Ian Bourn, Boyle and Shaw, El Vonne Brown, Enda Burke, Leona Christie, CoolTan, Tessa Garland, Julika Gittner, Alex Ingram, IRE-MIND, Stephen Jackson, Terry Jones, Jean-Paul Martinon, Octavia Arts, Jo Panter, Laure Prouvost, Jon Purnell, Natasha Rees, Erica Scourti, Temple of Mithras, Josephine Wood

‘Society is an insane asylum run by the inmates’, Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums
The theme of the show resonates with current tendencies to prioritise principles of care in the community over extended hospitalisation. The idea of the mentally ill being free to roam the streets and mingle with the general public has caused much fear amongst communities and frequently leads to sensationalist news headlines in the tabloids such as "Armed and dangerous: public at risk as mental patients escape the care net." (Sunday Express, 2006).

On the other hand, the art world has shown a revived interest in the ‘outsider’ artist. The fantasy of the ‘outsider ‘ who, ignored by society, obsessively practices his ‘authentic’ and untrained creativity has lead to exhibitions such as Inner Worlds Outside at the Whitechapel Gallery (2006). While giving artistic credibility to the work of self-taught artists by exhibiting it next to the work of established artists, such exhibitions do not challenge the authority of the art institution to select who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’.

Scare in the Community aims to confront both sides of the coin by showing art, which relates to ideas of institutional ennui and social norms alongside work that responds directly to the implications of the closure of asylums over the past decades.

Scare in the Community is curated by Julika Gittner and Jon Purnell.