Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Parr (T.Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Speaker: Naomi Waltham-Smith (Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Warwick)

Title: 'Homofaunie: Non-Human Tonalities of Listening in Derrida and Cixous'

Speaker: Rachel Fraser (Oxford)

Title: 'Narrative Testimony'

Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Parr (T.Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Guest Speakers:

Daniele Lorenzini  (Warwick)

Title: Genealogy, Possibilization, and (Post-)Critique

 David Owen (Southampton)

Title: Genealogy as Re-Problematization: Autonomy, Aspect-Change and Limits

Speaker: Tom Crowther

Title: Philosophy and Mental Health

Speakers: Tom Crowther (Warwick) and Guy Longworth (Warwick)

Titles: 'Knowledge, Abilities, and Wakeful Consciousness' (TC) and 'Learning from Theaetetus' (GL)

Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Parr (T.Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Speaker: Josh Robinson (School of English, Communications, Philosophy, Cardiff)

Title: 'Crisis in Theory'

Josh Robinson teaches modern and contemporary critical theory in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. Most recently, he is author of Adorno’s Poetics of Form, which appeared last year in SUNY’s Contemporary Continental Philosophy series): https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6556-adornos-poetics-of-form.aspx

Crisis in Theory: Beyond the Representational Paradigm

This paper aspires to offer a critical account of a set of assumptions that are widespread in literary and critical theory, both in its historical emergence (as seen primarily through its institutional histories) and in several more recent developments (including the various ‘turns’ that arise from time to time. My focus is on what I term the representational paradigm: in its simplest and broadest formulation, the assumption, explicit or otherwise, within literary studies that works of literature matter insofar as they are representative; that what matters about literary works is their representative character.

This paradigm persists in multiple, not always interdependent (or even necessarily compatible) manifestations, which include: an analytical focus on events represented within works of literature (what might be called a focus on content at the expense of form); a set of analytical procedures that rely on an implicit theory of allegory whereby readings are produced that see elements of a work as representing elements outside it; attempts to reconfigure the canon and/or redesign our curricula such that the works and authors within it are more representative of global society. I outline a tentative taxonomy of these different versions of representationalism, and relate them to a set of shared democratic assumptions about political representation—assumptions which have a tendency to place themselves beyond scrutiny. I argue that while the democratic aspirations expressed at least in progressive versions of representationalism paradigm constitute a commendable alternative to the (not only cultural) conservatism of the tendencies against which they are in many respects a reaction, these underlying assumptions ultimately overlook or even limit the potential of literature’s ways of thinking to contribute to a transformation of our understanding of the political. I thus set out some of the ways in which criticism and theory might move beyond the representational paradigm.

In the first part of the seminar, Stephanie Redding (Centre for Student Careers and Skills) will give a presentation on 'Philosophy Postgrads: Exploring All Your Options', which will be about how to go about finding a job once you've completed your degree.

The second part of this seminar will be led by Tom Crowther, and will focus on 'How to Write an MA (or MPhil) Dissertation'. MA students are particularly encouraged to attend this workshop, since the issues are of particular relevance to them. But everyone is invited!

Session following on from 16 January:

Speakers: Tom Crowther (Warwick) and Guy Longworth (Warwick)

Titles: 'Knowledge, Abilities, and Wakeful Consciousness' (TC) and 'Learning from Theaetetus' (GL)

Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Parr (T.Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Speaker: Nina Power (Roehampton)

Title: 'Philosophies of the Wolf: Freud and Deleuze & Guattari

Speaker: Daniele Lorenzini (Warwick)

Title: 'Understanding and Acknowledging: Some Remarks on the Illocutionary/Perlocutionary Distinction'

Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Parr (T. Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Speaker: Simone Kotva (Cambridge)

Title: 'An Enquiry Concerning Non-Human Understanding: Philosophy, Ecstasy and Ecological Thinking'

Speaker: Peter Adamson (LMU Munich; KCL)

Title: 'Self-Knowledge in Islamic Philosophy'

Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Parr (T.Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Speaker: Kate Soper (Philosophy, University of Brighton/London Metropolitan University)

Title: 'The Dialectics of Progress: Towards a Post-Growth Aesthetic and Politics of Prosperity'

Speaker: Anil Gomes (Oxford)

Title: Lichtenberg's Puzzle

"Sometime in 1793 or 1794, the German philosopher, physicist, and aphorist George Christoph Lichtenberg writes in his notebook: ‘One should say it is thinking, just as one says, it is lightning. To say cogito is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement’ (my translation). Lichtenberg’s claim was influential on a range of philosophers, including Ernst Mach, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein. But – I’ll suggest – the problem which he is pressing has been misunderstood. I’ll try and set out the nature of the puzzle and explain why it has force. It will raise a set of questions about the kind of agency involved in conscious thought."

Papers are circulated prior to the seminar. Please contact Tom Par (T.Parr@warwick.ac.uk) for further information

This is a unique opportunity to hear from fantastic female talent writing in many fields of philosophy. Whether you are considering postgraduate study or simply pursuing an interest in philosophy, there will be something to engage you. We are pleased to welcome staff from The University of Warwick for a Q&A panel as well as two guest speakers:

Helen Steward (University of Leeds) is the Deputy Head of The School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science. She is President of the Aristotelian Society, as well as being one of the leading philosophers in the country pioneering work in philosophy of action, free will and philosophy of the mind.

Fabienne Peter (University of Warwick) is the Head of the Department of Philosophy. Before coming to Warwick in 2004, she taught at the University of Basel and was Postdoc at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Bergson on Time and Freedom

With Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick), Emily Herring (Leeds) and Mark Sinclair (Roehampton)

Guest Speaker: David Bather Woods

Title: What is the Good of Public Philosophy?

ABSTRACT:

There has been a boom in public philosophy recently, with philosophers taking full advantage of the range of new media as well as continuing with the old. This session is titled ‘What is the good of public philosophy?’ There have been many answers to this question, including enrichment, guidance, self-improvement, entertainment, and citizenry. But as I research this literature, I find few if any linking public philosophy to the goods of university access and participation. In this session, then, I pose a more specific set of question: Does public philosophy support the good of widening participation? Does widening participation need public philosophy? If so, what kind of public philosophy does it need? At first glance, public philosophy does not look essential to widening participation in university philosophy. On further investigation, however, there is a role for philosophers to play in raising awareness of the discipline of philosophy, encouraging and increasing philosophical literacy, and shaping the environment and image of philosophy.

Speaker: Simon Wimmer (Warwick)

Title: 'Knowledge, Facts, and why Knowledge might be a Socio-Linguistic Kind'