Philosophy, Language and the Political - Re-evaluating Post-Structuralism

International Colloquium on Philosophy, Language and the Political: Reevaluating Poststructuralism.

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 10th, 11th and 12th December 2014

(Sponsored by JNU, l’Institut Français New Delhi, ICSSR, New Delhi, ICPR, New Delhi)

 

Tentative Programme

 

Wednesday, 10th December

Opening session:

 

Chair: Ayesha Kidwai, JNU.

9. 30 a.m.: Welcome and Introduction: Franson Manjali, JNU, Coordinator)

10. 00: Marc Crépon, École Normal Supèrieure, Paris – The Invention of the Other: The Event of the Untranslatable.

10. 50: Tea

Chair: Saugata Bhaduri, JNU, Coordinator.

11. 00: Paul Patton, University of New South Wales, Sydney – Poststructuralism and political normativity: the case of Deleuze

11. 50: Aniruddha Chowdhary, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla – Singular History: Finitude, Temporality and Historicity in Early Heidegger.

12. 30: Rustam Singh, Eklavya Institute, Hoshangabad – Not this, Not that: Maurice Blanchot and Poststructuralism.

1. 10 Lunch

Chair: Saitya Brata Das, JNU, Coordinator.

2.10: Gérard Bensussan, University of Strasbourg – TBA

2. 45:  Manas Ray, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS, Kolkata) –  Gandhi: Antiliberal, or a Departure within Liberalism? (thinking in the tracks of Foucault).

3. 20:  Arup Chatterjee, JNU: Notes on Travelogy: Negotiating with Counterpath: Travelling Jacques Derrida.

3. 50 Tea

4:00: Jean-Luc Nancy, Emeritus, University of Strasbourg (video conference) JOUIS ANNIVERSAIRE! ‘Scenes of inner life’ for the tenth anniversary of the death of Jacques Derrida.

Thursday, 11th December:

 

Chair:

9. 30 a.m.: Jacob Rogozinski, Université de Strasbourg – Fire / Death

10.15: Samir Gandesha, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver – Jacques Derrida: The 'Good European.’

11. 00 Anup Dhar, Ambedkar University, Delhi : Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Politics: Derrida’s Cryptonymy

11. 30: Tea

Chair: Manidipa Sen, JNU.

11.40 : Soumyabrata Choudhury, JNU – The French Revolution of Indian History: Notes on Comparative Politics and Incomparable Events.

12. 20 p.m.: Milind Wakankar (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi) – Religion after Religion: Plato after Badiou in the Light of Modern Indian Thought (Aurobindo, K. C. Bhattacharya, Bedekar)

1.00:  Lunch

 

Chair: Brinda Bose, JNU

2.00: Sukalpa Bhattacharya, North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong – Body-Reparation-Invention: Cixous and Derrida on “Feminine Writing.”

2.40 Ranu Uniyal, University of Lucknow – “Somewhere there must be people who are like me” – A Reading of Hélène Cixous.

3. 20: Tea

 

Chair: Simi Malhotra, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi.

3.30 : François Cusset – Emeritus, Université de Paris X, Nanterre –  “Can a toolbox go to war?” The political legacy of poststructuralism.

4.10: TBA

4. 50: Prasenjit Biswas, NEHU – Foucault and Derrida on Truth and Meaning : A Semantic, Political and Ethical Reapprisal.

Friday, 12th December

 

Chair:

9. 30: Sourav Kargupta, CSSS, Kolkata  –Postcolonial Marx and the Problem of the Human: Preliminary Conjectures.

10. 00: Sandhya Deve?an, University of Delhi – The Body of Knowledge: Notes on the Stigmatext.

10. 30: Nimmi Menike and Sanjay Kaushal, JNU – Wounding the Self ? Writing the Other.

11. 00 Tea

 

Chair:

11. 10: Vinod K. Kalidasan, Central University of Kerala, Kasargod – Learning to Live with Specters: Hauntology, Memory and Language in ‘Specters of Marx.’

11. 40: Debaditya Bhattacharya, Central University of Bihar, Patna  – Of Shame and Censure: A Deconstructive Account of Knowledge

12. 10. Siby K. George, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai – Constitutive Theories of Language and the Politics of Change.

1.00 Lunch

 

Chair:
2. 00 Anirban Das, CSSS, Kolkata – TBA.

2. 30 Achia Anzi, JNU – ‘This is (not) a pipe.’

3.00 Concluding Session and Panel Discussion.

5. 30 End.

Philosophy, Language and the Political: Reevaluating Post-structuralism

Thematic note:

While commemorating this year the death anniversaries of two major philosophers of our times, Michel Foucault (30th) and Jacques Derrida (10th), it is useful for scholars to attempt a reevaluation of the current of thought and academic practice that appeared and flourished in the last four decades of the 20th century, under the label of ‘poststructuralism.’ The trend may be said to have begun with the publication of Gilles Deleuze’s monograph on Nietzsche in 1962. Since then, the decisive philosophical break with the hitherto dominant structuralist current owed itself to other philosophical antecedents in the works of Heidegger, Levinas and Blanchot. Indeed, a sense of the stultification of political thought in Europe both before and immediately after World War II contributed to the emergence of the new philosophical approach. Going beyond the Gramscian and the Althusserian concerns with hegemony and ideology, philosophers resorted, following Nietzsche’s linguistic and genealogical instinct, to a tracing of the discontinuous historical movements of dominant discourses, as well as to an effective critique of their modernising and totalising dimensions. Historically and discursively, fragmentation and multiplicity began to be seen as more real than the totality that many scholars had until then held on to as their major orientation. That totalities could and must open up to infinite multiplicities was one of the main tenets of the poststructuralists. Consequently, in addition to recasting the ‘human sciences,’ they sought to re-envision the aesthetic (especially the literary and the artistic) and the ethical domains, by inducing a much-needed political sensitivity into them. Contextually speaking, for many in India, not the least of the effects of post-structuralism was felt in the forging of postcolonial critiques and movements initiated and pursued by Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Paul Patton, since the early 1980s. And more recently, it is evident that the field of religious studies, has also been impacted by post-structuralism, in bringing in thoughts on a discourse of God, that seek to undermine the pressure of a political theology with its adversely major role in the makeup of our modernity.

            In the proposed conference scheduled to be held at Jawaharlal Nehru University on the 10th, 11thand 12th December, 2014, several reputed scholars from different parts of the world, are expected to participate, highlighting the backgrounds and destinies, and the possible merits and achievements of the post-structuralist philosophical movement, as well as address the diverse criticisms that have been levelled against it.

(Coordinators: Saugata Bhaduri, Saitya Brata Das, Franson Manjali, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU.)

International Colloquium on Philosophy, Language and the Political: Reevaluating Poststructuralism.

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 10th, 11th and 12th December 2014

(Sponsored by JNU, l’Institut Français New Delhi, ICSSR, New Delhi, ICPR, New Delhi)

 

List of participants and proposed papers

(Programme schedule to be announced soon)

1.       Achia Anzi – ‘This is (not) a pipe’

2.       Anirban Das -- TBA

3.       Aniruddha Chaudhury -- Singular History: Finitude, Temporality and Historicity in Early Heidegger.

4.       Anup Dhar –  Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Politics: Derrida’s Cryptonymy

5.       Arup Chatterjee – Notes on Travelogy: Negotiating with Counterpath: Travelling Jacques Derrida.

6.       Debaditya Bhattacharya – Of Shame and Censure: A Deconstructive Account of Knowledge

7.       François Cusset – TBA

8.        Gérard Bensussan -- TBA

9.       Jacob Rogozinksi – Fire / Death

10.   Jean-Luc Nancy (Video conference) Jouïs Anniversaire! “Scenes of Inner Life” for the Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Derrida

11.   Manas Ray – Gandhi: Antiliberal, or a Departure within Liberalism? (thinking in the tracks of Foucault)

12.   Marc Crépon – The Invention of the Other : The Event of the Untranslatable

13.   Milind Wakankar – Religion after Religion: Plato after Badiou in the Light of Modern Indian Thought (Aurobindo, K. C. Bhattacharya, Bedkar)

14.   Nimmi Menike and Sanjay Kaushal – Wounding the Self – Writing the Other.

15.   Paul Patton -- Poststructuralism and political normativity: the case of Deleuze

16.   Prasenjit Biswas – Foucault and Derrida on Truth and Meaning : A Semnatic, Political and Ethical Reapprisal.

17.   Ranu Uniyal – ‘Somewhere there must be people who are like me’ – A Reading of Hélène Cixous

18.   Rustam Singh – Not this, Not that: Maurice Blanchot and Poststructuralism.

19.   Saitya Brata Das – The Abyss and the Volcano.

20.   Samir Gandesha -- TBA

21.   Sandhya Devesan -- The Body of Knowledge: Notes on the Stigmatext.

22.   Saumyabrata Chaudhury – The French Revolution of Indian History: Notes on Comparative Politics and Incomparable Events

23.   Saurav Kargupta – Postcolonial Matrix and the Problem of the Human: Preliminary Conjectures.

24.   Siby K. George -- Constitutive Theories of Language and the Politics of Change

25.   Sukalpa Bhattacharya – Body-Reparation-Invention: Cixous and Derrida on “Feminine Writing”

26.   Vinod K.Kalidasan – Learning to Live with Specters: Hauntology, Memory and Language in ‘Specters of Marx.’