Arendt After ’68: A Symposium
February 12-13, 2009
Participants include:
Richard Bernstein, New School
Jean Cohen, Columbia
Stathis Gourgouris, Columbia
Ayten Gündoğdu, Barnard
Fred Moten, Duke
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia
Linda Zerilli, University of Chicago
This symposium is devoted to a consideration of Hannah Arendt’s theorization of violence in America in the aftermath of 1968, especially as articulated in the short volume On Violence (1969). It is intended to follow the end of a cycle of reflective and sometimes nostalgic events marking the 40th anniversary of ‘68 at Columbia, and its title, Arendt after ‘68 reflects the symposium organizers’ sense that a full accounting for the events of that year (in the US and elsewhere) must include an analysis of the kinds of theoretical work produced in its aftermath.
In recent years, the writings and political theory of Hannah Arendt have become the objects of a sustained reconsideration, one that has variously situated her in the intellectual lineages of both liberal and Nietzschean traditions. Her complex and ambivalent relationship to Schmittian as well as Frankfurt School political theory, to feminist and phallocentric discourse, and to German, Jewish and Zionist politics, have generated an enormous and enormously productive set of reflections by writers of diverse affiliations and commitments. However, while a growing body of literature has been devoted to her writings on America, most of this has focused on On Revolution, "Little Rock," and "Crises of the Republic", a thorough accounting of her thought on American political life remains to be undertaken, and her work on the US has generally received far less systematic theoretical attention than have the texts on European political history, notably The Rise of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem. On Violence and the later more-US focused works still await their fuller analysis. This conference will focus on On Violence.
Arendt’s writing of On Violence (urgent, timely and, as a result, sometimes perfunctory), was at least partly a direct response to the student riots of 1968 (at Columbia University, as well as Paris and other cities) and the transformations demanded and effected in educational institutions that they made. It was also provoked by Arendt’s ambivalent efforts to come to terms with the theoretical works of Sartre and Fanon. It commences with a reference to the 1969 Report on Violence in America, and it situates changes in the intellectual culture of the United States universities on a broadly changing political horizon, one marked not only by the rapid processes and claims of decolonization but also by the rise of black nationalism in the US and the emergence of a youth politics characterized, in Arendt’s mind, by a reconceptualization of the relationship between judgment and action.
Schedule
Thursday, February 12
Deutsches Haus
4:10pm
Welcome: Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia), Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender
4:15pm
Introductory Remarks: Rosalind Morris (Columbia), Conference Organizer
4:30pm
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia), ‘An Honorary Male.’
Respondent: Kendall Thomas (Columbia)
5:30pm
Richard Bernstein (New School), ‘The Enduring Legacy of Hannah Arendt: Power, Public Freedom, and Violence.’
Respondent: Andreas Kalyvas (New School)
Friday, February 13
Room 501 Schermerhorn
10:30am
Jean Cohen (Columbia), ‘Banishing the Sovereign? Arendt on Sovereignty and Freedom in America and Beyond.’
Respondent: Andreas Huyssen (Columbia)
11:30am
Ayten Gündoğdu (Barnard), ‘Arendt on the Stateless: Rethinking the Violence of Rightlessness in an Age of Rights.’
Respondent: Lisa Wedeen (University of Chicago)
12:30–2:00pm
Lunch Break
2:00pm
Fred Moten (Duke), ‘Student Studies.’
Respondent: Brent Hayes Edwards (Columbia)
3:00pm
Stathis Gourgouris (Columbia), “Anarchy's Democracy.”
Respondent: Nadia Urbinati (Columbia)
4:00pm
Linda Zerilli (University of Chicago), ‘From Willing to Judging: Hannah Arendt's Copernican Revolution.’
Respondent: Samuel Moyn (Columbia)
5:00pm
Reception - 754 Schermerhorn Ext.
Sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, with generous support from the Office of the Provost.
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