Foucault and the Politics of Language Today - Mark Kelly (Western Sydney University)
Media, Film and Communication are kicking off our research seminar series for 2019 with a talk by Mark Kelly (Western Sydney University) on “Foucault and the Politics of Language Today”.
The talk will take place on Thursday 28th February at 4pm in Burns 1 Lecture theatre in the Arts Building. This will be followed by a function in the Humanities tearoom.
About Mark Kelly
Mark is in the Arts Faculty at WSU and is an ARC Future Fellow on the project 'The invention of norms: how ethics, law, and the life sciences shape our social selves'. He has worked previously in the philosophy departments at Middlesex, Monash and Macquarie.
Mark recently published Biopolitical Imperialism with Zero Books and has also published The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault (Routledge). He is also the Treasurer of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy.
About the talk "Foucault and the Politics of Language Today"
In this paper, I argue – on the basis of Foucault's principle of the tactical polyvalence of discourse – that a contemporary political thinking misguidedly understands language as political monovalent, that is, understands words and phrases as having a fixed political meaning. I focus on the particular examples of the reaction of both left and right to the phenomenon of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy to illustrate this. I then go on to argue that contemporary focus on increasing 'representation' of subaltern groups, in relation to the media most obviously, effectively commits a similar error of confusing signifiers for the political substance they are supposed to signify, and substituting the modification of representations for the rearrangement of power relations.
This is an open public lecture and all are welcome.
| Date | Thursday, 28 February 2019 |
|---|---|
| Time | 4:00pm - 5:00pm |
| Audience | Public |
| Event Category | Research Events |
| Event Type |
Public Lecture |
| Campus | Dunedin |
| Department | Media, Film and Communication |
| Location | Burns 1 Lecture theatre, Arts Building |
| Contact Name | Rosemary Overell |
| Contact Email | rosemary.overell@otago.ac.nz |
| Website | http://https://www.facebook.com/events/1867078636754293/ |