2007

Political Theology: The Border in Question

At a time when the paradigm of liberal modernity, beginning with its constitutive separation of church and state, finds itself in (global) crisis, this conference addresses the conjunctions and disjunctions of the religious and the political spheres, in thought and social reality, within the German tradition and beyond. Individual presentations will examine implications of this trembling along the religio-political border for the destabilization of other borderlines and limits within manifold historical and textual spaces, from Paul to early modern culture, from late romantic pessimism to modernist messianism, from Judaeo-Christian tensions to the relations between Turkish and German cultures in Germany. View the poster for this conference at this link.

Provisional Program

March 1, 2007 (1:00 - 5:00) - Knight Library Browsing Room

Opening Remarks (Jeffrey S. Librett)

Political Theology in Modernist and Contemporary Theory

Moderator: Kenneth Calhoon (German and Comparative Literature, Univ. of Oregon)

• 1:00 - Kenneth Reinhard (English and Comparative Literature, UCLA)
  Title: Paul and the Political Theology of the Neighbor
• 2:45 - Tracy McNulty (Romance Languages, Cornell University)
  Title: The Exception become the Rule: The Legacy of Paul in Schmitt's Political Theology
• 4:00 - Joshua Gold (Johns Hopkins University)
  Title: The Dwarf in the Machine: Sources of a Theological Figure.

March 2, 2007 (9:00 - 6:00) - Knight Library Browsing Room

Political Theology and Early Modernity

(9:00am - 12:00)

Moderator: Linda Kintz (English, University of Oregon)

• 9:15 - Julia Lupton (English, UC Irvine)
  Title: Schmitt and Shakespeare
• 10:30 - Leonard Feldman (Political Science, University of Oregon)
  Title: Schmitt, Locke and Boundaries of Liberalism

LUNCH BREAK (12:00 - 1:30)

Political Theology and East-West Cultural Connections

(1:30 - 5:30)

Moderator: Susan C. Anderson (German and Scandinavian [Head], University of Oregon)

• 1:30 - Jeffrey S. Librett (German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon)
  Title: Orientalism and Political Theology in Schopenhauer
• 2:45 - Ulker Gokberk (Reed College, German [Chair])
  Title: Beyond Secularism: Mysticism and Political Islam in the Borderland
• 4:00 - Coffee Break
• 4:30 - Claudia Breger (Indiana University, German)
  Title: Religious Turns: The Turkish- German Cultural Politics in the 21st Century
• 6:00 - Close

2008

Between Nature and Culture: After the Continental-Analytic Divide.

Thursday, Friday, May 1-2

The second colloquium will reconsider the question of nature and culture in connection with the debate (or polemically motivated indifference) that reigns between continental and analytic philosophy in this country and largely also abroad. The colloquium is called “Between Nature and Culture: Edging Beyond the Continental-Analytic Divide.” We will examine the largely untraversed, quasi-taboo, and generally unthought borderline between the analytic and continental philosophical traditions. In order to test our working hypothesis that these two traditions are divided largely by the fact that they take different approaches to the borderline between nature and culture, and specifically to the question of the natural or artificial character of language, we are inviting thinkers from these two traditions to address the nature/culture divide. Since the entire creation of an analytic philosophical tradition occurs in conjunction with a transfer of Viennese philosophy (Carnap, Frege, Wittgenstein) into the English context—a Germanization or Austrianization of English philosophy or an Anglicization of German-Austrian philosophy—the question of the relation between the analytic and continental traditions is something like that of the relation beween the German-Austrian and English traditions. If, as is commonly argued, the analytic tradition arises out of a rejection of idealism (and this is German Idealism beginning with Kant's "transcendental idealism"), then its origin is tied to the rejection of a specific concept of nature as well, namely the Idealist concept of nature. And of course, Idealism is nothing if not a specific kind of definition of nature, an ontology spelled out in terms of the relative independence of spirit from nature, and so on. . . In light of this brief philosophico-historical reminiscence, we can see how the difference between the continental and analytic traditions is tied to a difference over the concept of nature, and specifically a concept intimately bound up with the German philosophical tradition from the late eighteenth century until the twentieth. This is what the colloquium will explore, focusing partly on figures in German and English philosophy (especially Kant and Wittgenstein), partly on strictly conceptual issues

May 1-2, 2008

Program:


Thursday, May 1, 2008 (Walnut Room, in EMU)


Philosophical Beginnings

9:00-10:00 Andrew Cutrofello (Loyola University Chicago) “What is One-Dimensional Philosophy?”

10:00-11:00 Paul M. Livingston (Villanova University) “The Breath of Sense: Language, Structure, and the Paradox of Origin”

11:00-11:45 Discussion

11:45-1:15 Lunch Break

From Nature to Language

1:15-2:15 Dominiek Hoens (Leiden University) “On Language from a Lacanian Point of View”

2:15-3:15 Beata Stawarska (University of Oregon) Title, TBA

3:15-4:00 Discussion

4:00-4:15 Coffee Break

Wittgenstein’s Legacy

4:15-5:15 Martin Klebes (University of Oregon) "Two Round-trip Tickets to Literature (L. Wittgenstein, D. Lewis)"

5:15-6:15 Russell Goodman (University of New Mexico) “Wittgenstein on Nature and Culture”

6:15-7:00 Discussion

Friday, May 2, 2008 (McKenzie Hall 240 A)

Music and Listening

9:00-10:00 Scott Pratt (University of Oregon) Title, TBA

10:00-11:00 Lawrence Kramer (Fordham University) "Listening Devices: Musical Expression as Performance"

11:00-11:45 Discussion

11:45-1:15 Lunch

Gender Between Construct and Essence

1:15-2:15 Bonnie Mann (University of Oregon) “What Should Feminists Do About Nature?”

2:15-3:15 Sharyn Clough (Oregon State University) "Gender and germs: 'Cultural' impacts on 'natural' bodies."

3:15-4:00 Discussion

4:00 Closing Remarks

2009

Borderlines in Psychoanalysis, Borderlines of Psychoanalysis

When: Thursday, April 30, 2009 and Friday, May 1, 2009
Where: University of Oregon--Eugene, Oregon
Browsing Room, Knight Library

Sponsored by the German Studies Committee, with support of the Department of German and Scandinavian, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of English, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Oregon Humanities Center, the Department of Romance Languages, and the Comparative Literature Program.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

9:45-10:00
Jeffrey S. Librett, University of Oregon Opening Remarks

10:00-10:45
Alexander Mathäs, University of Oregon "Narcissism and the Sublime"

10:45-11:00
Discussion

11:00-11:45
Juliet F. MacCannell, University of California, Irvine "Drawing Lines"

11:45-12:00
Discussion

12:00- 2:00
Lunch

2:00- 2:45
Jeffrey S. Librett, University of Oregon "Splitting Headaches: On the Borderline Between the Borderline and the Narcissistic Personality Disorders"

2:45- 3:00
Discussion

3:00- 3:45
Samuel Weber, Northwestern University "The Uncanny Inner Border of Psychoanalysis: Between Anxiety and Desire"

3:45- 4:00
Discussion

Friday, May 1, 2009

10:00-10:45
Stefanie Speanburg, Emory University "Fine Lines: Subjectivity, Self-inscription, and Borderline Discourse"

10:45-11:00
Discussion

The Question of the Limit in Psychoanalysis Today

11:00-11:45
Willy Apollon, Freud School of Quebec, GIFRIC "The Limit: a Fundamental Question for the Subject in Human Experience"

11:45-12:00
Discussion

12:00- 2:00
Lunch

2:00- 2:45
Danielle Bergeron, Freud School of Quebec, GIFRIC “The Frontiers Between Autism and Psychosis"

2:45- 3:00
Discussion

3:00- 4:00
Lucie Cantin, Freud School of Quebec, GIFRIC "Charcot's Hysteric and Today's Borderline: from the Failure to the Impossibility of Imagining the Other's Object"

4:00- 5:00
Open discussion

Click here to see a poster for this conference.

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