[Foucault-L] CFP: Ontology and Politics

With apologies for cross-posting.

Call for Papers: Ontology and Politics Conference

Date: Monday June 16th, 2008
Location: Queen Mary, University of London
Call for Papers Deadline: Friday May 9th, 2008
All enquiries and abstracts to: p.rekret@xxxxxxxxxx

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Simon Critchley, The New School University (USA)
Professor Andrew Benjamin, Monash University (AUS)

Call for Papers:
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 originates. While politics can no
longer lay claim to secure grounds, the gesture of rethinking ontology
cannot be separated or abstracted from the society from 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.

We invite papers addressing the following and any other related themes:

-How can we think the political in the absence of a secure or stable
ontology?

-Questioning our relation to the tradition of political philosophy and the
relation of the philosophical to the political.

-Is there a necessary transitivity between the ontological and the
political?

-The political implications of thinking ontology as pure immanence,
production, difference, becoming, or multiplicity.

-Thinking community or the self's relation to others when secure ontological
foundations for such relations are in question.

Paper title and 300 word abstract should be submitted by Friday May 9th,
2008 to Paul Rekret at p.rekret@xxxxxxxxxx

Graduate papers strongly encouraged.

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