THE TIME OF MATERIALITY
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
April 5-7, 2007

featuring keynote speakers Peter Hallward and Catherine Malabou

All events will take place in the A.D. White House unless otherwise indicated.

THURSDAY, APRIL 5
1:00-1:30: Check In
1:30-1:45: Opening Remarks

I. 1:45-3:00
Material Subjectivities
Moderator: Tracy McNulty (Associate Professor of Romance Studies, Cornell University)
a. Bradley Depew (English, Cornell University): "Representation and Affect in Diderot's Paradoxe sur le comédien."
b. Adrian Johnston (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico): “The Immanent Genesis of the Transcendent: From Zizek to a Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity”

II. 3:00-4:45
Dynamics of Politics
Moderator: Neil Saccamano (Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cornell University)
a. Naveh Frumer (Philosophy, The New School for Social Research): “Sovereignty, Potentiality, and Temporality in Agamben's Homo Sacer”
b. Simon Glezos (Political Science, Johns Hopkins University): “Speed, Democracy, and the Politics of the Future”
c. Scott Selisker (English, University of Virginia): “Time and the Perception of Community: Badiou, Kant, Henry James”

5:00-7:00 Keynote Lecture (Guerlac Room, A.D. White House)
Peter Hallward (Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University): “Matters of Will”

7:00 Reception

FRIDAY, APRIL 6
Breakfast: 9:30-10:00

I. 10:00-11:45
Bergson in Flux
Moderator: Douglas McQueen-Thomson (English, Cornell University)
a. Paul Grimstad (English, New York University): “From Discreteness to Durée: Two Types of Radical Empiricism”
b. Michael Kolkman (Philosophy, Warwick University): “Materiality as Force: Henri Bergson”
c. Ilan Safit (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Pace University): “From Inertness through Plasticity: On the Notion of Flux Monism”

II. 11:45-1:30
Materialist Poetics of Time
Moderator: John Hicks (English, Cornell University)
a. Alexis Briley (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “Temporal Plasticity in Hölderlin's Nachtgesänge”
b. Josh Robinson (Cambridge University): “The Temporality of Aesthetic Experience”
c. David Urban (English, Princeton University): “Hölderlin's Time Machine: Translation, Tragedy, Transport”

1:30-2:30 Lunch

III. 2:30-4:15
Materialism and Metaphysics
Moderator: Peter Gilgen (Associate Professor of German Studies, Cornell University)
a. Aaron Hodges (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “A Consolation for Philosophy: Adorno's Materialism”
b. Michael Olson (Philosophy, Villanova University): “A Transformation of Transcendental Idealism in the Name of Matter”
c. Rocio Zambrana (Philosophy, The New School for Social Research): "Historical Necessity Today? Narratives and Self-Understanding in Hegel"

4:30-6:30 Keynote Lecture (Kaufman Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall)
Catherine Malabou (Professor of Philosophy, Université de Paris X – Nanterre): “Plasticity and Elasticity in Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle”

6:30 Reception

SATURDAY, APRIL 7
9:00-9:30 Breakfast

I. 9:30-11:15
Productive Limits
Moderator: Ben Glaser (English, Cornell University)
a. Catharine Diehl (Comparative Literature, Princeton University): “Leibniz on the Limitations of Receptivity”
b. Joe Hughes (Edinburgh University): “Gilles Deleuze and the Production of Time”
c. Paloma Yannakakis (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “Thinking Catastrophe in Denis Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau”

II. 11:15-1:00
Modernist Temporalities
Moderator: Rebecca Colesworthy (English, Cornell University)
a. Jacob Brogan (English, Cornell University): “Cavafy’s Unlost: Folding Time, Building Walls”
b. Margareta Christian (German, Princeton University): “The Time of Distance: Rilke's ‘Duineser Elegien’”
c. Dora Zhang (Comparative Literature, Princeton University): “Silence Now: Beckett at the Limit”

1:00-2:00 Lunch

III. 2 :00-3:45
Derrida’s Genesis
Moderator: Alan Young-Bryant (English, Cornell University)
a. Michael Gallope (Music, New York University): “General and Technical Différance”
b. Samir Haddad (Philosophy, Fordham University): “Birth and Rebirth in Derrida and Arendt”
c. Jason Smith (Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine): “Jacques Derrida, ‘Crypto-Communist’: Temporal Hylé and Dialectical Materialism”

IV. 3:45-5:30
The End
Moderator: Walter Cohen (Professor of Comparative Literature, Cornell University)
a. Bruno Bosteels (Associate Professor of Romance Studies, Cornell University): “Against Time: The Dogma of Finitude”
b. Martin Hägglund (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Unconditionality of Finitude”

This event is free and open to the public. Funding is provided by the Class of 1916, the Society for the Humanities, French Studies, the School of Arts and Sciences, the Bowmar Chair, EGSO/GPSAFC, German Studies, Architecture, the Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, and History of Art.

Conference Organizers: Alexis Briley, Jacob Brogan, Rebecca Colesworthy, Bradley Depew, Ben Glaser, Martin Hagglund, John Hicks, Aaron Hodges, Jess Keiser, Douglas McQueen-Thomson, Sarah Pickle, and Alan Young-Bryant. With special thanks to Rob Lehman and Audrey Wasser.

For further information about the Theory Reading Group, please see: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/trg