Dialectics and Society Workshop
Faculty Conveners
- Timothy Brennan, CSCL and English
- Giancarlo Casale, History
- Keya Ganguly, CSCL
- Sumanth Gopinath, Music
- Silvia López, Latin American Studies, Carleton College
- Jason McGrath, ALL
- Guriqbal (Bali) Sahota, ALL
Contact
Guriqbal (Bali) Sahota: sahota@umn.edu
Overview
Dialectical thought has emerged over the last several centuries as a self-reflexive inquiry into the world which seeks to work through determinate contradictions such that encompassing totalities can be systematically comprehended. This workshop engages with the nature of dialectical thinking in all of its forms. The collective especially seeks to reflect on the ways in which this tradition has related to the formation of modern disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, various political persuasions, as well as distinct artistic practices.
We seek to understand the challenges dialectics has posed to various schools of modern thought as well as the countervailing currents to which it has given rise.
Schedule Fall Semester 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Reading Group:_ Hegel, /The Phenomenology of Spirit/ (DD. Absolute Knowing) (pp. 479-494 of the A.V. Miller translation).
Hegel, Absolute Knowing
Time and Location: 5:30-7:30 PM, Nolte 125 or 235
Friday, October 9, 2009
Reading Group:_ Walter Benjamin, /The Origin of German Tragic Drama/ (the English translation of //Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels//. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1928), “Epistemo-Critical Prologue (pp. 27-56 in the Verso Osborne translation).”
In conjunction with the TEMS Research Group.
Time and Location: 12:15 – 2:00 PM, Nolte 335
Friday, November 13, 2009
Reading Group:_ Walter Benjamin, /The Origin of German Tragic Drama/ (the English translation of /Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels/. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1928). “Trauerspiel and Tragedy (pp. 57-158 in the Verso Osborne translation).” In conjunction with the TEMS Research Group.
Time and Location: 12:15 – 2:00 PM, Nolte 335.
Friday, December 18
Reading Group:_ Walter Benjamin, /The Origin of German Tragic Drama/ (the English translation of /Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels/. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, 1928). “Allegory and Trauerspiel (pp. 159-235 in the Verso Osborne translation).” In conjunction with the TEMS Research Group.
Time and Location: 12:15 – 2:00 PM, Nolte 335.
Schedule Spring Semester 2009
January 30, 2009
Reading group on The Phenomenology of Spirit (Part B Self-Consciousness, pp. 104-138 in A.V. Miller's translation)
February 26, 2009 , 2008
Lecture by Susan Buck-Morss in the IAS Thursday at Four series
February 27, 2009
Workshop with Susan Buck-Morss on work in progress
March 27, 2009
Reading group on The Phenomenology of Spirit (Part CC Religion, pp.
410-478 in A.V. Miller's translation)
May 1 , 2009
Workshop with Gopal Balakrishnan on work in progress
Schedule Fall Semester 2008
September 5, 2008
Reading group on selections of Zizek’s Parallax View
October 3, 2008
Shierry Weber Nicholsen on Exact Imagination, Late Work (chapter 1 [Subjective Aesthetic Experience and Its Historical Trajectory] and chapter 2 [Language: Its Murmurings, Its Darkness, and Its Silver Rib], along with passages from Adorno selected by Weber Nicholsen
Adorno - Selective readings - English - Deutsch.
Shierry Weber Nicholson - Exact Imagination, Late Work
November 6, 2008
Max Pensky at IAS Thursday at Four (on "current work in international law and transitional justice, on the status of domestic amnesties for crimes against humanity, and the trouble that the International Criminal Court has gotten into in dealing with them")
November 7, 2008
Max Pensky on "Kant, Benjamin, and the Possibility of Philosophical History"
December 5, 2008
Reading group on Hegel (selections from Philosophy of Right)
Schedule Spring Semester 2008
February 1, 2008
Reading group on Chapter 1, “Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy” of Adorno’s Hegel: Three Studies.
February 29, 2008
Reading group on Part 8 (“So Called Primitive Accumulation”) of Karl Marx's Capital (Vol. 1) led by Chris Isett
March 28, 2008
Chris Connery (UC Santa Cruz) discusses the 1960s in global context.
May 8, 2008
Moishe Postone (University of Chicago) presents “Theorizing Historical Change: Critical Theory and the Transformations of the Twentieth Century” in the IAS Thursday at Four series
May 9, 2008
Moishe Postone (University of Chicago) discusses work in progress on social theory.
Readings: "Lukacs and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism" and "Critique, state, and economy."
Schedule Fall Semester 2007
November 9, 2007
Reading group on Chapter 7 "The Dialectics of the real and the Phenomenological Method in Hegel" of Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel
November 30, 2007
Jason McGrath discuses work in progress on Chinese Cinema with Keya Ganguli