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During the Second World War, Jacques Derrida was excluded from school in occupied Algeria because he was Jewish. Citizenship of the nation and its language community were to be experienced as precarious, marked by traces of a violent racial politics of both anti- Semitism and colonialism. His philosophy of the dislocation of language and identity always recalled this politics in its insistence on the inter-subjective risk implicit in signification.
In Derrida, politics is enacted in an open-ness first to danger but also to hospitality. In a world burdened by economic, national and religious fundamentalisms and their dogmatic discourses, this open-ness bears the lesson of the atrocities that stalk modern and postmodern ethics and history. It was towards an optimistic reconsideration of these problems that Derrida’s work grew in the last twenty years of his life.
Consequently, and as an alternative voice to the recent denigrations of Derrida in the press since his death and in an attempt to resist the temptation to fetishize as we mourn him, thus enacting the closure of Derrida’s oeuvre, 'The Political Futures of Jacques Derrida' will celebrate the enduring and urgent political significance and relevance of his work, as well as considering and enacting the ethical/political future horizons that it opens.
Some themes to be discussed include:
Derrida & the politics & practice of everyday life - Political terrorism - Derrida, hospitality & affect - The radical reinvention of a political ethics - Derrida & the media - Textual freeplay: Derrida’s ethical/political relevance - The politics of memory, mourning & the beyond - Derrida, political decision & absolute risk - Derrida & justice - Derrida & emotion.
| WHEN: | 15th of Februrary Department of Critical & Cultural Studies, Macquarie University. |
| CONVENORS: | Nicole Anderson, Joan Kirkby, Nick Mansfield, & Joseph Pugliese. Department of Critical & Cultural Studies, Macquarie University. |
| VENUE: | Building E7B, Room 100, Macquarie University. |
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Click here to view location map |
| RSVP: | (Tuesday 8th February 2005) |
This event is free however for catering purposes please RSVP, by email, to Dr. Nicole Anderson at 