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Research Seminar in Post-Kantian European Philosophy, 2019/2020

Unless otherwise stated, Post-Kantian European Philosophy Research Group seminars take place on Tuesdays, 5:30–7:30pm in Room S0.11 (ground floor of Social Studies). All welcome. For further information, please contact tbc

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Postgraduate Work in Progress Seminar

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Location: S0.08/online

Mostyn Taylor Crocket’s ‘Towards a Genealogy of Modernity: Time and History in Althusser, Balibar and Foucault’.

Abstract

In this paper I investigate the possibility of a genealogical study of modernity. Foucauldian genealogy is an important historical approach but is one that has, I argue, been unable to properly analyse what I call combinatory phenomena (e.g. modernity or capitalism). I suggest that this inability stems from genealogy’s rejection of totalization. I claim that turning to Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar’s contributions to Reading Capital can provide us with a way of understanding ‘combinatory phenomena’ which does not lapse into a totalization. I show how their critique of traditional historical periodization and their theory of ‘heterogenous temporalities’ allows us to understand the social formation as constructed out of multiple times and histories. Finally, I show how this can serve as the theoretical basis of a method which investigates the connections between genealogies in producing ‘combinatory phenomena’, taking Foucault’s genealogies as my examples.

 

 

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