Nancy Redoubled: A Politics of Sense and a Sense of Politics

'Every sensory register thus bears with it both its simple nature and its tense, attentive or anxious state: seeing and looking, smelling and sniffing or scenting, tasting and savouring, touching and feeling or palpating, hearing and listening.' Nancy: Listening (2002) p. 5

Jean Luc Nancy (1940- ) offers a rich and diverse group of enquiries for discussion, dissection and appropriation. The diversity of register (partage des voix) and the detailed discussion of individual art practices (evidence du film) make up a formidable call for a reassessment of the task and goals of aesthetics, and of any philosophy of art. The discussions of inoperative and confronted community, of the inheritance of Marxism and communist hope, and of the unsacrificeable disrupt common places about the form and function of political theory.

When brought to bear on each other these two lines of enquiry form no less than a major innovation in the ordering and disordering of the sub-disciplines of philosophy, and of their role in the formation and disruption of other disciplines. By opening up discussion of these thematics to further interrogation our three speakers will provide a framing for a more thoroughgoing reception of these notions, of their grounds and prospects.

This is a free event open to all.

Contacts: Nick Aldridge, MMU, [email protected] Joanna Hodge, MMU [email protected] Henry Somers Hall, MMU, [email protected] David Webb, University of Staffordshire, [email protected]