4th Annual Conference, Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA), University of Leeds, September 3-5, 2008.

The TaPRA Theatre, Performance and Philosophy Working Group would like to invite proposals for papers for this conference. Please send abstracts with a brief biographical note to the convenors, Professor Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe dmeyerdinkgrafe@lincoln.ac.uk or Dr Dan WattD.P.Watt@lboro.ac.uk by the deadline of 30 June 2008.

Theatre Performance and Philosophy: Mission Statement: Ever since Aristotle's Poetics in the West, and Natyashastra in what is now South Asia, philosophy has played a major role in relation to theatre, both in explaining the phenomena associated with theatre and in influencing theatre practice and theory. Besides examining the often overlooked historical links between philosophy and theatre in the works and plays of given thinkers like Hegel and Sartre, of particular interest to the TaPRA Theatre, Performance and Philosophy working group will be the use of theatrical metaphors in philosophy and the notion of the "performative" and performance, from Austin's How To Do Things withWords to Derrida's "Signature, Event, Context". The radical transformations of philosophy undertaken by thinkers such as Nietzsche, Lyotard, Deleuze, Bataille, Debord, and Baudrillard offer philosophy itself as a theatre in which its poetic aspect is asserted as irreducible to any political or social agenda that may seek to define it. In examining the links between recent philosophical enquiry and theatre and performance this working group will explore the potential practical and theoretical implications of such a turn.

Working Methods: The TPP working group will meet annually at TaPRA conference and maintain a lively debate in between through an email list and research paper presentations at both Lincoln and Loughborough. An outlet for publications exists for appropriate titles, including conference proceedings, in the Rodopi series Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, for which TPP co-convenor Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe serves as general editor, as well as through the refereed web journal at http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/index.htm

Waters, Lindsay. "A Call for Slow Writing." INSIDE HIGHER ED March 10, 2008.

If we want change to happen so that essays become the norm of scholarly publication for tenure for junior people, then we will have to make it happen. It is in our power, but it will not happen unless we make a concerted effort. We need to make changes in our journals, as I described we did with boundary 2 and the Marcus/Sollors. We need to do what we might fear will be dumbing down our publications by insisting upon clearer language set forth in rhythmical sentence. The reason for the persistence of gobbledy-gook is that it’s a lot easier to hide mediocre thinking under the cloak of gobbledy-gook. If we insist upon clarity, we will miss those moments of professional “stuplimity” (to use my dear author Sianne Ngai’s word) caused by the deep unclarity of the sort we get from Zizek. But we’ll win back readers. We want to publish writings people will talk about. The real, dirty secret of academic publishing, as a daring author of a letter to the editor of Nature had the courage to say, is that it’s too easy to get published nowadays: “Let’s admit it. . . one can publish just about anything if one goes low enough down the list of impact factors,” wrote Vladimir Svetlov of the Department of Microbiogology at Ohio State University. There are procedures for refereeing and they make some difference in an international context (this is going to be a bigger and bigger issue in the years to come), but those procedures don’t in and of themselves guarantee anything. In fact, where I hear people talk the most about journals edited according to international standards for refereeing, it often attached to mediocre publications and is a reason for excluding from counting towards one’s record publication in essays it is almost impossible to get into because they have their own, very high standards, like Critical Inquiry. A good journal has a direction, a mission and scholarly goals. The for-profit publishers know how to set up a journal that gets credibility in the most facile way possible. It has become harder to make money from journals since September 11th. The old tricks won’t work, but the authorities in the universities have not adjusted to them and in some way they feed into them, feed into the undermining of scholarly standards. The profit motive undermines true credibility of many scholarly journals. I have been clipping the articles from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other papers that document the assault on the authority of scholarly journals by a number of for-profit operations. It has become a lot more dangerous to edit a scholarly journal, especially in the medical sciences where there is big money to lose when the claims for a Big Pharma product are contested by a scientist. I have a big sheaf of such essays gathered over the last three years. All this would be bad enough were it not that papers like the Wall Street Journal also run essays by — what is the right word for it? — people like Professor Thomas P. Stossel of the Harvard Medical School saying that scholarly journals “are magazines,” no better than the magazines you find in the grocery store with no more authority than such publications. The pull-quote from the essay reads: “Why are scientific journals regarded with such reverence?” This shameful screed was meant to undermine scholarly journals. To say the least such talk is of no help in the effort I am encouraging to bring more authority back to the scholarly journal. . . . Read the rest here: http://insidehighered.com/views/2008/03/10/waters.

"The World in a Phrase: Philosophy and the Aphorism," Institute of Philosophy, University of London, March 14, 2008.

The aphorism - a world of thought compacted into a single phrase - is the oldest written form of literature on the planet. The aphorism is also the oldest form of philosophical writing, dating back to the earliest moral and cosmological musings of the ancient Egyptians and Chinese. Yet there remains no manner of thinking better suited to contemporary times - and this one-day symposium will explore why. Poets, professors, artists, philosophers, psychologists and comedians (and aphorists!) from Europe and the U.S. will gather to discuss and celebrate the aphorism as a privileged vehicle for grappling with the deepest questions facing our world - and will show how the aphorism is just the ticket if you are tired of ideologies but haven't given up on truth. Further details are here: http://www.philosophy.sas.ac.uk/content.php?id=43&pid=12.

Cerbone, David R. "Review of Anthony Kenny's PHILOSOPHY IN THE MODERN WORLD." NDPR March 7, 2008.

Kenny, Anthony. Philosophy in the Modern World. Vol. 4 of A New History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: OUP, 2007. In considering the scope of Kenny's exposition, it is important to note that "modern" modifies "world" rather than "philosophy." The book thus does not cover what is typically covered in a college course on modern philosophy, which usually ranges from Descartes to Kant. Consideration of that era in philosophy was included in the third volume (The Rise of Modern Philosophy). As Kenny notes at the outset, the third volume ended with the death of Hegel, and the present volume continues onward from there to close to the end of the 20th century. In the Introduction, Kenny recounts his struggles with determining a suitable cut-off point for inclusion in the book: Can the philosopher in question still be living? Must he or she be younger than Kenny, who reports being seventy-five? Rather than use demise or his own age as a criterion, Kenny finally settled on a thirty-year rule, thereby excluding from consideration anything written after 1975. Drawing the line there still leaves a considerable swath of philosophy to consider and one of the remarkable achievements of this book is just how much it does manage to cover, and with considerable clarity and rigor (though there are some lamentable lacunae, as I'll suggest below). It is rare indeed that a work in philosophy can move so gracefully from the ethics of Schopenhauer to the logic of Peirce to Croce's aesthetics, but Kenny does just that and a great deal more. That this is the fourth volume of a comprehensive history of Western philosophy makes Kenny's achievements in this particular book even more astonishing. The book is eminently readable, though not easy: as Kenny notes, "philosophy has no shallow end" (p. xv). Still for those wishing to get their feet wet or to fill in some of the gaps in their understanding of the philosophy of this era, this can be an excellent book. However, as I'll try to spell out below, there are some unfortunate gaps in Kenny's own exposition, especially for readers whose interests tend toward 20th century continental philosophy: this audience will have to look elsewhere for filling in those gaps (or, to vary the image, reading this book will leave their feet rather too dry). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12545.

DERRIDA TODAY (Edinburgh University Press)

Derrida Today will focus on what Derrida's thought offers to contemporary debates about politics, society and global affairs. Controversies about power, violence, identity, globalisation, the resurgence of religion, economics and the role of critique all agitate public policy, media dialogue and academic debate. Derrida Today will explore how Derridean thought and deconstruction make significant contributions to this debate, and reconsider the terms on which it takes place. Derrida Today is now inviting papers that deal with the ongoing relevance of Derrida's work and deconstruction in general to contemporary issues; the way it reconfigures the academic and social protocols and languages by which such issues are defined and discussed, and innovative artistic practices that adopt a "deconstructive" approach to how our contemporary situation can be represented. Published: March & November ISSN: 1754-8500 E-ISSN: 1754-8519 Further information is here: http://www.eupjournals.com/journal/drt.

"Methods of Husserl's Phenomenology," Cologne-Leuven Summer School in Phenomenology, Cologne, May 13-17, 2008.

This Summer School is held in English language and it should give an insight in the basic methods of Husserlian phenomenology. The center of the cours will be the method of constitutional analysis, the eidetic method, the reductive methods and genetic intentional-analysis. These methods will be presented in lectures, each day in the time 10-13.00 together with a discussion on this topics. In the afternoon in the time 15-17.00 there will be a textual analysis that should go into some details and in this way help to enhance the understanding. The lecturers are: Prof. Dr. U. Melle (Leuven), Prof. Dr. D. Lohmar (Köln), Dr. H. Peucker (Paderborn) und Dr. J. Brudzinska (Köln / Warschau). We are planning for a level that should help to inform intensively on the topic of methods in phenomenology on a medium level but we are also open for discussions of methodical questions on the level of doctoral students and postdocs.This cours will be also handled as a "Hauptseminar" for the students of the cologne university. To get a qualified certificate for this Hauptseminar a written paper on a topic to be determined by the is expected. This international Summer School is open for students from all countries. Because we have no financial support to offer for participiants we strongly encourage you to apply for short term grants at your university or other institutions. Time: Tuesday-Saturday 13-17. Mai 2008 Each day 10-13.00 and 15-17.00 Room: University of Cologne, Main Building, Room 4.016 IMPORTANT: Written registration is required because of limited capacities!Registration is to be done with the secretary of the Cologne Husserl-Archive:monika.heidenreich@uni-koeln.de

"Être à la vérité: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1908-2008," Basel University, March 11-15, 2008.

The question of truth was one of the fundamental philosophical questions which challenged the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty throughout his life. He developed his reflections on the (im)possibility of truth – starting with a critique of René Descartes’ body-soul-consciousness-separation – through a thorough reading of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, and Hegelian dialectics, as well as of different forms of ontology, especially modern ontology, including the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. On this background, his questioning of truth reflected not only the philosophical conception of truth, but also truth in the natural sciences as well as in art, music and literature. The naïve understanding of truth in être au monde (being towards the world) is the starting point for his reflection in all periods of his work. It might be merely a belief – as M. Merleau-Ponty says – that the world and other humans are given in perception, yet this belief grounds the philosophical doubt of perception and its truth. Although starting from perceptive certainty might be grounded in belief, it is possible to reflect on this starting point itself. M. Merleau-Ponty approaches perceptive certainty again and again from different perspectives and situates it in different contexts. In his first book, The Structure of Behaviour, he develops a holistic conception of behaviour based on Gestalt theoretical concepts. This approach links a double critique of realist and idealist research and philosophy. He conceives behaviour as being at the same time, both perceptible and internally structured by non-intellectual connections. In his second book, Phenomenology of Perception, M. Merleau-Ponty explicitly speaks of “perception as access to truth” (PP XI (French original) / XVII (English translation)). Reflection on perception is the privileged approach for clarifying the question of the truth of être au monde (being towards the world). In his unfinished book, The Prose of the World, he develops, through a dialectical relation of linguistic sense in literature and perceptive sense in art, a conception of sense which is not representational but structural. However, his thesis is based on a cultural and historical paradigm that renders the possibility and the status of formal truth a problem. As the question of truth concerns literature, art, music, history, culture, society, and politics, as well as the natural sciences and philosophy, including not only epistemology and logic, but also ontology and aesthetics, Maurice Merleau-Ponty has to relinquish his cultural and historical paradigm for a more fundamental approach. In his last book, The Visible and the Invisible, he provides a sketch of an indirect ontology which approaches truth by reflecting on the other (the world, the other human and the other of the self) as neither the same nor completely different. Être à la vérité (being towards truth) is necessarily grounded in être au monde (being towards the world) and être à l’autre (being towards the other). The question of truth – one of the fundamental questions of Western philosophy – is resituated in M. Merleau-Ponty’s work in a fundamental way. Accordingly, M. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is of decisive impact for philosophy at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. The fact of the growing importance of his philosophy, not only in France and Germany but also in the US and Asia, is therefore no surprise. This conference, celebrating his centenary, brings together different generations of renowned specialists of M. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy from different philosophical disciplines and several continents. For further information: http://www.phenomenology.ro/newsletter/pages/Ponty_Basel_2008.html.

Schlinger, Henry D. "Consciousness is Nothing But a Word." eSKEPTIC February 27, 2008.

In 1991, Daniel Dennett published his tome, Consciousness Explained. Yet, ten years later he penned an article titled “Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?” If he had to ask the question, the answer seems obvious. English-speaking philosophers and psychologists have been trying to understand consciousness at least since John Locke introduced the word into the English language in the 17th century. But despite the best efforts of those who’ve thrown their hats into the ring, we haven’t made much progress. Obviously, a different approach is needed. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-02-27.html#feature.

Holt, Jim. "Good Instincts." NEW YORK TIMES March 9, 2008.

Charity, do-gooding, philanthropy it’s all just selfishness masquerading as virtue. So says the cynic. In modern times, the theory that each of us, despite occasional appearances of self-sacrificial nobility, is ultimately and invariably looking out for No. 1 got a big boost from Darwin’s theory of evolution. By the logic of natural selection, any tendency to act selflessly ought to be snuffed out in the struggle to survive and propagate. So if someone seems to be behaving as an altruist — say, by giving away a fortune to relieve the sufferings of others — that person is really following the selfish dictates of his own genes. The evolutionary psychologist Randolph Nesse confessed that he slept badly for many nights after absorbing this supposed discovery, which he called “one of the most disturbing in the history of science.” . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

Pevere, Geoff. "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." TORONTO STAR March 1, 2008.

With the publication of his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859, the controversy-averse, socially shy British naturalist (described by one biographer as "a reclusive biologist who wrote books") almost single-handedly upended the prevailing paradigm concerning the relationship between man, God and Nature. Where a concept of divine design in nature had prevailed for centuries, Darwin – a non-religious scientific materialist – offered something radically, startlingly and heretically different: a vision of nature processing change in life forms by force of circumstance, a process of constant situational adaptation that saw survival as the only `design' at work. Ergo, dinosaurs go when they can no longer cut it, and man only comes along when natural circumstances permit. Small wonder Darwin himself sat on the revelation for years before publishing it. He knew what was coming. As he wrote in a letter, he felt like he was "committing murder." . . . Read the rest here: http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/308305.

Kirsch, Adam. "Searching For Joseph Conrad." NEW YORK SUN March 5, 2008.

Shortly after his 36th birthday, Conrad gave it all up for good, exchanging the most romantic of callings for the most solitary and sedentary. In just a few years, he made himself into a great writer in English — not even his second language but his third, after French — and invented a new kind of novel, in which adventure and intrigue are raised to the level of moral parable. His fascination with human evil, with the cruelty and existential void lurking beneath the surface of advanced European civilization, qualifies Conrad as perhaps the first modernist writer. "I am modern," he defiantly wrote after one publisher rejected him — so much so that it took decades for his reputation to spread beyond a small circle of admirers. It makes sense that Conrad did not become genuinely popular until World War I, when the public was finally ready to hear the prophecy in Kurtz's dying words in Heart of Darkness: "The horror! The horror!" . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nysun.com/article/72341.

Porter, Peter. "How Shakespeare Started Out." TIMES March 5, 2008.

One of the fascinations of literary scholarship is its hold on writers of our own time. Contemporary poets read Shakespeare almost as if he were a rival, or some sort of perennial vade mecum of technical forms and approaches. John Berryman, embodying that special concept of his time, the “anxiety of influence”, went so far as to lament having written so much verse when he might have spent his life editing King Lear. Even without the expanding needs of modern education, Shakespeare would be with us in hundreds of studies year by year. What remains to be said that is new? Must all evaluation be reassessment in historical and lexicographical terms, or forays into literary value-judging, a procedure with hundreds of books behind it, from ancient Bradley to latest Kermode? The present fascination with Shakespeare’s life and some of its more speculative corners (E. A. J. Honigman’s Lost Years, James Shapiro’s 1599 and Charles Nicholls’s The Lodger) turns out to be as packed with basic literary criticism as any of their more orthodox predecessors. However equivocal Shakespeare’s record may be, his is one of the most familiar presences in our lives. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3489393.ece?print=yes.

Tomalin, Claire. "The Devil's Advocate [on Milton]." GUARDIAN March 1, 2008.

When I was invited by my publishers to choose any English poet for a "selected poems" I found myself saying, almost without a pause to think, "Milton". I confess I was surprised that they took the idea on board so readily. John Milton is a great name, but today he is not a popular poet. To me the early poems are sumptuous, the sonnets witty, magnificent and moving by turns, and Paradise Lost as thrilling as a novel. Yet I suspect that he does not fit easily into our age of performance poetry, and that he may be read less than he deserves to be. His reputation as a bad-tempered husband and father is held against him. But it seems to me that the man who emerges from the poems is a man possessed by natural and human beauty, by dreams, myths and legends, a man full of ideas that are sometimes in conflict with one another; who was prepared to give up his vocation as a poet for years in order to serve a political cause; and who overcame blindness to write his greatest work, full of exquisitely imagined scenes. However gnarled and crusty a man, he is a poet who commands attention. . . . Read the rest here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2261041,00.html.

CFP: "Philosophy as Literature," THE EUROPEAN LEGACY (2009)‏.

The European Legacy hereby invites contributions on the topic of “Philosophy as Literature.” The issue will feature a conversation on the relationship philosophy-literature with GIUSEPPE MAZZOTTA (Sterling Professor of the Humanities for Italian, Yale University), ALEXANDER NEHAMAS (Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Princeton University) & SIMON CRITCHLEY (Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research). The European Legacy, published by Routledge, is the official journal of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10848770.asp CALL FOR PAPERS: Like novelists, historians or columnists, philosophers, too, are writers. They make sophisticated use of language, and employ – whether deliberately or not – specific rhetorical and stylistic devices, as well as certain repertoires of metaphors, images and symbols. As writers, philosophers also have to adjust their writing to specific audiences, tailor it to serve specific purposes, and strategically choose one genre over another, with all its rules, protocols, and constraints. In short, it is crucial for philosophers – if they are to persuade readers – to advance their ideas following certain aesthetic rules, rhetorical procedures and strategies of persuasion. This has led some authors to speak of “the literariness of philosophical texts” (Berel Lang) as something indistinguishable from the philosophical substance and relevance of those texts. A writer’s relationship to language, writing and weaving of narratives in general is always complex. For, if we are to believe Heidegger, although “man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, …in fact language remains the master of man.” Therefore, it might well be the case that – as often happen with writers – philosophers, too, go through some peculiar experiences: sometimes, for example, they become so completely seduced by language that they almost lose themselves in the act of writing and come to utter whatever language compels them to; some other times, they become so deeply caught up in their own discourse that it becomes difficult for them to separate from it: on such occasions they are not very different from those novelists who end up becoming characters in the narratives they are weaving. The implication is that a work of philosophy might well be seen as a work of (literary) art, as an autonomous world, for whose creation the author’s personal vision, imagination, playfulness and inventiveness play a major role. In other words, according to this view, The Critique of Pure Reason is, in a fundamental way, much closer to Hamlet or The Brothers Karamazov than to, say, On the Origin of Species. With this in mind, some scholars of philosophy have been in a position to say that philosophy is nothing other than literature. Others, more cautious, have allowed philosophy to be literature only to some degree or under circumstances. Then, there are, of course, those for whom philosophy does not have anything to do with literature. We invite submissions dealing with the multifaceted relationship between philosophy and literature, some aspects of which have been pointed to above. Interdisciplinary approaches (combining, for example, philosophy, literary theory and intellectual history) are particularly encouraged. Here are only some of the possible topics: - The employment of literary categories (genre, tropes, narrative, plot, point of view, etc.) in the production of philosophical texts - The genres of philosophical writing (dialogue, treatise, meditation, journal article, etc) and their significance for the content of those writings; how exactly the adoption of a certain genre shapes the philosophizing in question - Philosophical styles: styles of writing / styles of philosophizing; “the anatomy of the philosophical style” (Berel Lang) - The variety of literary practices in the history of philosophy - The philosophers’ rhetoric; philosophy of rhetoric / rhetoric of philosophy - Canons and canonization in the history of philosophy - Author/authorship/authority in the production of philosophical texts; author’s “voice”; the use of personae, masks, masquerades - Philosophy as expression of the self (philosophy and autobiography) - The art of the “literary philosophers” (Plato, Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Vico, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Unamuno, Benjamin, Sartre, Camus, Cioran, etc) - Recent philosophizing on the relationship philosophy-literature (contributions dedicated to the work of Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor Adorno, Stanley Cavell, Alexander Nehamas, Slavoj Zizek, Jean-Luc Nancy, Berel Lang, Iris Murdoch, Simon Critchley, etc) - Literary theorists/historians on the relationship philosophy-literature (contributions dedicated to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Rene Wellek, Wolfgang Iser, Hayden White, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Umberto Eco, etc) SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES: Deadline for submissions: January 1, 2009 Length: 6000 words All articles and reviews submitted to The European Legacy undergo peer-review. Manuscripts and Notes, typed double-spaced, should be submitted to the Guest Editor as e-mail attachments, using WordPerfect or Microsoft Word. The author’s full address should be supplied as a footnote to the title page. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition. You can submit your contributions to: bradatan@hotmail.com Please allow at least 4-6 months for the review process and editorial decisions. Receipt of materials will be confirmed by email. Unless otherwise noted in this Call for Papers, the Instructions for Authors on the journal’s webpage are adopted for this issue: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1084-8770&linktype=44 We look forward to your submissions! Sincerely, Costica Bradatan Guest Editor – “The European Legacy” Assistant Professor of Honors – Texas Tech University http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/cbradata

Miller, David Marshall. "Review of Stephen Gaukroger's THE EMERGENCE OF A SCIENTIFIC CULTURE." NDPR March 3, 2008.

Gaukroger, Stephen. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685. Oxford: OUP, 2006. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture identifies science both "as a particular kind of cognitive practice, and as a particular kind of cultural product." With this dual view, Gaukroger happily steps out of the old debate in which, broadly speaking, philosophically-inclined "internalist" historians saw science as an intellectual discipline, socio-cultural "externalist" historians viewed science merely as a human practice, and both approaches severely distorted the object of their study by denigrating the importance of the other. By examining science as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon, without regard to the distinction, Gaukroger offers a more accurate, less ideological understanding of science and its history. Indeed, his interest in how the cognitive values of science came to possess cultural significance could have barely been stated, let alone answered, in the context of either internalism or externalism since it presumes that intellectual and cultural values are on a par. At the very least, Gaukroger's starting observation that the intellectual enterprise of Western science gained a cultural traction unique among world cultures frames a novel and promising mode of historical enquiry. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12503.

"Hermeneutics and the Humanities," Jagiellonian University, Kraków, March 27-28, 2008.

Michał Paweł Markowski, Jagiellonian University, Kraków "In Two Moments. Toward the Hermeneutics of Non-Understanding" Hans Ruin, Södertörn Hogskola, Sweden "The Task of Thinking in the Gestell: Hermeneutic Reflections on Heidegger´s Later Thought" Paweł Dybel, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw "The Concept of Historicity of Understanding in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics" Andrzej Wiercinski, International Institute for Hermeneutics, University of Toronto, and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany "Paul Ricoeur’s Indirect Path to Understanding" Leonard Neuger, Stockholm University "What does Chekhov’s Siren Whisper to Us?: The Inevitability of the 'Impossible' Creation of the Humanities" Adam Lipszyc, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw "Remembrance as Lamentation: Scholem, Benjamin, Sebald" Marcia Schuback, Södertörn Hogskola, Sweden "Imaginative Hermeneutics and the Humanities" Boyd Blundell, Loyola University New Orleans, USA "Naive Sophistication: Hermeneutics and the New Humanities" Sean J. McGrath, Humboldt Fellow, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany and Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada "The Hermeneutics of the Symbol: The Impact of Psychoanalysis on the Humanities" For the complete programme (including abstracts), please visit: http://www.phenomenology.ro/newsletter/pages/Hermeneutics%20and%20the%20Humanities.pdf.

Muller, Jerry Z. "Us and Them: the Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism." FOREIGN AFFAIRS March / April 2008.

Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism tend to stress the contingent elements of group identity -- the extent to which national consciousness is culturally and politically manufactured by ideologists and politicians. They regularly invoke Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities," as if demonstrating that nationalism is constructed will rob the concept of its power. It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never as natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim. Yet it would be a mistake to think that because nationalism is partly constructed it is therefore fragile or infinitely malleable. Ethnonationalism was not a chance detour in European history: it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, and in one form or another, it will remain for many generations to come. One can only profit from facing it directly. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87203/jerry-z-muller/us-and-them.html?mode=print.

Ford, Liz, et al. "Eagleton Faces Axe at Manchester." GUARDIAN February 7, 2008.

Terry Eagleton, Britain's leading Marxist literary critic, faces the axe at Manchester University where he has been involved in one of the most ferocious literary spats of recent years with the novelist Martin Amis. . . . In July Eagleton reaches retirement age and speculation is mounting about his future at Manchester, which is in the process of losing 650 jobs to clear a £30m debt. . . . Read the rest here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2253955,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10.

John, Jeremiah. "Review of Ido Geiger's THE FOUNDING ACT OF MODERN ETHICAL LIFE." NDPR February 24, 2008.

Geiger, Ido. The Founding Act of Modern Ethical Life: Hegel's Critique of Kant's Moral and Political Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. It is an indication of the richness of Hegel's philosophy and of the relevance of much English-speaking Hegel scholarship that literature on Hegel's practical philosophy, even after a generation of careful, philosophically rigorous book-length treatments, continues to explore new territory and to show the importance of Hegel's thought to enduring issues in moral and political philosophy. Ido Geiger's The Founding Act of Modern Ethical Life is a fine example of this trend. The Founding Act is also quite striking and unusual, however, on two counts. First, in no more than 158 pages, Geiger's reach spans from Kantian moral philosophy, to Hegel's philosophy of action, philosophy of history, and political philosophy, to the issue of political founding in Plato's Republic. Geiger navigates this territory with ease, also bringing to bear contemporary thinkers such as Lacan, Derrida, Arendt and Stanley Cavell. Second, he cuts against the grain of many standard interpretations of Hegel from the past half-century. Though I find some of his interpretive claims unconvincing, Geiger presents elegant solutions to many tough puzzles in The Founding Act, and caused me to change my opinion on more than one issue in Hegel. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu:80/review.cfm?id=12483.

PUB: "Narratology of Tellability and Visual Mechanics." AMSTERDAM INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL NARRATOLOGY 4 (2007).

I. The ‘Event’ and The ‘Eventfulness’. Editorial note. Wolf Schmid: Eventfulness as a Narratological Category. Jan Christoph Meister: Events are us. Peter Hühn: Eventfulness in Poetry and Prose Fiction. Benjamin Biebuyck: Figurativeness figuring as a Condenser between Event and Action. (How Tropes Generate Additional Dimensions of Narrativity). Günter Martens: Narrative Notability and Discourse Events between Rhetoric and Narratology. Eyal Segal: Narrativity and the Closure of Event Sequences. II. Narrative Travels and Visual Stories Mieke Bal: A Thousand and One Voices. Cinema Suitcase: Mille et un jours (2003). III. Archeological Narrative and the ‘Interartistic’ Disclosure. Fee-Alexandra Haase: An Intertextual Reading of a Myth: Between Poetry, Myth, Cult Topography, and History. (Notes on Revisionism in Narrative Traditions of the Mythos of Aphrodite Kypris in Ancient Greek Fragments Attributed to Homer and the Cypria.) Vassilena Kolarova: The Interartistic Concept in Kandinsky’s Paintings. The Image/Text problem. IV. The Sign-Structures, Authors and Characters. Willem G. Weststeijn: Towards a Cognitive Theory of Character. Dennis Ioffe: Sign-Systems, Symbolist Narration, and the Notion of the Transgressive ‘plastic gesture’. (‘Homo Somatikos’ in Russian Modernist Life-Creation). The journal's homepage is here: http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/index.html.