Philosophy and the Outside

On one level, the outside signifies philosophy’s problematic relation to ‘non-philosophical’ discourses. For instance, art, politics and science have, in various ways, been historically constituted as an outside to philosophy. Alternatively, the outside can denote practices or forms of experience that cannot be subsumed within the confines of philosophical thought. Crucially, how are we to conceive the encounter between philosophy and the outside; what happens in the process of a ‘thing’ or experience being absorbed into philosophical thought? Different questions thus begin to emerge. Is philosophy necessarily related to the question of the outside? Is the outside the very condition of possibility for philosophy? Why do certain ‘outsides’ become part of philosophical discourse, and others remain antagonistic to it? Why are certain outsides privileged? How does the outside command what philosophy becomes - must we be forced to think? If philosophy is a conditioned discourse rather than an external arbiter, what becomes of its place and role in relation to the outside? Is this outside a resource or an excluded zone?

Philosophy qua tradition has also been continuously confronted with other traditions of thought and radical practices, without including them in its systems of reference. In such encounters, defining ‘philosophy’ is always at stake. Can the relationship between philosophy and its outside be reciprocal, or will the tradition always be in a position of domination? Is philosophy destined to remain ‘Western’, and its history Eurocentric? How far can we understand this outside spatially?

Finally, to what extent do these external encounters shed light on another type of outside, that which we might define as philosophy’s inner outside? Are there unexplored resources within philosophy that could possibly allow a different relation to the complexity of the outside, and to the problems posed by new practices and new experiences?

Day 1

Thursday, 14 June 2012

John Galsworthy Building, Room 0001

18.00-20.00 – Keynote Address by Jason Read (The University of Southern Maine) “The Relations of Production: The Ontology and Political Economy of Transindividuality”

20.00 – Drinks at The Grove Tavern (9 Grove Rd, Surbiton, KT6 4BX)

Day 2

Friday, 15 June 2012

John Galsworthy Building, Room 0001

10:00-10:20 – Welcome and Introduction Panel 1: Chair: Andres Saenz de Sicilia

10:20-10:40 – ‘Getting into Philosophy: Fichte, Leibniz, and the Difference Within’, John Van Houdt (Tilburg University)

10:40-11:00 – 'Kantian Mathematical/Dynamical Being and the Absolute Outside', Steve Howard (CRMEP Kingston)

11:00-11:20 – 'What is Called Thinking?: Heidegger and Hölderlin's Mnemosyne', Jana Elsen (University of Sussex)

11:20-11:45 – Questions 11:45-12:00 – Break 

Panel 2: Artistic Outsides, Chair: Iain Campbell

12:00-12:20 – ‘Production, Thought, Fatigue: Philosophy and the Givens of Art’, Christopher Law (CRMEP Kingston)

12:20-12:40 – ‘Badiou and Robbe-Grillet’, Tom Allen (Roehampton University)

12:40-13:00 – Questions

13:00-14:30 – Lunch

Panel 3: Hegel and Marx, Chair: George Tomlinson

14:30-14:50 – ‘The Productive Outside of the Philosophical Science in Hegel’s Encyclopaedia’, Ian Jakobi (CRMEP Kingston) 

14:50-15:10 – ‘Who Acts Abstractly?: A Transcendental Materialist Reading of Hegel’s ‘Who Thinks Abstractly?’’, Daniel Burnfin (Catholic University of Leuven)

15:10-15:30 – Questions

15:30-15:45 – Break

Panel 4: Dialectical and Post-Dialectical Reflections, Chair: Hammam Aldouri

15:45-16:05 – John Lumsden: ‘Adorno and the Attempt to Break Out of Idealism’, John Lumsden (University of Essex)

16:05-16:25 – '"...And War There is": Derrida on Levinas's Anti-Hegelianism', Mauro Senatore (Kingston University)

16:25-16:45 – ‘Philosophy and its Feminine Outside: A Material Reconfiguration’, Nicola Rubczak (Independent Scholar)

16:45-17:10 – Questions 17.10-17:30 – Closing remarks

17.30 – Drinks at The Grove Tavern (9 Grove Rd, Surbiton, KT6 4BX)

For more information, and to register, please email the following address: [email protected]