Seminar

The Columbia University Seminar in Literary Theory meets several times per semester to discuss new work on the relations between literature, philosophy, and politics. A paper is pre-circulated and discussed at the seminar. We invite faculty and graduate students of all institutions to attend.

The next meeting will take place on Wednesday December 4th. We’ll be discussing a draft chapter by Bruno Bosteels (Columbia University) from his forthcoming book Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude.

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Event Information

Title: “Difference” (from Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude)
Speaker: Bruno Bosteels (Columbia University) and respondent Robert J. C. Young (NYU)
Date and Time: Wednesday December 4th, 7.15-9 pm
Location: Faculty House, Columbia University, room TBD (consult the signs at the entrance)

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Chapter

The chapter is accessible at the following link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nvfzcQRSPZpt2iDGruafBm2NpkODO5fu

Please contact Milan Terlunen at mtt2126@columbia.edu if you have any problems accessing the chapter.

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Dinner 

We’ll be having dinner beforehand at Faculty House at 6 pm. There’s no need to reserve a spot for the seminar, but please email Milan Terlunen as soon as possible if you’d like to come to dinner. It may be possible to accommodate a few extra dinner guests if you respond on the day, but it can’t be guaranteed. Attendees are responsible for the cost of dinner, which is $30 per person and is only payable by check.

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About the speakers

Bruno Bosteels is professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. His research covers a wide range of topics in literature, culture, and politics in modern Latin America as well as contemporary philosophy and political theory. He is the author of Badiou and Politics (2011), Marx and Freud in Latin America (2012) and The Actuality of Communism (2014). He is also the translator and/or editor of half a dozen books by Alain Badiou. He is currently preparing two new books, one on contemporary post-Heideggerian thought, titled Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude (Verso) and the other, The Mexican Commune (Duke).

Robert J. C. Young is a postcolonial theorist, cultural critic, and historian, and professor of English and Comparative Literature. He is the author of White Mythologies (1990), Colonial Desire (1995), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001), The Idea of English Ethnicity (2008) and Empire, Colony, Postcolony (2015). He is also the co-editor of Frantz Fanon’s Écrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté (2016; English translation Alienation and Freedom, 2018).