The Writing and Society Research Centre and Philosophy@UWS present: Dr Knox Peden, ARC Research Fellow at University of Queensland TITLE: Stiegler’s Technique
DATE/TIME: Wednesday, May 28th. 3.30-5.00pm PLACE: University of Western Sydney, Bankstown Campus, Building 3, Room 3.G.27 [How to get to Bankstown Campus] http://www.uws.edu.au/campuses_structure/cas/campuses/bankstown ABSTRACT: Bernard Stiegler’s thinking about technics (la technique) occupies a peculiar position on the terrain of contemporary French thought. Vitalist and deconstructionist in apparently equal measure, Stiegler’s thought seems riven by a fundamental discrepancy. On the one hand, his philosophical history of technics bestows upon prosthetics a determinant, albeit infinitely temporal, role in the constitution of humanity. On the other, his increasingly strident interventions in cultural politics belie a conviction that technologies can be refashioned toward ends that are not entirely their own. Antihumanist in its philosophical principles, his project seems brazenly humanist in its culturalist ends. It’s possible that his current work finds sustenance in the instabilities of his originary ontology; it’s also possible that it marks a departure from the insights his Technics and Time project has procured. Whatever the case is, Stiegler’s astonishingly prolific output – seventeen books in five years, as a recent blurb puts it – has become primarily rhetorical in its contents. Rhetorical, which is to say, primarily a matter of technique. BIOGRAPHY: Dr Knox Peden<http://www.ched.uq.edu.au/dr-knox-peden-postdoctoral-research-fellow> is an ARC Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze (Stanford, 2014) and the co-editor with Peter Hallward of a two-volume work devoted to the Cahiers pour l’Analyse (Verso, 2012). In 2015 Bloomsbury will publish French Philosophy Today: A Historical Introduction. His grappling with Stiegler’s technique forms a part of this effort. Visit Philosophy@UWS on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philosophyuws For future research seminars on Philosophy, please visit: http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy/seminars2014 For further information in Philosophy@UWS, please visit: http://www.uws.edu.au/philosophy Siobhain O’Leary Administration Coordinator, Philosophy Research Initiative University of Western Sydney Bankstown Campus Building 5 Locked Bag 1797 Penrith NSW 2751 +61 2 9772 6190
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