~~~~ Spring 2013 ~~~~~
Tuesday, March 5
4:15 p.m. Steiner Hall Room 306
"A Street Critique of French Ideologies of Race and Racism"
Jérémie Maradas Nado (a.k.a. Jo Dalton)
Affiliation: Black Dragons Gang
French academics often argue that French racism is softer and less prevalent than American racism. They note that there is more interracial marriage in France and that mixed race kids are not simply "black" like in the U.S. but are labeled as métis instead. Moreover, they argue that people are not separated into communities like in the U.S. and citizens are simply recognized as French with no need of a hyphen. Jo Dalton will deconstruct these French ideologies, arguing that French anti-communitarianism and opposition to group identifications on a racial basis is in fact used as a tool of racial oppression. French anti-discrimination efforts have been limited by the anti-communitarianism of "anti-racist" militants and researchers in positions of privilege. Dalton will defend a positive sense of communitarianism from his experience in a black-but-not-only black street gang (the Black dragons). He will also draw from his background in French-American hip-hop culture that blurs the boundaries of French and American racial identities that French academics keep separate. Through his alternative perspectives from the street, Dalton will propose various ways to overcome the limits of official anti-racist initiatives in France.
Sponsored by:
Philosophy, Sociology, French, Anthropology, Peace Studies, Humanities,Office of Intercultural Engagement and Leadership
Wednesday, April 3
4:15 p.m. Steiner Hall, Rm 306
"Power as (or in) Vulnerability: Fanon and Levinas on an Ethical Politics"
Kris Sealey
Fairfield University
This project locates, in the work of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, a politicalsignification of a Levinasian conception of vulnerability. Identities that embody concrete vulnerabilities (corporeal vulnerabilities that pertain to race, to be specific) are particularly attuned to the structural dissonance emblematic of Levinas' formulation of the relationship between the 'I' and the 'self'. As such, a notion of the political that takes seriously Levinas' account of alterity is likely to come from, or germinate in, these concrete modes of embodiment. My analysis pursues this possibility - of a politics founded on the priority of vulnerability - in the kind of interiorized dissonance of racialized and colonized subjectivities. In other words, I determine this possibility to be one implicitly given by Fanon's account in The Wretched of the Earth. To this end, we might find, at the base of the revolutionary violence advocated by anti-colonial thinkers like Fanon, a somewhat Levinasian conceptions of hospitality for (or welcoming of) the Other or the stranger.
Sponsored by:
Philosophy, Office of Intercultural Engagement and Leadership and The Noun Program in Women's Studies
Thursday, April 18
4:15 p.m. Steiner Hall Room 306
A Pragmatist Approach to Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Problem
John Fennell
Grinnell College
Wittgenstein's Rule-Following discussion seems to leave him with radical meaning skepticism, i.e., the impossibility of any of our words having an objectively determinate meaning. This paper argues that a solution to this problem can be found by exploiting some central pragmatist doctrines about meaning – namely, concentrating on the actual practical context in which terms are used and a fallibilist conception of objectivity – and furthermore that this "pragmatist" approach to the problem is one that Wittgenstein himself can be understood as advocating.
~~~~ Fall 2012 ~~~~~
Thursday, September 13, 2012
4:15 p.m. ● Steiner Hall, Room 305
"Lifeworld Meets Critical Theory"
Johanna Meehan, Professor of Philosophy
Grinnell College Philosophy Department
Thursday, October 11, 2012
4:15 p.m. ● Steiner Hall, Room 306
"The origins of the rule-following considerations and the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy in the 1930s"
David Stern, Professor of Philosophy
University of Iowa Philosophy Department
Thursday, November 8, 2012
4:15 p.m. ● Steiner Hall, Room 306
"A State of War: Life of the Disadvantaged Communities in The Wire "
William Allen, Graduate Student
University of Memphis
Philosophy Student MAP Fall Presentations
TBA
