[csaa-forum] CFP: Wandering with Spinoza Conference

[Dimitris Vardoulakis]

Wandering with Spinoza Conference

 

The Centre for Ideas
Victorian College of the Arts
Melbourne, Australia
13 – 15 September, 2006

 

Closing date for abstracts is 30 May 2006

 

The Centre for Ideas at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia presents an interdisciplinary Conference on the work, thought and influence of Spinoza.

 

‘Wandering with Spinoza’, 13, 14, and 15 September, 2006.

 

Confirmed Keynote speakers: Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy, Mieke Bal, Thomas Hirschhorn and Genevieve Lloyd.

Other confirmed speakers:  Michael Mack, Andrew Benjamin, Alexander Garcia Duttmann and Paul Carter 

 

There are at least two senses in which “wandering” can be taken as a productive category to approach Spinoza’s thought.  First, it could designate Spinoza’s image of the human as the “little worm in the blood” which wanders around the cosmic circulation system.  To follow this “worm” is to follow Spinoza’s thought, from the impassioned geometrical writings to the personal epistolary exchanges.  But, like the “worm” that the human is, one’s thought will not be allowed to rest at one particular point, instead one wanders on with Spinoza.  The second meaning of the “wandering” could refer to the divergent routes and detours that the explications of Spinoza’s work has taken.  >From materialist to rationalist, from political philosopher to metaphysician, from heretic to theologian – the import of Spinoza’s thinking also eludes a single trajectory.



At the same time, if both of the above senses are retained, then a third one will also come into light.  Namely, that as one confronts Spinoza’s thought and its reception, then that confrontation itself will become nomadic, passing on and through various spheres.  A wandering that goes from the purity and eternality of philosophical thinking to the particularity and heterogeneity of art and politics – and then back again.  Thus, Spinoza raises a challenge to the disciplines that approach questions of what it means to be human.



The conference “Wandering with Spinoza” will respond to those movements, not by remaining faithful to Spinoza himself.  Rather, the conference calls on the responsibility to “wander with” as an enterprise which can be reduced neither to an individual, nor to determinate boundaries.  This call for papers is extended to everyone who likes to take on this responsibility.

 

Abstracts of 150 words should be sent by 30 May 2006 to e.presa at vca.unimelb.edu.au



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Dimitris Vardoulakis
Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Building 11
Monash University
Clayton, Vic 3800
Australia

tel: +61 3 9905 9009
fax: +61 3 9905 5593
email: Dimitrios.Vardoulakis at arts.monash.edu.au

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