Anti-Humanism and Public Ethics Program

Something that Matt and I will be participating in next week:

Thursday, March 12^th

Morning 

09:30 – 10:00            Registration / Coffee

10:00 – 10:05            Welcome, by Chantal Beauvais, Rector of Saint Paul University

10:05 – 11:05            Marc De Kesel (Saint Paul University):

Between Sade and Labre: Modernity’s Impossible Humanism

                                    Respondent: Andrew Pump (University of Ottawa)

11:05 – 11:15            Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:15            Hélène Tessier (Saint Paul University):

Humanisme et Démocratie: le rationalisme esthétique de Thomas Mann 

Respondent: Anna Djintcharadze (Dominican University College)

12:15 – 13:30             Lunch

Afternoon

13:30 – 14:30             Jean-Pierre Couture (University of Ottawa):

Le posthumanisme de Peter Sloterdijk: du berger génétique à l’athlète anthropotechnique

                                    Respondent: Marc De Kesel (Saint Paul University)

14:30 – 15:30            Mark Salter (University of Ottawa):

Global Ethics: Sovereignty and New Materialism

                                    Respondent: Michael Hijazi (Saint Paul University)

15:30 – 15:45            Coffee Break  

15:45 – 16:45            Devin Z. Shaw, (University of Ottawa and Carleton University):

Curmudgeonly Humanism: From Sartre to Vonnegut

                                    Respondent: Matthew R. McLennan (Saint Paul University)

18.00                           Conference Dinner       

Friday, March 13^th

Morning

10:00 – 11:00            Christopher Sauder (Dominican University College):

De l’existence à la logique : le système hégélien et les origines de l’antihumanisme français

                                    Respondent: Joshua Lalonde (University of Ottawa)

11:00 – 11:15            Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:15            Deniz Guvenc (Carleton University):

Locating Anti-Humanism within Contemporary Anarchism

                                    Respondent: Martin Samson (Saint Paul University)

12:15 – 13:15            Erica Harris (McGill University):

Ethics of Transgression: The Perverse Human Condition and Anti-pornography Legislation

                                    Respondent: Iva Apostolova (Dominican University College)

13:15 – 14:00            Lunch

Afternoon

14:00 – 15:00             Geraldine Finn (Carleton University):

Of all Things Man is the Measure: It is no longer, but it is still a Science of Man

            Respondent: Naomi Goldenberg (University of Ottawa)

15:00 – 15:15              Coffee Break

15:15 – 16:15             Matthew R. McLennan (Saint Paul University):

Medical Humanism: Putting the Ghost into Language

            Respondent: Monique Lanoix (Saint Paul University)

16:15 –16:30               Closing Remarks by Sophie Cloutier (Director of Public Ethics, Saint Paul University)

16:30 – 17:00              Closing Discussion

 

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Opens Tomorrow

The Vonnegut Library's hours will begin tomorrow 12-5pm Fridays and Saturdays, until switching to regular hours on January 29th, 2011. The hitch? The Library is in Indianapolis. I suppose its administrators wanted to make you work on that pilgrimage you were planning. From the NYT:

The library items on display range from the ordinary to the intergalactic, many of them donated by his children. They include the author’s typewriter and an unopened box of his Pall Mall cigarettes, alongside a painting devoted to the Tralfamadorians, the green aliens Mr. Vonnegut wrote about in books including Slaughterhouse-Five.” Several of Mr. Vonnegut’s drawings are also displayed, including one of a gravestone that reads “Life is no way to treat an animal.”

That drawing, entitled "Trout's Tomb," has been the wallpaper on my computer screen for over four years, and I've been waiting for an excuse to post it here:

The Pynchon Review

There's nothing like an extra hour of sleep, unless it's catching up on the last week at Notes Taken, which includes Matt McLennan discussing Andrea Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum, and the second part of my lectures on Schelling's period of absolute idealism (and part one is here). I don't know how Matt's lecture went, but I can say that first year students are not prepared for absolute idealism. Including Schelling in the course can only indicate how foggy my head was in those final days of the dissertation. However, adding Rousseau seems to have been a good choice. Maybe we just should have read Zizek on ideology or Paul Mason talking about his favorite books.

The funny part about writing the Sunday review is that it seems to take on a theme whether I like it or not. This week, it just ended up being about Thomas Pynchon.

• Here he is, on whether or not it is ok to be a luddite.
• Re: Pynchon: on the Simpsons.
  
• Also re: Pynchon: I'm not sure whether or not Little, Brown and Co. understand the humor in posting a silhouette in the place of Pynchon's photo on their underdeveloped website. Note that the possibility of viewing his books, on this page, are 'coming soon!' No wonder P-chon published his latest work with Penguin. Inherent Vice even has a 'trailer.' The voice? It's his. And there's a soundtrack?
  
• Re: re: Pynchon: from Corey, a link to an interpretation of Against the Day, if not all his works.
• Re: re: re: Pynchon: there is a Pynchon wiki. Kill time at your own risk.
  
• And the non-Pynchon bonus: Dave Eggers reviewing a posthumous anthology of Kurt Vonnegut's work.

Banned Books Week

September 26th to October 3rd is Banned Books Week, and various groups are doing some consciousness raising about it, such as the American Library Association, and this clumsy website. The ALA site has a list of the Radcliffe Publishing Course's Top 1oo books (of the 20th century), and reasons why they are frequently banned. From what I can gather, Radcliffe compiled this list for the Modern Library editorial board (and it doesn't look like it's organized chronologically). From what I can remember, I've only read 16 and a half of the books listed, but I would probably never read all one hundred anyway. For my reasoning see numbers 43 and 92.

The reasons given for challenging books are not the most entertaining reading, but they sometimes have entertainment value. Take, for instance, the list of prudish offenses taken toward Slaughterhouse-Five:

Challenged in many communities, but burned in Drake, N. Dak (1973). Banned in Rochester, Mich. because the novel "contains and makes references to religious matters" and thus fell within the ban of the establishment clause. An appellate court upheld its usage in the school in Todd v Rochester Community Schools, 41 Mich. App. 320, 200 N. W 2d 90 (I 972). Banned in Levittown, N.Y (1975), North Jackson, Ohio (1979), and Lakeland, Fla. (1982) because of the "book's explicit sexual scenes, violence, and obscene language." Barred from purchase at the Washington Park High School in Racine, Wis. (I 984) by the district administrative assistant for instructional services. Challenged at the Owensboro, Ky. High School library (1985) because of "foul language, a section depicting a picture of an act of bestiality, a reference to 'Magic Fingers' attached to the protagonist's bed to help him sleep, and the sentence: 'The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the fly of God Almighty."'

To tell you the truth, I had forgotten about that last line. What a zinger!

However, this banned books list reminds me that I haven't started Ulysses. I'm already reading Hegel and Sartre for a paper! It's not like Ulysses is casual reading for unwinding after that.