Studies in Social & Political Thought

Announcing the SPT seminar series for Spring 2012

sspt — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:52:40 +0000

The Centre for Social & Political Thought is pleased to announce the programme for its research seminar series for Spring term 2012.

You can find a full timetable on our events page, and you can download a poster here.

The seminars take place on Wednesdays from 17:00-19:00 in Fulton 107 at the University of Sussex. All are very welcome to attend. We hope to see you there.

Professor Andrew Sayer: Why we can’t afford the rich

sspt — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:23:27 +0000

We are pleased to announce a joint Department of Sociology and Centre for Social and Political Thought event:

Andrew Sayer, Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy (Lancaster), “Why We Can’t Afford the Rich: A Moral Economic Critique”.

10th January 2012, 5pm, Fulton 203, University of Sussex.

You can download a PDF of the poster for the event here.

All welcome!

Special event – William E. Scheuerman: ‘Capitalism, Law, and Social Criticism’

sspt — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:03:10 +0000

The Centre for Social and Political Thought is pleased to announce a special event organised in conjunction with International Relations and the Department of Law:

Professor William E. Scheuerman (Indiana University Bloomington)

“Capitalism, Law, and Social Criticism”

9th December 12:00-14:00

Silverstone Building Room 309, University of Sussex.

All welcome!

You can download a poster for the event here.

CSPT work in progress seminar timetable

sspt — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:34:13 +0000

CENTRE FOR SOCIAL & POLITICAL THOUGHT WORK IN PROGRESS SEMINAR

The seminar will take place tomorrow, November 2nd, from 17:00-19:30, in Fulton 107, University of Sussex. The full timetable is below, or you can download a copy of the timetable here. All welcome.

17:00-17:35 Jack Louis Curry: “Marx, Nietzsche, Morality.”

17:35-18:10 Chris O’Kane: “Beyond Reification: Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of the Lukácsian paradigm of Western Hegelian Marxism.”

18:10-18:20 Break

18:20–18:55 Tim Carter: “Inwardness and the Hegelian Critique of Morality.”

18:55–19:30 Huw Rees: “Pyrrhic Translation – A Critique of Habermasian Postsecularism.”

Brunel SPT Research Seminars 2011/12

sspt — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:30:38 +0000

BRUNEL SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT RESEARCH GROUP SEMINAR SERIES 2011-2012

‘Crisis, Transition, Transformation: Revolutionary Thought Today’

The last year has witnessed a wave of protest movements that have swept around the world. This seminar series aims to explore the new challenges and opportunities for revolutionary thought today.

Term 1

Wednesday 26th October 2011, 4pm, Room MJ118
Mark Neocleous (Brunel University)
Marx’s Secret: On the Violence of Original Accumulation and the Logic of International Law

Monday 14th November 2011, 3pm, Room GB210
Banu Bargu (The New School)
Machiavelli and Marx

Wednesday 23rd November 2011, 4pm, Room MJ118
Sara R. Farris (University of Konstanz)
Workerism’s Inimical Incursions: On Mario Tronti’s Weberianism

Tuesday 6th December 2011, 4pm, Room GB210
Peter D. Thomas (Brunel University)
Revolutions, passive and permanent

Term 2

Wednesday 18th January 2012, 4pm, Room MJ118
Peter Osborne (Kingston University)
Crisis and Contemporaneity

Thursday 9th February 2012, 4pm Room LC 004-006
Judith Revel (University of Paris – Sorbonne)
Diagnosis, Subjectivation, Common: Three Faces of Emancipation Today

Wednesday 29th February 2012, 4pm, Room GB239
Slavoj Zizek (Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities)
The Deadlock

Tuesday 20th March 2012, 4pm, Room MJ117
Filippo Del Lucchese (Brunel University)
The Politics of Monstrosity

Wednesday 28th March 2012, 4pm, Room MJ118
China Mieville (University of Warwick)
Clash of the Titans: Marxism and International Law

All seminars take place at Brunel University. For further information, please contact:

Filippo Dellucchese: Fillippo.Dellucchese@brunel.ac.uk

Mark Neocleous: Mark.Neocleous@brunel.ac.uk

Peter Thomas: PeterD.Thomas@brunel.ac.uk

Dangerous ideas: Rethinking the politics of critique

sspt — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:40:27 +0000

Dangerous Ideas challenges engaged intellectuals to think though the extraordinary changes of the past decade. It is an opportunity to explore what engaged critique means for a newly politicised student community, and for a society experiencing seismic shifts in light of the financial and military crises of the past decade. The series culminates with a one day conference in June of 2012. Speakers at these lectures are all well known participants and commentators on the role and place of critique in contemporary society. All lectures are followed by 45 minutes of discussion.

VENUE: 6.30 pm: CRD, Grand Parade, Room M57 University of Brighton

11^th October 2011: Dr Daniel Steuer (Brighton), Birgit Hofstaetter (Brighton): New Directions in Critical Theory

25^th of October, 2011: Dr Saul Newman, Goldsmiths: Max Stirner’s Ethics of Voluntary Inservitude

8^th of November: Dr Mark Devenney, Brighton: Towards an Improper Politics: A Critique of Capital after Rancière and Laclau

22^nd of November, 2011 Dr Nina Power, Roehmapton: The Politics of Protest

6^th of December, 2011 Professor Diana Coole, Birkbeck: Doing critical theory as political engagement: challenges, threats and dangers

7^th of February: Professor Alan Finlayson, East Anglia/Swansea: Rhetorical Invention and the Artistic Practice of Politics

21^st of February: Professor Sarah Franklin, Cambridge: The Mechanics of Substance: Rethinking Reproductive Politics in the ‘age of Biology’

6^th of March 2012, Professor Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck: Resisting Neo-liberalism

20^th March 2012: Professor Howard Caygill, Kingston

1^st of June 2012: One day Symposium: Critique after post-structuralism: The politics of critical theory today

Hosted by CAPPE, the Critical Studies Research Group and the Faculty of Arts

CSPT research seminar series – Autumn 2011

sspt — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:06:14 +0000

The programme for the Centre for Social & Political Thought’s research seminar series for 2011 is up on the events page. We have some excellent speakers lined up, so please come along

SSPT Volume 19 out now!

sspt — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:37:01 +0000

Click here for more details. You can order your copy here

SSPT Annual Conference – Registration Open

sspt — Sat, 07 May 2011 11:29:20 +0000

SSPT Annual Conference, 16-17 June 2011, University of Sussex

This year’s conference theme is ‘Forms of Domination and Emancipation’. We have keynotes from Chris Arthur (formerly of Sussex) and Werner Bonefeld (York), as well as parallel panels with some excellent looking papers.

See our Events page for further details and to register. Attendance is FREE but places are limited.

CFP SSPT (Volume 19)

sspt — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 02:29:44 +0000

The next issue of Studies in Social and Political Thought will be including a special section on the theme ‘Theorising the Postcolonial, Decolonising Theory’.

Both (post)colonialism and decolonial thought have sought to problematise the universalising claims which have characterised European Western philosophy from the Enlightenment period onwards. In this sense, then, both are political projects which seek to highlight implicit or assumed epistemological hierarchies. Yet, while postcolonialism has emerged from within this framework, decolonial theorists such as Walter Mignolo have sought to theorise ‘from the borders’ of coloniality, from outside European thought. The editors would like to invite postgraduate students and early career researchers to submit articles which address either (post)colonial or decolonial theory, or the relationship between the two, within any substantive context. Themes covered might include (though need not be restricted to):

Theoretical Eurocentrism
Ideas of universality
Decolonial theory
The coloniality of power
The influence of (post)colonialism on mainstream social and political thought
History, particularly colonial histories, and its/their relationship to theory
Coloniality and epistemology
‘Indigenizing’ theory

Articles should be 4000-5000 words in length (inclusive of footnotes).

The deadline for submission is 14th April 2011

All submissions should be complete articles ready for peer review and should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. Authors should also ensure that their name and institution are clearly stated on the submission. Guidelines on style are available here. The guest editors of the section are Emma Battell Lowman and Lucy Mayblin of the University of Warwick.

Please direct submissions and inquiries to Emma: e.j.b.lowman@warwick.ac.uk

A PDF version of the Call For Papers is here