The Political Concepts conference returns to the Columbia University. The project is guided by one formal principle--the posing of a Socratic question "what is x?"--and by one theatrical principle--the concepts defined should be relevant to political thought and, more broadly, to thinking about the political.
Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon is a multidisciplinary, web-based journal that seeks to be a forum for engaged scholarship. Each lexical entry will focus on a single concept with the express intention of resituating it in the field of political discourse by addressing what has remained unquestioned or unthought in that concept. Each entry will serve as a short defining essay for a concept. Through their argumentative strategies and employment of the concept in question, entries will aim to reconfigure a concept, rather than take for granted the generally accepted definitions of that concept or the conclusions that follow from them.
Political Concepts does not predetermine what does or does not count as a political concept. Our aim is to expand the scope of what demands political accounting, and for this reason we welcome essays that fashion new political concepts or demonstrate how concepts deserve to be taken as politically significant. It is our view that “politics” refers to the multiplicity of forces, structures, problems, and orientations that shape our collective life. Politics enters the frame wherever our lives together are staked and wherever collective action could make a difference to the outcome. As no discipline possesses an hegemony over this critical space, we welcome submissions from all fields of study.
We consider Political Concepts to be “a critical lexicon” because each contribution resituates a particular aspect of political meaning, thereby opening pathways for another future—one that is not already determined and ill-fated. The term “critical” in our title is also meant quite literally: Political Concepts is a forum for conversation and constructive debate rather than the construction of an encyclopedic ideal.
March 6, 2015 Friday
8:50am - 9:00am EDT
9:00am - 10:30am EDT
Lydia Goehr
Professor of Philosophy
Columbia University
Rebecca Comay
Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
Adi Ophir
Professor at The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas
Tel Aviv University
10:30am - 10:45am EDT
10:45am - 12:15pm EDT
Andrew Arato
Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory
The New School for Social Research
Nadia Urbinati
Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies
Columbia University
Andreas Kalyvas
Associate Professor of Political Science
New School for Social Research
12:15pm - 1:45pm EDT
2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Hagar Kotef
Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Comparative Politics
SOAS, University of London
Miriam Ticktin
Associate Professor of Anthropology
The New School for Social Research
Ann Stoler
Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies
The New School for Social Research
3:25pm - 4:00pm EDT
4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT
Samuel Weber
Avalon Professor of Humanities
Northwestern University
Emily Apter
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
New York University
Stathis Gourgouris
Professor
Columbia University
March 7, 2015 Saturday
10:20am - 10:30am EDT
10:30am - 12:00pm EDT
Maxim Pensky
Chair of the Department of Philosophy
State University of New York--Binghamton
Alberto Moreiras
Professor
Texas A & M University
Jay Bernstein
University Distinguished Professor
The New School
12:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
Timothy Bewes
Professor of English
Brown University
Jason Frank
Associate Professor
Cornell University
Bonnie Honig
Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science
Brown University
4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT
Linda Martín Alcoff
Professor of Philosophy
Hunter College
Dmitri Nikulin
Professor of Philosophy
New School for Social Research
Akeel Bilgrami
Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy
Columbia University