[show_more more=”From Democracy to Fascism: Freud, Lacan, and the Enigma of Modern Politics” less=”show less” color=”#0066cc” list=”\u00bb”] Davide Tarizzo<\/strong><\/p>\n Ever since Freud\u2019s seminal essay on Group Psychology, philosophers and social scientists have attempted to apply psychoanalytic categories to historical and political phenomena. Today we witness a renewed interest in this line of research; in what might be labelled the Lacanian turn in political theory (Laclau, Zizek, Badiou). Recent inquiry concentrates on three crucial questions: What is a political subject (Badiou)? What is a political discourse (Laclau)? What is a political phantasy (Zizek)? During the seminar, each of these questions will be addressed from a resolutely Freudian-Lacanian point of view. The seminar will intertwine the psychoanalytic approach to political-historical issues with more traditional approaches developed in the field of political science (Nationalism Studies), history of law (Villey, Legendre) and modern history (Morgan, Bazcko, Macpherson, Mosse).<\/p>\n Along the lines traced by these questions, a new theoretical perspective will be gradually sketched out, which will implicate a new definition of democracy as well as a new definition of fascism. If, relying on psychoanalytic inquiries into \u201ccollective subjectivities\u201d (Lacan), we can distinguish two different paths to modern democracy (the European and the American), we can also identify two different exits from modern democracy, that is, two types of fascism: \u201cold\u201d fascism and \u201cnew\u201d fascism (to adopt Pasolini\u2019s idiom). Although the new fascism shares some basic features with the old, it is nonetheless distinct enough to be unrecognizable as such. This is one of the reasons that the new fascism enjoys the quality of being almost invisible\u2014so that it becomes mandatory to ask: Do we live in a fascist regime today?<\/p>\n Indicative Reading List<\/strong> [show_more more=”Inventing Law” less=”show less” color=”#0066cc” list=”\u00bb”] Peter Goodrich<\/strong><\/p>\n In a recent study carried out at New York University School of Law the researchers divided the students at the end of their first year of legal study into two groups. The first group argued a case, the exercise being one of advocacy, in a formal courtroom before a judge in robes. The second group argued the same case in a classroom temporarily re-arranged as a courtroom before a judge in regular clothes. The first group, arguing in a traditionally embellished and classically ornate forum were significantly more likely to view the process as legally appropriate, the judge as authoritative and the outcome as just. The plastic and visual context, the architecture, the inscriptions, the portraiture and panels, the judicial throne and costume evidently played an significantly persuasive role in this adversarial appearance of law and in this expression of desire for justice. Law is in this example more than its texts and exceeds the bounds of its reasons. It is this dangerous supplement, this visiocratic transmission of justice and judgment, that \u2018Inventing Law\u2019 will pursue, divagate and elaborate upon.<\/p>\n A text, as Lacan puts it, is always an enigma, a mi-dire, meaning a half-said, namely a reference to everything else that authorizes the statement, inscription or judgment. The name of the statute, the signature of the judge, the reputation of the author are simply references to everything else impounded and implied by the particular case, the curlicue or line exacted \u2013 further cases, other texts, the compilations, collections, codes, writings, inscriptions, imagery, statuary, portraiture and further hieroglyphs and enigmas that compose the tradition, the plasticity and presence of what is in our case termed common law. Using the (recently translated) work of the classicist and analyst Pierre Legendre, while glibly dancing across the grammatology of Jacques Derrida, the scribbles of Peter Goodrich, the contropiano of Susan Byrne, the juridical theology of Giorgio Agamben, the course will take up the mantle of legal humanism and trace the plenitude and comedy of law in the specific times and spaces of its invention. This is light hearted and so most serious and irenic of undertakings.<\/p>\n Topics to be excoriated, adumbrated, concatenated and ratiocinated will include: [show_more more=”Geoffrey Bennington: ‘Failing Sovereignty in Late Derrida'” less=”show less” color=”#0066cc” list=”\u00bb”]<\/p>\n In this lecture I examine Derrida\u2019s preoccupation with sovereignty in his late seminars and published works. \u00a0I show, taking examples especially from Rousseau, how sovereignty is always already failing, affected by what Derrida calls \u201cauto-immunity\u201d. \u00a0In the light of this analysis, I point to some curious omissions in Derrida\u2019s account, around Aristotle, Bataille, and Heidegger.<\/p>\n Geoffrey Bennington is Asa G. Candler Professor of Modern French Thought at Emory University and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School. \u00a0He is the author of 15 books and over 120 articles and chapters on philosophical and literary-theoretical topics. \u00a0His books include\u00a0Jacques Derrida\u00a0(co-authored with Jacques Derrida, 1991),\u00a0Legislations: The Politics of Deconstruction\u00a0(1995), and\u00a0Fronti\u00e8res kantiennes\u00a0(2000). His most recent books are\u00a0Not Half No End: Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida\u00a0(2010) and\u00a0G\u00e9ographie et autres lectures\u00a0(2011). \u00a0He has translated many works by Derrida and other contemporary French thinkers, and is General Editor, with Peggy Kamuf, of the English language edition of\u00a0The Seminars of Jacques Derrida\u00a0at the University of Chicago Press. \u00a0His translations of the first two volumes of the seminars to be published,\u00a0The Beast and the Sovereign I\u00a0and\u00a0II, appeared in 2009 and 2011. \u00a0He is currently completing a book of deconstructive political philosophy tentatively entitled\u00a0Scatter.[\/show_more]<\/span><\/p>\n [show_more more=”Davina Cooper: ‘Playing Like a State: Imagining progressive governance from conservative Christian refusal'” less=”show less” color=”#0066cc” list=”\u00bb”]<\/p>\n This lecture will explore the presence and potential of a playful state through the somewhat paradoxical example of the international legal drama currently taking shape over conservative Christian refusal to treat gay sexuality equally. Play is a practice rarely associated with states \u2013 whether they are conservative or progressive. And yet, different kinds of playful state performances regularly occur. Focusing on neoliberal states with equality laws, this lecture will explore the diverse ways in which states play. Through the legal drama of conservative Christian refusal (and the reciprocating refusal of state bodies as they pull resources, contracts and jobs from resistant Christian bodies), the lecture will centre on play\u2019s potential to provide a mode of action and ethos through which a more socially just state might take shape.<\/p>\n Davina Cooper is Professor of Law & Political Theory at the University of Kent. For 25 years her work has addressed different conceptual and cultural aspects of a transformative politics, focusing in particular on the state, sexuality, and adventures in grass-roots governing. Her books include:\u00a0Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Everyday Utopias\u00a0(Duke, 2014);\u00a0Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference\u00a0(CUP, 2004); and\u00a0Governing out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging(Rivers Oram 1998). She has also participated in state governance from the \u201cinside\u201d as a local politician and as a magistrate.[\/show_more]<\/span><\/p>\n [show_more more=”Roberto Esposito: ‘Persons, Things and Bodies'” less=”show less” color=”#0066cc” list=”\u00bb”]<\/p>\n Roberto Esposito (1950, Piano di Sorrento) is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore. He has\u00a0held\u00a0numerous lectures and seminars at\u00a0Universities around the world, in\u00a0America (including Harvard, UCLA Los Angeles, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Duke and Michigan), and in England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Japan, Argentina and Chile.\u00a0 He is co-editor of\u00a0Filosofia Politica,<\/em>\u00a0published by il Mulino, and of the series \u2018Comunit\u00e0 e Libert\u00e0\u2019 for Laterza, and he\u00a0is a philosophy consultant for Einaudi. His work has\u00a0been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean.\u00a0Amongst his many books appearing\u00a0in English are\u00a0Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy\u00a0<\/em>(2008),\u00a0Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community<\/em>\u00a0(2009),\u00a0Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life\u00a0<\/em>(2011), and\u00a0Third Person\u00a0<\/em>(2012). Forthcoming in English translation include\u00a0Categories of the Impolitical<\/em>\u00a0(2015, Fordham University Press) and\u00a0Persons and Things: From the Body\u2019s Point of View<\/em>\u00a0(2015, Polity Press).[\/show_more]<\/span><\/p>\n [show_more more=”Peter Goodrich: ‘Madness and Law'” less=”show less” color=”#0066cc” list=”\u00bb”]<\/p>\n The \u2018Great Thoughts\u2019 or, in a lesser translation, the\u00a0Memoirs of My Nervous Illness\u00a0by judge Daniel Paul Schreber are a remarkable account of the psychosis of the President of the Saxon Court of Appeals. To read the\u00a0Memoirs\u00a0as a record of madness is relatively easy and has been lengthily pursued. To interpret this remarkable work as legal discourse, as a successful litigation of the judge\u2019s release from the asylum and as a radical jurisprudence is more a novel undertaking and will be proposed here.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nBadiou,\u00a0Theory of the Subject<\/em>
\nFreud,\u00a0Group Psychology<\/em>
\nFreud,\u00a0Civilization and Its Discontents<\/em>
\nLacan,\u00a0\u00c9crits<\/em>
\nLacan,\u00a0Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness<\/em>
\nLaclau,\u00a0On Populist Reason<\/em>
\nMacpherson,\u00a0The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism<\/em>
\nMorgan,\u00a0Inventing the People<\/em>
\nMosse,\u00a0The Fascist Revolution<\/em>
\n\u00d6zkirimli,\u00a0Theories of Nationalism<\/em>
\nPolanyi,\u00a0The Great Transformation<\/em>
\nZizek,\u00a0The Sublime Object of Ideology<\/em>[\/show_more]<\/p>\n
\nLegal openings
\nThe spaces of tradition
\nLegal emblems
\nAmity and legality
\nBlindness and insight
\nThe melancholy of law
\nJuridical portraiture
\nRhetoric and hermeneutics
\nExegesis and legal literalism
\nVisiocracy
\nAffect and judgment
\nCnutism or the ravages of the tides
\nSupplements and marginalia[\/show_more]<\/span><\/p>\nLectures<\/h2>\n