Key note speaker 2007: Alenka Zupančič

The Nordic Summer University's summer session invites key note speakers with a potential to interest all 8 network groups. These interdisciplinary groups all work on different topics and disciplines; for the time being ranging from creative speculation in aesthetics/technology to concrete regulations of the state. Fot this year's session in Sweden, 22.-29. July, the key notes are Alenka Zupančič and Hartmut Rosa (see next post).

Alenka Zupančič should be such a speaker. From wikipeida:
Alenka Zupančič is a Slovenian philosopher whose work focuses on psychoanalysis and continental theory. She is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana. Zupančič belongs to the Slovenian school of psychoanalysis along with Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek.
Zupančič has written on several topics including ethics, literature, comedy, love and other topics. Hegel, Bergson and Badiou are also referenced in her work.

Key Note speaker 2007: Hartmut Rosa

Professor Rosa teaches both sociology and political theory. His research interests include - according to the German wikipedia source - studies of modernity in terms of technique and sociological "acceleration"; he has written on the philosophy of Charles Taylor, on critical theory, on social mobilization and he also holds an interest in the history of ideas in the tradition of the Cambridge school (see the next post on Q. Skinner).

According to the wikipedia article, this means that professor Rosa advocates that studies of contemporary and historical societies should be sensitive to the history of concepts and ideas, in terms of normativity and ideology, to form a critical perspecitve for research:

Rosa fordert eine Hinterfragung politischer Theorien bezüglich ihres Inhalts und ihres Wirkens. Das bedeutet die Untersuchung von Traditions- und Diskussionszusammenhängen, sowie normativer oder ideologischer Implikationen, in denen er das zentrale Anliegen einer kritischen Begriffsgeschichte sieht. Dieser Forschungsschwerpunkt fügt seine vorangegangenen Themenbereiche zusammen. Rosa sucht, neue Verbindungen zwischen der aktuellen Gesellschaftstheorie mit zeitdiagnostischen Analysen und einer normativen, kritischen Sozialphilosophie, deren Basis er in der Verknüpfung von "politik-, identitäts- und modernetheoretischen Überlegungen" sieht. (from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmut_Rosa )

Summer Session 2008: Key Note speaker Quentin Skinner

The Nordic Summer University has just received a positive reply from the distinguished professor in modern history, Quentin Skinner, University of Cambridge. Skinner has been very influential in various studies such as history of Philsophy, rhetorics, textual studies, hermeneutics, political philosophy and the history of ideas.

I had the pleasure of hearing professor Skinner at the University of Oslo recently, where he gave two talks on political concepts of of freedom. His favoured political theory is (a neo-Roman) republicanism, and a republican notion of freedom, which to him is characterized by the abscence of arbitrary power as a social precence. His thought goes quite well together with Castoriadis's thought, and the two thinkers may open up for some new insights.

The Castoriadis network group would do well to arrange their summer session of 2008 with talks and papers that could interest professor Skinner.

Ingerid S.