October 10/11 2014
‘Superpositions’ refers to the non-philosophical practice of conjugating distinct strata of academic discourse on the model of quantum interference rather than classical logic, which entails a distinctive ‘equalization’ of the standard hierarchies of disciplines and knowledges. The outcome of such a practice remains largely unknown. Perhaps similarly unknown is the work of François Laruelle, inventor of what has been most recently called ‘non-standard philosophy’. Laruelle, once named “the most important unknown philosopher working in Europe today” (Ray Brassier, 2003) has developed an innovative and powerful repertoire of concepts across an oeuvre spanning four decades and dozens of books. His work will undoubtedly come to have a significant impact on the critical practices of the humanities; this symposium explores Laruelle’s work across its possible relations to contemporary issues in philosophy, critical theory and media studies.
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SCHEDULE:
Detailed schedule- PDF
Friday, October 10, 2014: 7:30-8:30 pm
Reception and Introduction: Opening Lecture, Alex Galloway
Dorothy Hirshorn Suite, Room I205
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street
Saturday, October 11, 2014: 9:30 am – 6:00 pm
Symposium
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Room 202
Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street
Superpositions
Non-Standard Perspectives on Critical Theory, Philosophy and Media Studies
A Symposium on Laruelle and the Humanities
List of Speakers:
Alex Dubilet (Berkeley, University of California)
Alexander R. Galloway (New York University)
Rocco Gangle (Endicott College)
Julius Greve (University of Cologne)
Katerina Kolozova (University American College-Skopje)
Dave Mesing (Villanova University)
Benjamin Norris (The New School)
Anthony Paul Smith (LaSalle University)
Organizers:
Rocco Gangle (Endicott College)
Julius Greve (University of Cologne)
Ed Keller (The New School/CTM)
Paper titles and Speakers’ bios:
Dubilet: “(Non-)Human Identity and Radical Immanence: On Man-in-Person in Laruelle’s Thought” —
Alex Dubilet is a Lecturer in the Program for Religious Studies and the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. His primary research and teaching interests encompass the fields of philosophy and religion, history of Christianity, theories of secularism and religion, and political theology. He is a co-translator into English (with Jessie Hock) of François Laruelle’s Théorie générale des victimes (forthcoming from Polity Press).
Galloway: “Against the Digital: Laruelle and the One” — Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. He is author or co-author of several books, most recently The Interface Effect (Polity, 2012) and Laruelle: Against the Digital (Minnesota, 2014).
Gangle: “Non-Individuation and the Humanities Research Program” – – Rocco Gangle is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Endicott College. He is the author of François Laruelle’s Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introductionand Guide and the forthcoming Diagrammatic Immanence: Category Theory and Philosophy (both with Edinburgh University Press). He is one of the earliest Anglophone translators of Laruelle’s work and has written a variety of articles linking non-philosophy to Levinasian phenomenology, ordinary language philosophy and mathematics.
Greve: “The Decisional Apparatus: Jameson, Flusser, Laruelle” – – Julius Greve is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Cologne. He currently works on the concept of nature in the novels of Cormac McCarthy and on 19th/20th-century philosophies of nature, in particular those of Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Lorenz Oken, and Gilles Deleuze (including the ideas these thinkers have spawned in contemporary philosophical speculation). Greve’s further research interests encompass the tradition of intermediality in American cultural practices and the history of critical theory.
Kolozova: “Into the Chôra of Marx’s Text: Metaphysics of Wage Labor as Political Theory and Praxis” – – Katerina Kolozova, PhD, is the director of the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje and a professor of philosophy and gender studies at the University American College-Skopje. She is also visiting professor at several universities in Former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (the State University of Skopje, University of Sarajevo, University of Belgrade and University of Sofia as well as at the Faculty of Media and Communications of Belgrade). in 2009, Kolozova was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric (Program of Critical Theory) at the University of California-Berkeley. Kolozova is the author of The Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststucturalist Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2014).
Mesing: “The Use of Non-Philosophy in the Task of Philosophy: Laruelle, Critical Theory, and Materialism” – – Dave Mesing is a PhD student in philosophy at Villanova University in Philadelphia. He works at the intersection of contemporary critical theory and the history of philosophy, and has interests encompassing Spinoza, Marx, Italian operaismo, the history of materialism, and contemporary continental philosophy.
Norris: “Experiencing the (Philosophical) Abyss: Empiricism and Non-Philosophy” – – Benjamin Norris is a Phd. student in philosophy at The New School for Social Research. His work centers around the critical perspectives on Spinoza found in the works of Kant, Schelling and Nietzsche. He is the author of “Re-asking the Question of the Gendered Subject after Non-Philosophy” in Speculations volume 3.
Smith: “Is the (Black) Muslim an Ordinary Human: The Universal and the Particular in Non-Philosophy’s Human Question” – – Anthony Paul Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at La Salle University. In addition to his own use of non-philosophy in A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature: Ecologies of Thought (PalgraveMacmillian), he is the translator or co-translator of five of François Laruelle’s texts and the author of the forthcoming François Laruelle’s Principles of Non-Philosophy: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh University Press) and Laruelle: A Stranger Thought (Polity).