Materialities and Materialisms in Contemporary Thought:
Ontology, Politics, Technology
June 14-15, 2013
University of Helsinki
Metsätalo, Unioninkatu 40 B, hall 6 (3rd floor)
http://helsinkimaterialism.wordpress.com/
In the Western philosophical tradition, which from Parmenides and Plato to Hegel and Husserl tended to prioritize ideality, intelligibility, and conceptuality, materialism has been an undercurrent, resurfacing now and again in diverse forms: Presocratic and Hellenistic atomism, early modern and Enlightenment materialism, Marxist historical materialism, and 20th-century physicalism. The conference will introduce different scholarly perspectives on the new upsurge of materialism and on new approaches to materiality in some of the most recent discussions in philosophy, the social sciences, and art studies. What is the significance of materiality for contemporary philosophical anthropology and political theory, strongly informed by the Foucauldian notions of biopower and biopolitics? How does the phenomenological approach, associated by Husserl with a transcendental idealism, relate to materiality? How have thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Quentin Meillassoux transformed contemporary notions of philosophical materialism?
Keynote speakers:
Étienne Balibar (Université de Paris X – Nanterre / Columbia University)
Daniel Smith (Purdue University)
Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Organized by the research community Subjectivity, Historicity, and Communality and the research project European Rationality in the Break from Modernity (Academy of Finland).
Preliminary program:
Friday, June 14
10:00 – 10:15
Opening words, Sara Heinämaa (University of Helsinki)
10:15 – 11:45
Keynote lecture
Étienne Balibar (Université de Paris X – Nanterre / Columbia University)
A New Beginning for Philosophical Anthropology? Some Materialist Hypotheses
11:45 – 12:00
Break
12:00 – 13:30
Politics and Material Ontologies
Sergei Prozorov (University of Helsinki)
Void Universalism: Towards an Ontology of World Politics
Johanna Oksala (University of Helsinki)
What is Political Philosophy?
13:30 – 14:45
Lunch
14:45 – 16:15
The Materiality of Biopolitics
Jemima Repo (University of Helsinki)
Gender, Genealogy, Materiality
Mianna Meskus (University of Helsinki)
Biopolitics in the Government of Laboratory Life
16:15 – 16:30
Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00
Phenomenology and Materiality
Sara Heinämaa (University of Helsinki)
Mathematization of the Plena: Husserl’s analysis in The Crisis of European Sciences
Timo Miettinen (University of Helsinki)
Phenomenology of Poiesis
Saturday, June 15
10:15 – 11:45
Plenary lecture
Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London):
Materialisms Without Matter: Between Practice and Abstraction
11:45 – 12:00
Break
12:00 – 13:30
Subtractive and Speculative Materialism
Jussi Backman (University of Jyväskylä)
Materialism of the Multiple: On Badiou and Other Presocratics
Ari Korhonen (University of Helsinki)
Materialism, Speculation, and the Aftermath of Hegel: Meillassoux at the Limits of Reflection
13:30 – 14:45
Lunch
14:45 – 16:15
Deleuze, Materiality, Technics
Katve-Kaisa Kontturi (University of Turku)
New Ontologies of Contemporary Art: Materiality, Technics, and Politics
Julius Telivuo (University of Helsinki)
Deleuze’s Intensive Materialism
16:15 – 16:30
Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00
Plenary lecture
Daniel Smith (Purdue University)
Deleuze on Technology and Thought
The conference is free of charge and open to all, including students. Welcome!