CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY

Event Date: 16-17 April 2010









Ciné Lumière, The French Institute

From Structure to Rhizome

Transdisciplinarity in French thought, 1945 to the present: histories, concepts, constructions

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the ‘great books’ of postwar French theory transformed study in the humanities in the Anglophone world. These books were all, in one way or another, transdisciplinary in character. Yet their reception has primarily taken place in an array of specific disciplinary contexts, isolated from a broader understanding of the intellectual dynamics, forms, significance and innovative potential of transdisciplinarity itself. This conference aims to redress this situation. Each speaker will reflect on the transdisciplinary functioning of a single concept in French thought since 1945, with respect to a founding text, a particular thinker or a school of thought.

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Etienne Balibar – Structure

Étienne Balibar is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy, University of Paris X, Nanterre, and Distinguished Professor of Humanities, University of California, Irvine. His numerous works include Lire le Capital (with Louis Althusser et al, Maspero, 1965/1968; trans. New Left Books, 1970), Spinoza et la politique (PUF, 1985; trans. Verso, 1998), Race, nation, classe: les identities ambiguës (with Immanuel Wallerstein, La Découverte, 1988; trans. Verso, 1991), La philosophie de Marx (La Découverte, 1993; trans. Verso, 1995) and Nous, citoyens d’Europe (La Découverte, 2001; trans. Princeton University Press, 2004). French Philosophy Since 1945: Problems, Concepts, Inventions (co-ed. with John Rajchman), Volume IV in the New Press series Postwar French Thought, was published last month.

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<Due to technical difficulties at The Institute Français the sound quality of the recordings from Friday 16 April 2010 is somewhat impeded.>