Save Middlesex Philosophy

Two forthcoming Philosophy events at Middlesex:

Thursday 17 March, 6.30pm

Martin Liebscher, ‘Sigmund Freud and his Philosophical Mediators’

Martin Liebscher teaches at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London. He is the co-editor (with Angus Nicholls) of the recent collection Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth Century German Thought (Cambridge, 2010), and is the author of many articles on Nietzsche, Jung and Wittgenstein.

Place:  Room M004 (Saloon), Mansion Building, Middlesex University, Trent Park campus, Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ.

Thursday 31 March, 6.30pm.

Milena Ivanova, ‘Can the Realist Solve the Problem of Underdetermination of Theory by Evidence?’

Milena Ivanova is a PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at Bristol University, where she is writing a thesis on Conventionalism and Structural Realism. She has recently published articles on Pierre Duhem’s philosophy of science and on Michael Friedman’s development of a Kantian approach to the study of scientific revolutions in his Dynamics of Reason.

Place:  Room M004 (Saloon), Mansion Building.

Tube: Piccadilly line to Oakwood station, free bus to campus.

All welcome.

Please note: the seminar on 31 March replaces the previously announced seminar by David Lapoujade.

Philosophy Event at Middlesex, Tuesday 1 March 2011, 5.30pm

Marcus Boon, ‘Buddhism after Badiou: Between Ideology and Practice’

Marcus Boon is a writer and Associate Professor in the English Literature department at York University, Toronto. In his most recent book, In Praise of Copying (Harvard, 2010), he analyses the role of copying in contemporary culture and technology, attempting to explain why copying fills us with “fear and fascination”. Tracing the emergence and development of the concept of the copy in both Western philosophy (from Plato to Heidegger and Derrida) and Asian philosophy (Buddhism and Taoism), he arrives at a theory of ‘depropriation’ that he suggests can help deal with the paradoxes of identity, authenticity and inauthenticity that characterise life in the digital age. He is also the author of The Road to Excess (2002), and numerous articles on contemporary music and poetry.

Place:  Room M004 (Saloon), Mansion Building, Middlesex University, Trent Park campus, Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ.

Tube: Piccadilly line to Oakwood station, free bus to campus.

All welcome.

Philosophy Event at Middlesex, Tuesday 15 February 2011, 5.30pm

Dylan Evans (Cork University): ‘Is Lacanian Psychoanalysis Wrong, or Not Even Wrong?’

Dylan Evans is the author of An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (1996) and several key articles on Lacan’s work (including ‘Science and Truth: An Introduction’). In the late 1990s, dissatisfied with the foundations of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Evans moved into the field of evolutionary psychology, publishing numerous articles in the area. In his book Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (2001), he elaborated a theory of the evolution of human emotion, and in Placebo: The Belief Effect (2003), he critically examined the theory of the ‘placebo effect’, proposing a biochemical explanation for the phenomena associated with it. After researching evolutionary robotics at the University of Bath, in 2003 he became Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Autonomous Systems at the University of West of England. In 2007, he went on to set up the Utopia experiment in the Scottish Highlands. Currently based at Cork University, his recent work focuses on risk intelligence and decision theory. His forthcoming book is entitled Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty. In this seminar he returns to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and offers new reflections on its relation to science and epistemology.

Place:  Room M004 (Saloon), Mansion Building, Middlesex University, Trent Park campus, Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ.

Tube: Piccadilly line to Oakwood station, free bus to campus.

All welcome.

Here is a revised Middlesex Philosophy Seminar and Events schedule for January-May 2011.

Seminars are held on Tuesdays at 5.30pm or Thursdays at 6.30pm, in the Saloon (M004), Mansion Building, Trent Park campus (Piccadilly Line to Oakwood tube, free bus to campus).

Tuesday 25 January, 5.30pm.  Gary Lachman (London): ‘What is Cosmic Consciousness?’

Friday 28 January, 4pm (Room 222). Rosa Nogues: Introduction to French Feminism, part III: Kristeva.

Tuesday 15 February, 5.30pm. Dylan Evans (University College Cork): ‘Is Lacanian Psychoanalysis Wrong, Or Not Even Wrong?’

Tuesday 1 March, 5.30pm. Marcus Boon (York University, Toronto): ‘Buddhism after Badiou: Between Ideology and Practice’

Thursday 17 March, 6.30pm.  Martin Liebscher (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London): ‘Sigmund Freud and his Philosophical Mediators’

Thursday 31 March, 6.30pm.  Milena Ivanova (Bristol University): ‘Can the Realist Solve the Problem of Underdetermination of Theory by Evidence?’

Thursday 5 May, 2pm-8.30pm. Workshop: ‘Hegel Now?’ With Ali Alizadeh, Katerina Deligiorgi, Ian Jakobi and Slavoj Žižek.

All welcome.

Please note the change of date and topic for Marcus Boon’s talk. Two previously announced seminars, by Robin Le Poidevin (25 January) and Keith Ansell Pearson (3 February), have now been cancelled.

Please direct enquiries to c.kerslake@mdx.ac.uk

Introduction to French Feminism by Rosa Nogues, part III: Kristeva

The concluding session of the course has now been scheduled for Friday 28 January 2011, 4-6pm.

Place: Room M222, second floor, Mansion Building.

Texts have already been distributed to previous attendees. If you require copies, please write to c.kerslake@mdx.ac.uk.

Tube: Piccadilly line to Oakwood station, free bus to campus.

All welcome.

From the Education Activist Network:

Events this week: Unite to Save EMA

-         Tuesday: Meeting with Terry Eagleton, Laurie Penny and Alfie Meadows

-         Wednesday: March on Parliament, assemble 4pm Piccadilly

-         Protests and NUS day of action across the country

On Wednesday 19th January, MPs will debate the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance. So many existing students would not have been able to study without EMA; now it has already been closed to new applicants and could soon be scrapped altogether.

Students have already begun protesting to defend EMA, with a day of action in December and determined demonstrations this week in cities from Leeds to Truro. And after MPs voted to raise tuition fees last term, university students are organising to put to the test the French slogan: “What Parliament does, the streets can undo”.

Starting with an NUS day of action and a fantastic London-wide rally on Tuesday, followed by a march on Parliament and nationwide protests on Wednesday: let’s remind the government’s education wreckers that our movement is more determined than ever in 2011.

TUESDAY 18^th JANUARY – TAKING BACK EDUCATION

Terry Eagleton, Laurie Penny, Alfie Meadows and others discuss what we are fighting for and how we can win

7pm Tuesday 18^th January, The Quad, London School of Economics

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136064176453230

Click to download a flyer

TUESDAY 18^th JANUARY: National day of action

The National Union of Students has called for a day of action, with events, rallies and protests at colleges and campuses across the country.

WEDNESDAY 19^th JANUARY: March on Parliament to save EMA

Students, education workers and all defenders of the right to education, unite and join the demonstration as MPs debate the end of EMA. Bring your friends, your colleagues and your union banners.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=173551569353859

4pm: Assemble at Piccadilly Circus

5pm: March to Parliament Square

Supported by EAN, NCAFC, Free Education Campaign and London Student Assembly. Click here to download flyer

On Twitter, use the hashtags #saveEMA, #solidarity and #demo2011 and follow @edactivistnet

Philosophy Event at Middlesex, Tuesday 25 January 2011, 5.30pm

Gary Lachman, ‘What is Cosmic Consciousness?’

Gary Lachman is the author of numerous books, including A Secret History of Consciousness (2003) and Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and The Dark Side Of the Age of Aquarius (2002). In A Secret History of Consciousness, he explores the emergence of new theories of consciousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. He contends that there is an ‘unofficial’ tradition of research into the nature of consciousness, emerging into the academic mainstream in the work of Henri Bergson and William James in the early twentieth century, but more often tending to flourish in countercultural spaces outside the academy, and on the whole continuing to remain at odds with the major contemporary philosophical and scientific approaches to the problem of consciousness. Ranging from discussions of thought and perception, to accounts of research into dreaming and hypnagogia, drawing together diverse perspectives from philosophy, science, esotericism and countercultural thought, Lachman’s work on consciousness offers a unique vantage point on one of the central problems of philosophy.

Place:  Room M004 (Saloon), Mansion Building, Middlesex University, Trent Park campus, Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ.

Tube: Piccadilly line to Oakwood station, free bus to campus.

All welcome.

Note: this seminar replaces Robin Le Poidevin’s seminar on ‘The Beginning of Time’, which has been cancelled.