1. GUEST SPEAKERS LECTURE SERIES

Term 2

Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Frank Ruda (Dundee), 'The Immanence of Obscurity'

https://campus.recap.ncl.ac.uk/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=b185f8bb-1365-486d-9360-ae3501034415

Term 3

Week 1 —Wednesday 27th April 2022 - Tom Greaves (UEA), ‘The Elemental and the Ephemeral’, 5pm–7pm, HDB3.76

Week 2 — Wednesday 4th May - [POSTPONED] Isabel Millar (Global Centre for Advanced Studies), 'Life in Priapalandia', 5pm–7pm, HDB3.76

Week 4 — Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Arthur Bradley (Lancaster), ‘In the Antechamber of Power: Sovereign Divisibility from Schiller to Schmitt’, 3pm–5pm [n.b. the earlier time], HDB3.76

ABSTRACT: Frank Ruda, 'The Immanence of Obscurity'

In one of his seminars, Michel Foucault makes a passing reference to a peculiar form of sovereign figure that, surprisingly, he sees repeatedly emerging throughout almost the entire history of the Western world: the grotesque sovereign. The lecture will mobilize Foucault’s passing remarks and wager that they might help to elucidate from within the political operativity of obscure times and “obscure subjects” (Badiou).

ABSTRACT: Arthur Bradley, 'In the Antechamber of Power: Sovereign Divisibility from Schiller to Schmitt'

In this paper, I offer a political architectonic of what Carl Schmitt calls the “antechamber of power [Vorraum der Macht]” from Friedrich Schiller, through Franz Kafka, to Walter Benjamin. To summarize,  I seek to argue that the antechamber of power has always been a marginal space within the conceptual imaginary of sovereignty, but Schiller, Kafka, Benjamin, and Schmitt re-imagine it as the privileged space of an originary partage, sharing or division of power. In a series of readings of philosophical, historical, and literary representations of the antechamber, I show how the allegedly private chamber of power occupied by the sovereign alone constitutively divides or exteriorizes itself into a --- potentially infinite --- series of new political antechambers occupied by a new class of political bodies: Schiller’s counsellor, Kafka’s bureaucrat, Benjamin’s clerk.

Subscribe to the mailing list for the Research Group here: https://lists.ncl.ac.uk/wws/info/critical-theory-practice

Other events that may be of interest:

Representing Nonhuman Animals Conference: University of Durham, Monday 25^th April 2022, 12midday onwards.

2. PHILOSOPHY POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE

Philosophy PG Conference

The PG conference is a space for PhD students and MLitts to present their current research. It will be held from 10am - 5pm on the 18^th of May in HDB G.13.