"Is Critique Secular?"
Day-long symposium hosted by the Critical Theory Initiative
Friday
October 19, 2007
9:30 am--5:30 pm
The Geballe Room
Townsend Center for the Humanities
Wendy Brown, Political Science, UCB
Opening Remarks
Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Author of On Suicide Bombing, 2007
"Reflections on Blasphemy and Secular Criticism"
Discussants: Judith Butler (Rhetoric, UCB) and Saba Mahmood (Anthropology, UCB)
10 am--11:30 am
Lunch Break: 11:45--1:30 pm
Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Author of Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History, 2002
"Psychoanalytic Critique, Secular or Otherwise?"
Discussant: Niklaus Largier (German, UCB)
2 pm--3:30 pm
Colin Jager, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University
Author of The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era, 2007
"Is Critique Secular? Thoughts on Enchantment and Reflexivity"
Discussant: Chris Nealon (English, UCB)
4 pm--5:30 pm
FORMAT: The papers are available from the Townsend Center for the Humanities website. No formal presentation will be made of the papers so please read in advance. A collective discussion of each paper will be preceded by brief remarks from assigned UCB discussants.
The Critical Theory Initiative is a new research and teaching unit at Berkeley, whose aim is to invigorate the project of critique in the 21st-century university, both by investigating its genealogy and by bringing it to bear on emergent forms of knowledge.
Sponsors: Critical Theory Initiative, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Mellon Fellowship in History of Art, Taubman Funds, Center for Middle East Studies, Maxine Elliot Funds, Departments of German and Comparative Literature.