Just a reminder about Gabriel Rockhill’s April 14th seminar, ” Contemporary French Philosophy: A Primer.” This is an intensive one-day seminar. It will serve as an introductory crash course in contemporary French theory. You will find that the issues dealt with by this theory are relevant to your own lives. The seminar will be stimulating for complete beginners and refined philosophes alike. At an Incite Seminar, things are relaxed and fun for everyone.
We are very fortunate to have Gabriel Rockhill, Ph.D. as our facilitator. Gabriel is associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University and director of the Critical Theory Workshop in Paris, and author of numerous books and articles. He is also a leading international authority on French thought. You can read more about Gabriel and the seminar at our website.
If you’re in the Philadelphia area, please join us this Saturday, April 14th from 10am to 3pm. If you’re not, please help spread the word.
Here’s what we’ll be reading and discussing:
Alain Badiou, “The Adventure of French Philosophy”
“No God, No Caesar, No Tribune!” Cornelius Castoriadis Interviewed by Daniel Mermet
from Jacques Derrida, Positions
“Intellectuals & Power: A conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze”
from Kristin Ross, May ’68 and its Afterlives
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism”
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
This intensive seminar will serve as a crash course in contemporary French theory in order to provide students with a rigorous overview of its key movements, figures and concepts. Beginning with the immediate postwar rise of Existentialism, while tracing out its important connections to Marxism, we will then look at the emerging critiques formulated by the “structuralists” and their gradual turn away from Marxism. Finally, we will compare and contrast two rival movements that emerged on the heels of structuralism and continue today: the “post-structuralists,” who sought to radicalize the structuralist turn, and a disparate group of thinkers—from Castoriadis to Badiou—who saw in both structuralism and post-structuralism an intensified embrace of postwar ideology and advocated for a resuscitation of anti-capitalist philosophy.
Facilitator: Gabriel Rockhill, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and Director of the Critical Theory Workshop in Paris. His main areas of research are modern and contemporary thought, social and political theory, continental philosophy, aesthetics, and historiography. Gabriel is the author of Radical History & the Politics of Art;Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics; Logique de l’histoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques; Contre-histoire du temps présent: Interrogations intempestives sur la mondialisation, la technologie, la démocratie, as well as numerous articles, book chapters, reviews, and edited books.
Facilitator: Gabriel Rockhill, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and Director of the Critical Theory Workshop in Paris. His main areas of research are modern and contemporary thought, social and political theory, continental philosophy, aesthetics, and historiography. Gabriel is the author of Radical History & the Politics of Art; Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics; Logique de l’histoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques; Contre-histoire du temps présent: Interrogations intempestives sur la mondialisation, la technologie, la démocratie, as well as numerous articles, book chapters, reviews, and edited books.
