The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Common Room
ICLS Graduate Students: Nick Croggon, Manuel Shvartzberg-Carrio, and Roberto Valdovinos
Department of French and Romance Philology
Department of Art History and Archaeology
Maison Francaise
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures
Center for Contemporary Critical Thought
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Center for Justice at Columbia University
Temple Hoyne Buelle Center for the Study of American Architecture
The Heyman Center for the Humanities
In this seminar, we will discuss the question of technics in the contemporary world. In No Apocalypse, Not Now, Derrida writes about what he calls “the absolute pharmakon” – that is, the nuclear weapon. In Speed and Politics, Virilio shows that the Russian and American military powers convined Brezhnev and Nixon to negotiate in order to avoid the release of a nuclear war automatically “decided” by computers. In the same vein, we are now confronted with the question of speed in emergency situations provoked by the Anthropocene, the new geological period to which we belong. To understand this periodization and sketch an answer, we need an organological and pharmacological approach based on Canguilhem’s and Leroi-Gourhan’s works.
To apply:
Please email your name, your Departmental affiliation, your year level, and 2-4 lines describing your research interests and your particular interest in Bernard Stiegler’s work. Send applications by 22 September 2015 to m.shvartzberg@columbia.edu. Participants will be notifed via email by 24 September. Open to Columbia University graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and Faculty.
