The joint LLAA and LSAANZ program (PDF 1.71MB), including last minute changes (PDF 183kb) is now available for downloading.
Keynote Speakers
We are excited to confirm the participation of the following keynote speakers:
LLAA
Judith Jack Halberstam - Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California.
(9.00 – 10.15 am, Weds 2 Dec, DELL Gallery S05, Lecture Theatre, Room 2.04)
Title: “Unbecoming”
Abstract: In this talk I present a piece of a book I am finishing that is tentatively entitled Notes of Failure and that concerns itself with a contemporary politics of knowledge the possibly counter–intuitive forms of knowing that might be necessary now in order to unseat logics of power and being that have proven to be dead ends for thinking through social change. I look at failure and passivity as forms of resistance and I track the force of what I call a “queer negativity” through artwork preoccupied with unbecoming, unbeing, sterility and futility – much of which is figured as the unravelling of self in literary works and the gaping presence of empty space in visual works. Building here on works of feminists like Saidiya Hartman and Saba Mahmood and locating a queer femininity that refuses resistance and reshapes the meaning of the political in the process, I want to offer up a queer theory of masochism and negative affect that revels in failures, builds around an anti–heroic, disintegrating subject and in the process recasts the project of thinking sex and gender.
Alexis Wright - Indigenous Australian author and Distinguished Research Fellow, Writing and Society Research Group, College of the Arts, University of Western Sydney.
(9.00 – 10.15 am, Thurs 3 Dec, DELL Gallery S05, Lecture Theatre, Room 2.04)
Title: “Imperial Visions”...................in conversation with William MacNeil (LLAA President)
David M Berry - Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Swansea University, UK.
(3.45 – 5.00 pm, Thurs 3 Dec, DELL Gallery S05, Lecture Theatre, Room 2.04)
Title: “On Vicarious Transformations”
Abstract: A talk exploring the computational image.
Philosophers of science, especially Wilfred Sellars, have contrasted what they term the “manifest” image and the “scientific” image. The former refers to the image of the world we develop on the basis of reflecting upon our ordinary experience of it; the latter to the quite different and often counter–intuitive image of the world created by science and which often refers to things we cannot directly perceive. In this presentation I consider a third case: the computational change. The is different to computationalism, the argument that the human mind can be characterised as like a computer’, and also to the argument that an increasing portion of the human and social world is explainable through computational processes. Rather I want to consider the historical emergence of computability as an explanatory framework for understanding being, evolution or life and of conceiving of the universe as software running on the “Universal Computer” we call reality.
LSAANZ
Arzoo Osanloo - Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Law, Societies and Justice Program, University of Washington.
(9.00 – 10.15 am, Fri 4 Dec, DELL Gallery S05, Lecture Theatre, Room 2.04)
Title: “Advocacy in Post–Republican Iran: Or, How Iran’s Newly Authoritarian Regime Engenders a New Politics of Rights Talk”
Abstract: In the aftermath of Iran’s June 12 elections, a seemingly relentless mobilisation of dissenters have shaped and sustained a new social and political movement that challenges the legitimacy of the current Iranian government. Members of the newly formed Green Movement for Freedom refer to the sitting Iranian government as the ‘coup d’état government’, while commentators from both inside and outside of the country increasingly refer to Iran’s government as authoritarian, dictatorial, even fascistic. The world’s press has scrupulously covered and praised the efforts of the Iranians who challenge the government’s legitimacy, calling the protestors brave and courageous.
The current Iranian government, however, is far from the only authoritarian regime in the Middle East or for that matter the world. So why is it that we see this scale of dissent and protest in Iran, while not in other authoritarian countries, where we also see rigged elections, such as in Egypt? Moving beyond laudatory ascriptions of the bravery of the Iranian people, this talk will consider the institutions and subjectivities engendered through a century–long struggle for a constitutional government, resistance to imperialist intervention and most importantly, the consequences of the ‘republicanisation’ of Islamic principles in the post–revolutionary era.
This talk will tie together current calls for rights with the often overlooked aspects and effects of the Iranian government’s ‘republic’, noting that up to now, Khomeini’s vision for a so–called ‘pure’ Islamic Government has been overshadowed by the compromise formation of an Islamic Republic.
This talk will explore today’s struggles in Iran as a contest over the form of governance still taking shape in Iran today – thirty years on.
Timothy Campbell - Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University, New York.
(9.00 – 10.15 am, Sat 5 Dec, DELL Gallery S05, Lecture Theatre, Room 2.04)
Title: “Liminal Personae: The Thanatopolitics of Personalisation in the Neo–Liberal Milieu”
Abstract: What is the function of the person today in a context of neo–liberal governance? In this paper I offer a provisional answer by examining how the recent, massive personalisation of life forms, be they collective or individual, is integral to the workings of neo–liberalism. After offering a symptomology of this personalising trend with dispatches from the front–lines of neo–liberalism, I turn to contemporary Italian thought, especially the work of Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito, in order to link neo–liberal personalisation strategies to an intensifying thanatopolitics, that is a deathly mastery over life as Michel Foucault called it. I conclude by inquiring after possible practices of resistance, particularly through the admittedly problematic category of the impersonal.
Karen Jackson - Indigenous Services Program Officer, Victoria University of Technology and David McCallum – Associate Professor of Sociology, Victoria University, Melbourne...............in conversation.
(3. 45 – 5.00 pm, Sat 5 Dec, DELL Gallery S05, Lecture Theatre, Room 2.04)
Mark Minchinton was unable to participate at Trans(l)egalité.