LECTURES

A lecture  by Professor Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University): 'Nomadic Feminist Theory in a Global Era'.

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities since 2007. She was the founding professor of 
Gender Studies in the Humanities at Utrecht (1988-2005) and the first scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies. 

Rosi Braidotti’s research and writing engages feminist philosophy and cultural studies. She is especially interested in poststructuralism and critical theory as well as epistemology and Deleuze studies. Her books include, Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti (Columbia University Press: New York, 2011); Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2006); Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2002); and Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, (Columbia University Press: New York, 1994); 2nd ed. 2011). 

Rosi Braidotti - Nomadic Feminist Theory in a Global Era.

Emanu-El Forum of Ideas, April 11, 1966.


Lecture By Dr. Erich Fromm Part 1

In his analysis of two contemporary forms of violence – the death-penalty and the violent exploitation of animals – Jacques Derrida showed how deeply rooted their conceptual bases are within contemporary institutions and practices. Moreover, his analyses showed the extent to which many of the discourses which claim to oppose them are caught up in the very conceptual space which sustains the forms of violence they purport to contest. In this talk, I focus on one of the resources Derrida’s own work offers for grappling with this difficulty. Tracking the octopus which appears in one of Derrida’s texts, I sketch the long history of this creature and explore the clues it provides as to alternative models of rationality and possible modes of resistance. (Custer)

Olivia Custer completed her Doctorat d’Université at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, working on Kant’s critical philosophy under the supervision of Jacques Derrida. Her research interests revolve around the question of how to engage Kant’s philosophical legacy. She is the author of L’Exemple de Kant (Peeters, 2012), and co-author of Sexualité, Genre et Melancholie, (Campagne Première, Paris, 2009).

Introduction: Judith Butler, Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley

Reading the Hell Out of Derrida: The Octopus | Olivia Custer | 10/23/14

This is the audio recording of Professor Judith Butler's public lecture at trinity College on Thursday February 5th, 2015: Vulnerability and Resistance Revisisted. 

Judith Butler - 'Vulnerability And Resistance Revisited'

Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst - The project horizon: On the temporality of making

Recorded for Brain Pickings. Background and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/02/amanda-palmer-reads-wislawa-szymborska

Join me in supporting Amanda Palmer's art on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/amandapalmer?ty=h

MORE / POEM TEXT

Amanda Palmer reads "Life While-You-Wait" by Wislawa Szymborska

Background, context, and full text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/11/david-whyte-vulnerability/

Excerpted from https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/david-whyte-the-conversational-nature-of-reality

Photograph by Nicol Ragland

MORE / TEXT

David Whyte reads "Vulnerability"

Background, context, and transcribed text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/13/james-baldwin-the-artists-struggle-for-integrity/

Recording by Pacifica Radio Archives.

CONTEXT / TEXT

James Baldwin: The Artist's Struggle for Integrity (full lecture)

On "Ethics as First Philosophy" (1984).

More existentialist ethics, with a Jewish twist this time! Seth rejoins Mark and Wes to discuss this difficult essay, with a bit of "Time and the Other" (1948) and "There Is: Existence Without Existents" (1946) thrown in, too.

Levinas thinks that the whole train of Western thought with the advance of science and all has left us too aggressive, too self-asserting, as a matter of our culturally held ontology, and that this obsures our view of our fundamental relationship to other people, to time, and to death. However, we do have, right there in our everyday experience, a model of "non-intentional consciousness" in the awareness we have of ourselves when we're not thinking about ourselves, when we're absorbed in some activity instead of self-reflecting.

"Intentional consciousness" makes whatever we're conscious of an object. It's like we're eating it, reducing it to some element in our minds. But if we can get at the more passive kinds of awareness we already have, we can see that "knowledge of" is not really the proper mode of dealing with another person, who is fundamentally Other and can't be reduced without falsification to an object. Ontologically (and probably developmentally), this passive way of relating is primary; it trumps all of our assertions of self and of mastery over our world.

So that's supposed to be a phenomenological account of the primacy of ethics over any other kind of philosophy, over any thought whatsoever. This is interesting to compare with the account of Levinas's contemporary Simone de Beauvoir, whose ethics we just covered in episode 140. She was arguing (in a Kantian sort of way) that ethics is contemporaneous with willing, which is of course prior to any of our particular projects or values. But Levinas is trying to make it even more primordial, with the passive experience that comes prior to willing. In both cases, existentialism is trying to say that a proper phenomenological evaluation of yourself is supposed to reveal that yes, you are subject to this obligation toward others. For Levinas, this obligation is total, whatever that means (our discussion, like the essay, is focused on the foundations of ethics, not so much on what exactly we're supposed to do given this obligation).

The Partially Examined Life

Go to blog

Emmanuel Levinas: Why Be Ethical? (Part One)

Debbie talks to writer Tim Ferriss about the strategies he has used to change his life.

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: 2009-2016

Design Matters with Debbie Millman: Tim Ferriss

Context and transcript: https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/04/04/elizabeth-alexander-design-matters-art/

Excerpted from https://soundcloud.com/designmatters/design-matters-with-debbie-millman-elizabeth-alexander

LECTURES

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