The Substance of Thought: Critical and Pre-Critical

featuring keynote speakers Simon Critchley (The New School for Social
Research) and Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
April 10th-12th, 2008

http://www.arts.cornell.edu/trg/conf2008.html

All events to be held in the A.D. White House unless otherwise noted

THURSDAY, APRIL 10
12:00-12:30: Check In
12:30-12:45: Opening Remarks

I. 12:45-2:30
Speculative Materialism
Moderator: Sarah Pickle (Comparative Literature, Cornell University)
a. Raoni Padui (Philosophy, Villanova University): “In Defense of Kant’s
Correlationism: Against Meillassoux’s Suturing of Philosophy to Science”
b. Nathan Brown (English, UCLA): “Badiou après Meillassoux: Rationalist
Empiricism ”
c. Aaron Hodges (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “The
Materialist Decision ”

II. 2:30-4:15
The Fate of the Subject
Moderator: Anne-Lise François (Associate Professor of English, Cornell
University)
a. Kathryn Hume (Comparative Literature, Stanford): “Descartes’s Literary
Philosophy – Mallarmé’s Philosophical Poesis: Igitur Resurrects the
Cogito”
b. Robert S. Lehman (English, Cornell University): “Between the Science of
the Sensible and the Philosophy of Art: Locating Badiou’s Inaesthetics”
c. Nina Power (Lecturer in Philosophy, Roehampton University): “The
Subterranean Current of Contemporary Feuerbachianism”

4:15-4:30: Coffee Break

III. 4:30-6:15
Ethics, Politics, and Affect
Moderator: (Jason Frank, Assistant Professor of Government, Cornell
University)
a. Tom Jacobs (Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven): “Kantian
Ethics as an ‘Evental Site’”
b. Nikolas Kompridis (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, York University):
“The Idea of a New Beginning: Political not Metaphysical”

FRIDAY, APRIL 11
Breakfast: 9:30-10:00

I. 10:00-11:45
Critical Metaphysics
Moderator: (Peter Gilgen, Associate Professor of German Studies, Cornell
University)
a. Elena Ficara (Philosophy, Technische Universität Berlin): “Metaphysics
and Critique in Kant and Contemporary Philosophy”
b. Floyd Wright (Philosophy, Depaul University): “Immense Metaphysics:
Jean-Luc Marion on the Problem of Divine Infinity in Descartes”
c. Michael Olson (Philosophy, Villanova University): “Kantian Criticism
and the Metaphysics of Objects”

II. 11:45-1:30
Alternative Critical Traditions
Moderator: Bradley Depew (English, Cornell University)
a. Ashley Vaught (Philosophy, Villanova University):“Spinozan Immanence in
Schelling and Deleuze”
b. Ioannis Trissokas (Philosophy, University of Warwick): “Hegel’s
Problem: Truth, Judgment and the Darkness of Pyrrhonism”
c. Philip Quadrio (Lecturer in Philosophy, Macquarie University):
“Rousseau, Kant and the Shadow of Philosophical Auto-Criticism: Exploring
‘Our’ Critical Heritage”

1:30-2:30: Lunch

III. 2:30-4:15
The Althusserian Legacy
Moderator: Douglas McQueen-Thomson (English, Cornell University)
a. Roberto Nigro (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State
University): “Marx and Althusser’s Legacy in Foucault”
b. Alexi Kukuljevic (Philosophy, Villanova University): “The Politics of
Metaphysics”
c. Knox Peden (History, UC Berkeley): “What is an Epistemological Problem?
Althusser and Desanti on the Content of Science”

4:30-6:30 Keynote Lecture (Guerlac Room, A.D. White House)
Alberto Toscano (Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London):
“Raving with Reason: Fanaticism, Iconoclasm and Critique”

6:30: Reception

SATURDAY, APRIL 12
9:30-10:00 Breakfast

I. 10:00-11:45
Another Deleuzian Century?
Moderator: Seth Perlow (English, Cornell University)
a. Dustin McWherter (Philosophy, Middlesex University): “The ‘Two Powers’
of Spinoza’s Parallelism and the Regional Immanence of Thought”
b. David Scott (Assistant Professor of Humanities, Coppin State
University): “Across the Great Divide: Orienting the Pre-Critical and the
Critical in Gilles Deleuze’s Thought”
c. Alistair Welchman (Assistant Professor of English, Classics, and
Philosophy, University of Texas at San Antonio): “The Cosmological Egg:
Deleuze’s Post-Critical Metaphysics”

II. 11:45-1:30
Poetics and Aesthetics
Moderator: Ryan Dirks (English, Cornell University)
a. John Hicks (English, Cornell University): “Deleuze and Badiou as
Literary Critics”
b. Kevin Attell (Assistant Professor of English, Cornell University):
“Bartleby: Take Your Pick”
c. Audrey Wasser (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “Monism and Literary
Criticism”

1:30-2:30 Lunch

III. 2:30-4:15
Constraint and/as Possibility
Moderator: Katrina Nousek (German Studies, Cornell University)
a. Gertrudis van de Vijver (Professor of Philosophy and Moral Science,
Ghent University): “The Constraint is the Possibility. On the Constitutive
Role of Negation in the Emergence of Subjectivity and Objectivity”
b. Martin Hägglund (Comparative Literature, Cornell University):
“Ultratranscendental: Derrida Beyond Kant”
c. Karin de Boer (Professor of Philosophy, University of Groningen): “On
the Very Concept of Immanent Critique in Kant and Hegel”

4:30-6:30 Keynote Lecture (Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium)
Simon Critchley (Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social
Research): “Violent Thoughts about Slavoj Žižek”

6:15-6:30: Closing Remarks

6:30: Reception