InterCcECT

“for there is a flaw in the order of things”: Schreber and the symbolic

anna kornbluh — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:14:18 +0000

InterCcECT invites you to the second session of our new regular reading group on Lacan’s Seminars, Thursday 31 May. We’ll be continuing with Seminar 3: The Psychoses, focusing on Chapter 2, with the additional text of Freud’s commentary on Daniel Paul Schreber, “Psychoanalytic Notes Upon an Autobiographical Account of Paranoia,” and with the recommendation to add Schreber’s “Memoirs of My Nervous Illness” to taste.

For a different negation of the social order than that represented by the psychotic, we’ll soon be reading Adam Kotsko’s Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide to Late-Capitalist Television and holding a book discussion with the author at 57th Street Books. Slavoj Zizek recently praised Kotsko’s argument in this lecture.

Join us for Lacan, Freud, and Schreber at 5pm at our salon in Bucktown. Write us for more details, or to propose other summer fun. InterCcECT takes its shape from you!

structures do live in the streets

anna kornbluh — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:36:39 +0000

20th century French philosophy often appears divided between attention to logic, concepts, or structures and concern for vitality and life. Is there a possible philosophy of “living structures” or materially grounded ‘life’?

With the generous support of Gallery 400, InterCcECT excitedly presents “Living Structures: Canguilhem, Deleuze, and the Problem of Life,” a lecture by Tom Eyers, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Washington University in Saint Louis, and author of Lacan and the Concept of the Real.

Join us 6pm Monday, 4 June at Gallery 400.

For another aperture onto this divide, participate in this week’s InterCcECT reading group on Lacan’s Seminar 3: The Psychoses.

Semesters are over and quarters are rounding the bend; let us know your summer reading list, working-group schemes, and field trip itineraries – we’d love to add them to our calendar.

aesthetic thought versus instrumental reason: the early years

anna kornbluh — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding might seem an unlikely place to espy the origins of aesthetic philosophy, but the deadlocks of empiricism it formulates may be precisely what necessitated the category of aesthetic cognition. InterCcECT is delighted to host a works-in-progress session on these questions with Professor Viv Soni.

Join us Thursday 10 May at 5pm at the InterCcECT Salon in Bucktown for “The Vanishing Place of Judgment between Empiricism and Aesthetics: The Case of Locke’s Essay.” Request the paper and final details.

InterCcECT is your circle. Sign up to receive regular updates, check the calendar for recommended events around town (like tonight’s The Art of Drinking Beer with Friends) and for our plans (like the upcoming Lacan reading group), and drop us a line to propose your own adventures.

Lacan’s Seminar III: The Psychoses — an InterCcECT reading group

anna kornbluh — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:16:01 +0000

The study of psychotics led Jacques Lacan to engage with Freud; the psychotic’s distinctive relation to the symbolic order was a crucial element of Lacan’s elaboration of the psychoanalytic approach to the unconscious and to clincial structures. InterCcECT invites you to a newly convened regular Lacan reading group, commencing with Seminar III: The Psychoses. The first session will entail a close, text-based exploration of a short selection, Chapters 1 and 2, along with planning for future readings and session logistics.

Thursday 17 May at 6pm at the InterCcECT Salon in Bucktown. Write us for details and a PDF (specify English or French or both).

Le Corbusier, Locke, Deleuze, Sociopaths

anna kornbluh — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:46:12 +0000

Join us for several upcoming events at which we’ll investigate the origins of aesthetic philosophy, the vicissitudes of vitalism, and negations of the social bond – perhaps even simultaneously!

InterCcECT presents:
10 May Viv Soni holds a works-in-progress session, “The Vanishing Place of Judgment between Empiricism and Aesthetics: The Case of Locke’s Essay” at the InterCcECT Salon, 5pm ( request the paper and details)
4 June Tom Eyers gives a talk, “Living Structures: Canguilhem, Deleuze, and the Problem of Life” 6pm, Gallery 400
16 July Adam Kotsko discusses his latest book Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide to Late-Capitalist Television at 57th Street Books, 6pm

InterCcECT recommends: (a few selections from our calendar – which includes details)
19 April Anthony Vidler, “Modernist Montage: Film Culture from Eisenstein to Le Corbusier” at Northwestern
20 April Sunil Agnani “Hating Empire Properly: Adorno, CLR James, and the legacy of the Enlightenment” at UIC
24 April Plastic Crimewave at MCA
3-4 May Fred Moten poetry and poetics at U of C
11 May Graham Harman’s Guerilla Metaphysics book discussion

We welcome your event announcements, project proposals, reading group suggestions, and more: write us !

April Showers

anna kornbluh — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:30:41 +0000

InterCcECT reminds you to attend our upcoming mini-seminar with Kiarina Kordela, “(Psychoanalytic) Biopolitics and Bioracism” (readings available here), Monday, 9 April, 4pm, UIC Institute for the Humanities, 701 S Morgan St, lower level.

Some theory events April showers on Chicago (and our neighbor, Milwaukee!):

3 April Richard Weisberg, In Defense of Flexiphobia: How a Touch of Faulknerian ‘Intractability’ Might Help Avoid Historical and Hermeneutic Disasters, UIC Forum for Research on Law, Politics, and the Humanities

4 April, Saskia Sassen, Digital Formations of the Powerful and the Powerless, UIC

5 April, Christopher Menke, The “Different Form” of Domination: Toward a Crtiique of the Social Critique of Law, Northwestern U.

13 April, Pre-Occupy Symposium, UW-Milwaukee Center for 21st Century Studies

20 April, In a Rut, Arts of Non-Sovereignty series, U Chicago

To propose or announce events, contact us .

the psychoanalytic supplement

anna kornbluh — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:16:29 +0000

In her forthcoming book Being, Time, Bios: Capitalism and Ontology, Kiarina Kordela’s psychoanalytically inflected readings of the history of philosophy prompt a a redefinition of biopolitics. In place of Foucault’s formulation that biopolitics is “the administration of bodies and the calculated management of life” she proposes to think “the administration and management of the subject’s relation to mortality and immortality, as a compensation for the loss of eternity.”

InterCcECT is delighted to present a miniseminar with Professor Kordela, Monday 9 April at 4pm, at the UIC Institute for the Humanities (Stevenson Hall, 701 S. Morgan St, lower level). We’ll be discussing her article “(Psychoanalytic) Biopolitics and Bioracism,” which she has generously made available here.

Mark your calendars now for two other special events presented by InterCcECT this spring, a workshop on the origins of aesthetic philosophy with Viv Soni, 5pm 10 May, and a talk on Deleuze by Tom Eyers, 5pm 4 June. To propose or announce events, including reading groups, performances, and other experiments, contact us .
We hope to see you soon, perhaps next week at Nancy Fraser’s lecture and seminar, “Theorizing the Crisis of Capitalism in the 21st Century.”

Everything is Production

anna kornbluh — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:02:00 +0000

“For the real truth of the matter – the glaring, sober truth that resides in delirium – is that there is no such thing as relatively independent spheres or circuits: production is immediately consumption and a recording process, without any sort of mediation, and the recording process and consumption directly determine production, though they do so within the production process itself. Hence everything is production: production of productions, of actions and of passions; productions of recording processes, of distributions and of co-ordinates that serve as points of reference; productions of consumptions, of sensual pleasures, of anxieties, and of pain.”

In preparation for our very special production by Alberto Toscano on 1 March, “Desiring Abstraction: The Place of Capital in Post ’68 French Thought,” join InterCcECT for a reading group session on selections from Anti-Oedipus and a response by Badiou. 5pm, Thursday 23 February. Request PDFs and details.

As always, contact us to propose projects; sign up for updates via RSS or check back here regularly for announcements including our own special events in April, May, and June with Kiarina Kordela, Viv Soni, and Tom Eyers.

Highlights from our calendar:
24 February, Bonnie Honig, “Antigone versus Oedipus: Feminist Theory and the Turn to Antigone” at DePaul
28 February, Bruce Robbins, “The Beneficiary: Cosmopolitanism and Inequality” at UIC
2 March, Sianne Ngai at UIC
2-3 March, Cavell’s Aesthetic Criticism at U of C
6 March, Lawrence Grossberg, “Is There a Place for Intellectuals in the New Radicalism?” at Columbia College

Desiring Abstraction: InterCcECT presents a lecture by Alberto Toscano

anna kornbluh — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:58:18 +0000

InterCcECT proudly presents a talk by Alberto Toscano, Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, “Desiring Abstraction: The Place of Capital in Post ’68 French Thought”.

Thursday, 1 March, 5:30pm
The New Corpse Gallery, 1511 N Milwaukee Ave, Wicker Park.

In preparation, we invite you to a reading group session Thursday 23 February, 5:00pm, focusing on excerpts from Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus along with Alain Badiou’s short piece “The Flux and the Party: In the Margins of Anti-Oedipus“. Contact us for PDF and details.

As always, write to us to propose or announce events, and check the calendar regularly.

In the meantime, we hope to see you around town:

3 February, U Chicago hosts Rolling The Dice: The Art of Chance
10 February, UIC hosts Aesthetics and German Philosophy
17 February, DePaul hosts Karen Feldman, “Phantom Autonomy: On Art and Historiography in Benjamin and Adorno”

New year, new thought: materialism, aesthetics, and more

anna kornbluh — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:20:14 +0000

As school starts anew, InterCcECT looks forward to new conversations and new elements in our circle. In two short weeks, on 24 Jan, join us for the previously scheduled reading group on Quentin Meillassoux’s Divine Inexistence. Contact us for PDF and details.

Shortly thereafter, meet us at UIC for Aesthetics and German Philosophy, a conference sponsored by the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, featuring Robert Pippin, David Wellberry, Karl Ameriks, and Elizabeth Millan. 10 Feb, 9:45am-5pm at UIC Student Center East, 570 S Halsted, Room 302.

Check the calendar for other upcoming events, and let us know: what are your theory goals for the new year?