Rough Theory

I am utterly wiped out at the moment – head full of static and completely unable to write anything serious (or, for that matter, even to respond to Claude’s meme [Claude, I found myself looking at it, and literally going, “fantasy… what’s the title of a piece of fantasy I liked… hmm… maybe the next question will be better… sexy songs… hmm… can I remember any sexy songs? Any songs, of any kind?” My memory is producing absolutely nothing at the moment – regardless of the genre… Will try again later, when recall wants to work for me again…]).

So now that I’ve no doubt instilled great confidence in my intellectual capacities, I wanted to put in a quick plug for the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, which is an “independent teaching and research school dedicated to Continental thought”. Based at the University of Melbourne, the MSCP offers a wide range of week-long seminars over the university term breaks, covering a diverse set of theorists and themes in continental philosophy. I was able to attend a series on Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, as well as a series on topics in 20th century German philosophy, during the winter break, and found the sessions excellent. They’ve just now released their schedule for the coming summer session, which includes the following sessions:

Week 1: Jan 28 – Feb 1
History of Philosophy I: The Pre-Socratics (David Rathbone)
Nietzsche & The Birth of Tragedy: Music, Science & Philosophy (Paul Daniels)

Week 2: February 4 – 8
History of Philosophy II: Plato and His Contemporaries (Cameron Shingleton and James Garrett)
Women in Dark Times (Matthew Sharpe, Lucy Ward and Sergio Mariscal)

Week 3: February 11 – 15
Emmanual Lévinas: Philosophy of Radical Alterity (Andrea León-Montero)
Thinking the Analytical/Continental Divide (George Duke and Jack Reynolds)

Week 4: February 18 – 22
The Pleasures: of Political Philosophy and Other Interruptions (Bryan Cooke)
Alain Badiou’s Being and Event (Jon Roffe)

The sessions labelled “History of Philosophy” are the first sequences in a series that will continue to unfold over the next three term breaks, intended to provide a broad orientation to the history of philosophy. Detailed descriptions of each session, as well as a registration form, can be found here.

The Hegel Summer School, in which I’m involved, will also take place at the University of Melbourne during the coming term break: 15-16 February. This unfortunately means that we will overlap the final day of the Week 3 MSCP sessions – but you guys know which session you’d rather attend, right? ;-P