Collectives in Contemporary French Thought

Program:

9.00-9.10 Welcome

9.10-9.50 Russell Grigg (Deakin), “Thinking about groups psychoanalytically: the four discourses as social bonds”

9.50-10.30 Monte Pemberton, “Maurice Halbwachs and the Collective Memory”

10.30-11.00 Morning tea

11.00-11.40 Mark Howard (Monash), “Banging pots and doors: Rancière’s contempt for the sociology of social movements”

11.40-12.20 Sean Bowden (Deakin), “Thinking about Collective Agency: Insights from Anglo-American and Contemporary French Thought”

12.20-1.20 Lunch

1.20-2.00 Simone Bignall (UNSW), “Postcolonial Negotiations: Group Formation and the Politics of Cooperation”

2.00-2.40 Dale Clisby (Deakin), “Collective action in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: answering the critique of Hallward”

2.40-3.20 Paul Hammond (Memphis), “Social Groups as Deleuzian Multiplicities”

3.20-3.50 Afternoon tea

3.50-4.30 Emily Finlay (Monash), “Maurice Blanchot and the Collective Space of the Written Word”

4.30-5.10 James Williams (Dundee), “Collectives, groups and signs”

5.10-5.30 Discussion and close

Room North 3, Level 2, Building BC, Deakin University, Burwood Campus

In recent years, philosophers working in the Anglo-American tradition have paid a significant amount of attention to groups. Particular areas of focus have included collective intentionality, the ontology of collective action, and collective responsibility. On the other hand, while not necessarily sharing the same concerns, French philosophical thought in the 20th and 21st centuries has seen the proliferation of a number of novel ways of thinking about groups and other collective phenomena: Lacan's work on the 'big Other'; Sartre's analysis of the formation and structure of groups in the Critique of Dialectical Reason; Simondon's work on psychic and collective individuation; Deleuze's and Guattari's thinking about the relation between 'collective assemblages of enunciation' and 'machinic assemblages of bodies'; Badiou's (but also Rancière's) work on collective political subjects, and so on.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers interested in exploring the contributions that contemporary French thought can make to recent philosophical theorizing about groups. In particular, we are interested in exploring novel ways to conceptualize the relation between individuals who can be said to 'share' intentions and agency.

The workshop is hosted by the European Philosophy and the History of Ideas research group (http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/centre-for-citizenship-and-globalisation/research/thematic-research-groups/ephi).