"Ontology and Politics," Department of Politics, Queen Mary College, University of London, June 16, 2008.

Recent work in political theory has often revolved around the question of the relation between ontology and politics . For all of their differences, Derrida, Nancy, Hardt and Negri, Deleuze, Laclau, Butler, Connolly, Zizek, Foucault, and Agamben (to name but a few) have sought to question the foundations of political thought, and also philosophy's relation to the political conditions within which it arises. While politics can no longer lay claim to secure grounds, the gesture of rethinking ontology cannot be separated or abstracted from the society in which it arises. The relation between ontology and politics is consequently a crucial question for both philosophy and politics . This workshop aims to explore the intersections of politics and ontology and the resulting implications for thinking the political and the philosophical. Programme: 9:00am Registration 9:30am Panel 1: Delimiting the Absent Grounds of the Political:

• Kevin Inston (University College London): "Representing the Unrepresentable: Rousseau's Legislator and the Impossible Object of the People."
• Alexandros Kioupkiolis (University of Cyprus): "Keeping It Open: Ontology, Ethics, Knowledge and Radical Democracy."
• Gerald Moore (Université Paris XII): "To Have Done with The End of Sacrifice."

11:10am Coffee/Tea Break

11:30 Panel 2: The Political Subject Between Immanence and Transcendence:

• Nemonie Craven (Queen Mary): "Je suis nécessaire à la justice. Emmanuel Levinas, from conatus to fidélité a soi."
• Patricia Farrell (Manchester Metropolitan): "Responsibility without capability, responsibility within capability: the encounter with the Other in Levinas and Deleuze.
• Giorgos Fourtounis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki): "Immanence and Subjection: Foucault, Althusser and the aporia of the subject."

1:10pm Lunch Break

2:15pm Panel 3: Ontology and Engagements with Politics:

• Ignaas Devisch & Kathleen Vandeputte (Ghent University): "Nancy and Ontological Pluralism: the Absence of a Political Program."
• Johanna Oksala (University of Dundee): "Foucault's Politicisation of Ontology."
• Paul Reynolds (Edge Hill): "Ontologies, Politics, Dialectics: the Ordering of Stable and Unstable Moments."

4:15pm Keynote Address:

• Simon Critchley (New School)
• Andrew Benjamin (Monash University)

Further information is here: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/Pol%20Theory%20Conference/index.html.