Spam

So, my blog has increasingly been over run by spammers. I haven't wanted to do this, but I have increased comment security because of this. Now you have to fill in word verifications (which are very annoying, I know), and older posts are moderated.

If anyone has better suggestions, let me know. I hate word verifications, personally. But I am not sure what I should do, and I am getting about 3 or 4 spam comments a day.

PIC Conference- Life: Politics, Resistance, & Beyond

Life: Politics, Resistance, & Beyond

The 20^th Annual Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture (PIC) Conference

April 16-17, 2010

Binghamton University – Binghamton, NY

Life has increasingly become the focus of power and the site of resistance. On the one hand there has been an increasing ‘scientific’ examination and management of populations, with a constant manipulation of the lives of populations in the name of improvement and protection. Meanwhile, economic chaos, ecological destruction, transnational labor exploitation, international and domestic militarization, increasing criminalization, and globalization have contributed to turning entire populations into población chatarra, disposable peoples. On the other hand, life has become the basis of resistance against power and the possibility for other worlds in the present and future. We can see this in the various and often contradictory concepts like Catherine Walsh’s life-ing, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s materialist vitalism, the positive biopolitics of Antonio Negri or Roberto Esposito, and Enrique Dussel’s community of life. We welcome papers that seek to attend to the question of life itself, in its various powers, possibilities, and politics.

Life itself should be heard in its multivalent resonances: As a collective term, as an individual term, and as a molecular or genetic term. Furthermore life can be heard outside the anthropocentric register, referring to the affirmation of life in the face of ecological destruction and multiple oppressions; biopower and biopolitics; vitalisms; machines and cyborgs; bio-capital and the surplus value of life; and alternatives to ‘life’ emerging out of anti and non-Western cosmologies. This conference seeks to promote debates over and deepen alliances among thinkers concerned with methodologies of resistance, the examination politics and philosophy after (traditional) humanism(s), and the engagement of counter-hegemonic dialogues.

In keeping with the interdisciplinary emphasis of Binghamton University's Program in Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture, we seek work that flourishes in the conjunction of multiple frames of epistemological inquiry, from fields including, but not limited to: postcolonial studies, decolonial studies, queer and gender studies, ethnic studies, critical animal studies, media and visual culture studies, urban studies, science and technology studies, critical theory, continental philosophy, and historiography. Workers/writers/artists of all different disciplinary, inter-disciplinary, and non-disciplinary stripes welcome, whether academically affiliated or not. Submissions may be textual, performative, visual.

Submission Guidelines

Submission deadline: February 15, 2010.

Please submit a 250-500 word abstract along with a cover letter that includes your name, academic affiliation, contact numbers, complete mailing address, and e-mail address, as well as information regarding any technological equipment you may need for your presentation. Papers will be considered for a 20 minute presentation, followed by discussion, so please limit the length of paper to 10-12 pages.

Email address for inquiries and electronic submission of abstracts: pic.conference.2010@gmail.com

Deleuze, Henry; Bacon, Kandinsky

Random thought. Someone should write an article (unless one already exists) that explores the differences in philosophy between Deleuze and Michel Henry by exploring their work on Francis Bacon and Vassily Kandinsky, respectively.

New blog

So, I've not really felt the academic blogging bug since getting back. I have, however, realized recently I wanted to blog about debate. So, instead of boring you all that don't care about debate, I've decided to create a blog for my debate chatter, Wrong Forum.

I'm sure I will be back to academic blogging shortly.

I'm back, what did I miss?

It was a busy and fun last two weeks. But I am back. Anyone want to tell me what interesting things I missed on the internet for the last two weeks?

Two weeks off, anyone want to blog?

My parents are in out of town visiting, and then I have a wedding to attend and will see a lot of my college friends, some of whom I haven't seen in a long while. Anyway, this blog will probably be basically dead for the next two weeks. Unless, someone wants to guest blog here. Great for people who read blogs but are not sure if they want to keep one up themselves. If so, drop me a line.

Anyway, take care blogosphere. See you in a few weeks. Don't implode while I am gone.

Moral schizophrenia and the power of affect in US v Stevens

I just got through reading the oral arguments (.pdf) in US v. Stevens. It was very interesting, to say the least. If you don't want to take the time to read around 70 pages of oral arguments, you can check out this summary from slate here (which is biased on the side opposite of mine, but entertaining to read). The oral arguments are certainly all over the place, but I wanted to highlight two interesting points from them.

(1) Gary Francione has often pointed out that most of us relate to animals in a mode of what he calls moral schizophrenia. We are willing to treat the family pet as a member of the family, while at the same time eating animal flesh on our dinner table. This moral schizophrenia is, in many ways, at the heart of the arguments made by the Justices against the law. Because we have a culture that has no real coherent way by which we determine something cruel or not (hunting, even the most vicious kind, in. Killing a cat though in the same way, probably illegal to sell images of that. Dog fighting and cockfighting, out! But bullfighting, specifically let in!). I have a lot of sympathy with the Justices on this one, it clearly is something very different from laws against depicting child pornography, which the present law is explicitly based off of. In child pornography we have an action whose exceptions are both narrow and fairly uncommon. Also, those exceptions have a certain degree of seeming coherency to them. In the case of the law about showing violence towards animals we have a law that is necessary has broad exceptions that are quite incoherent. I am not saying that the law should be overturned on this point (I really am not taking a stance on this issue), but I am pointing out that I think that advancing animal welfare legally will continue to face such issues.

(2) Another interesting part of the back and forth included two different times where there were discussions of banning speech that was not communicative. That rather than communicating to anything, appeal to something. Such as obscenity appealing to lust, or these images potentially appealing to sadism. While the term 'affect' was never used in these discussions, that is certainly what was under consideration. To what degree does the first amendment cover affect? What these backs and forths seemed to imply was that the State must not intervene on the question of content, but anything that simply advances affect can be regulated by the State.


The whole thing is pretty weird. For example, both lawyers seemed to agree that if there was a channel dedicated to broadcasting human sacrifices that were taking place outside of the US, Congress couldn't make such a channel illegal. The justices seemed all very bemused and confused by this stance, particularly this mutual stance.