Blog Archives

"Being Social"

27/3/2015

The ARN network recommend this publication by a couple of ARN friends Counterpress

Being Social brings together leading and emerging scholars on the question of sociality in poststructuralist thought. The essays collected in this volume examine a sense of the social which resists final determination and closure, embracing an anxiety and undecidability of sociality, rather than effacing it. Through issues including queer politics, migration, and Guantanamo, recent events such as the occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul, and theoretical explorations of themes such as writing, law, and democracy, contributors assess how a reconfigured sociality affects thinking and practice in the legal and political realms. With a particular emphasis on Jean-Luc Nancy, whose work brings questions of community to the fore, these essays explore how the consistent ‘unworking’ of sociality informs the tenor and form of political debate and engagement.

To purchase the publication click here

Emergent Authorities Symposium - 31st October 2014

4/3/2015

In October 2014 the ARN organised a day long symposium in Brighton. Called Emergent Authorities, it brought together speakers and discussants from the UK and Brazil, the event being the first stage in a series of shared projects between the two countries.

The symposium circled around the questions that have animated, and troubled us, from the start of beginning this group. Not only an interest in how authority is enacted in institutional spaces, in public space, in the political sphere, in cultural forms. But also a concern for the political void filled by charismatic voices, a curiosity directed at the cultural forms, in all their contingency, that gather authority. Circling around the event was the voice of Nigel Farage, possibly at the peak of his powers then, and the “yes, well” of Boris Johnson; figures whose authority is derived, as Jonathon Coe so nicely argued, from their capacity to channel the ridicule they produce.

Conflict Cluster Conference 10th to 11th December Brighton

2/3/2015

"Re-engaging Elaine Scarry's 'The Body of Pain' "

The event is a two day conference celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain, to be held at Grand Parade on 10th-11th December 2015 organised by Dr Leila Dawney and Dr Tim Huzar of the University of Brighton. The conference is being held at the Grand Parade site and the link for the call for papers is here