Utopia - towards a new political philosophy

Conference on Utopia:

Utopia – towards a new political philosophy

“The word utopia therefore designates that conjunction of philosophy, or of the concept, with the present milieu – political philosophy.” What is Philosophy, p. 100.

This call is Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s demand for another political philosophy – also acknowledging, in parentheses after the quote, that ‘perhaps utopia is not the best word. Perhaps it is rather a question of what it means to believe in this world.‘ And, if this is a challenge it is ‘because we no longer believe in the events which happen to us, love, death, as if they only half concerned us’. As such, the world has come to look like a bad film. How can we through our inventive capacities create another sense of time that transgresses the time of measure, the time of the useful, the time of a new scientific management and spin doctored identity politics? Is it not time to introduce the utopian combatant as the true subject for another coming political philosophy, a figure who doesn’t fight to destroy capitalism or the State as such, but who tries to enrich the forces of whatever is available and produce a new vitality?

As this may be true, the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy nevertheless initiates a small scale conference where the concept is to be reinvestigated.

The concept of Utopia is, in this investigation, by no means reserved for Deleuze and Guattari: thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben have in their later works both addressed the question of the coming community, the coming utopia rather than the already accomplished utopia, but an ethical power of hope as a dramatising effect initiating the very gesture of thought, the subject understood as whatever singularity, the path for a radical generosity.

Keynote speakers:

• Paul Patton: BA MA Syd Doctorat D'Universite, Paris  VIII professor. School of Philosophy, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

• Ian Buchanan: Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Cardiff, UK.

• Ole Fogh Kirkeby, Professor, Dep. of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS

Convenors:

The conference is hosted by lecturers Alexander Carnera and Bent Meier Sørensen - both from the Philosophy Group at Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS.

Programme: 

9:30 am          Coffee

10:00 am        Introduction

10:15 am        Ian Buchanan, Deleuze's 'Life' Sentences

11:30 am        Ole Fogh Kirkeby, The Utopian Event

12:45 pm        Lunch

1:30 pm          Paul Patton, Deleuze and Rawls on utopian political philosophy

2:30 pm          Kent Hansen (artist), Local Utopia – coincidences in art and the social

3:00 pm          Coffee

3:30 pm          Panel discussion, opened by Alexander Carnera and Bent Meier Sørensen

Master Class for Ph.D. Students - February 28th, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm.

Copenhagen Business School, Porcelænshaven 18A, Room 0.116

The conference is open for everybody, the master class is for PhD students only. Registration for both events are needed, deadline: February 17,  2006. The conference including lunch is free, but registration is necessary for planning purposes.

For further information please contact Christina Busk Thorsen at cbt.lpf@cbs.dk