Questions about security and violence permeate the philosophical and political tradition as they lay the foundation for theories of authority and care. Moreover, as thinking about security and violence operates in ways both physical and symbolic, law can be seen as a locus of negotiation between them. The symposium will address the current debate on the national and international politics of security, globalization and war, the distribution of violence along social, racial and gender lines, and the philosophical and cultural foundations of the law.
9 am: Welcome, Oana Panaïté (French & Italian)
9:30 am: John Hamilton (German / Comparative Literature, Harvard Univ.), “Liberalism, Libertinage, and the Limits of Security: Laclos and the Charlie Hebdo Massacre.”
Abstract: The terroristic attacks that recently horrified the world have occasioned reflection on public security and civic liberties. The primary issue, which concerns the relationship between security and liberalism, is hardly new, but rather persistently informs all modern political thought. In turning to Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses, the notorious libertine novel of the 18th century, innovative insights may be gained in regard to today’s attempts in balancing safety and freedom.
John Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard, is the author of Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity and the Classical Tradition (2004), Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language (2008), and Security: Politics, Humanity, and the Philology of Care (2013), in addition to numerous articles: on Lessing, Hölderlin, Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Büchner, Heine, Kafka, Thomas Mann, and Böll; Pindar, Cicero, and Horace; Balzac, Gautier, Valéry, Roger Caillois, and Pascal Quignard.
10:45 am: Coffee Break
11 am: Chantal Mouffe (Politics and International Relations, Univ. of Westminster), “Politics and Violence: An Agonistic Approach.”
Abstract: In this lecture, I will present my agonistic model and examine how it deals with the challenge confronting democracy when the ineradicable of antagonism is acknowledged.
Chantal Mouffe is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Westminster in London. She has taught and researched in many universities in Europe, North America and South America, and she is a corresponding member of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. She is the editor of Gramsci and Marxist Theory (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979), Dimensions of Radical Democracy. Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (Verso, London, 1992), Deconstruction and Pragmatism ( Routledge, 1996) and The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (Verso, London, 1999); the co-author with Ernesto Laclau of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics ( Verso, London, 1985) and the author of The Return of the Political (Verso, London, 1993) The Democratic Paradox (Verso, London, 2000), On the Political (Routledge, London, 2005) and Agonistics. Thinking the World Politically (Verso 2013).
12:15 – 2:30 pm: Lunch
2:30 pm: Elizabeth Anker (English, Cornell Univ.), “The Human Rights Turn, or the Political Will of Critical Theory.”
Abstract: Many humanities fields are currently witnessing a reaction against the negativity of critique, hermeneutic suspicion, and the deflationary impulses of theory, and this talk locates the human rights turn within this broader climate of methodological self-questioning. For many, human rights have represented an escape from the sense of a political impasse within theory. This talk cautions against the interrelated risks of viewing human rights through the lens of idealism or utopianism; of merely repurposing established analytics within poststructuralist theory under the guise of human rights; of deploying human rights in ways that reinforce what I refer to as the “political minimalism” of much critique; or of endorsing human rights in ways that circumvent questions of cultural particularity and neo-imperialism.
Elizabeth S. Anker is Associate Professor in the English Department at Cornell University and Associate Member of the Faculty of Cornell Law School. Her first book is Fictions of Dignity: Embodying Human Rights in World Literature (2012). She is currently working on two book projects. The first, Our Constitutional Metaphors: Law, Culture, and the Management of Crisis, looks to literature, architecture, and film to study popular metaphors for constitutions, examining how they resolve challenges to democracy. Second, she is writing a book on Human Rights and Critical Theory that explores the “human rights turn.”
3:45 pm: Coffee Break
4 – 5:30 pm: Roundtable Discussion
Akin Adesokan (Comparative Literature)
William Rasch (Germanic Studies / International Studies)
Jon Simons (Communication and Culture)
Susan Williams (Law School)
The symposium is sponsored by the Center for Theoretical Inquiry in the Humanities, the College Arts & Humanities Institute, the Office of the Vice-President for International Affairs, the Mary-Margaret Barr Koon Fund of the Department of French & Italian, the Dept. of International Studies, and the Dept. of Political Science, all at Indiana University.
Cost: Free
For more information contact:
Oana Panaite
[email protected]