When Monsters No Longer Speak: An Aspect of Disaster
in the Modern Age
7:30 p.m. Thursday March 25, 2010
Recent times have been marked, among other things, by a spate of disasters. As the bodies mount, the rubble sifted through, and the rest of us count our blessings, the accompanying reflections on the meaning of such events reach print and screen.
In the wake of all this is a continued failure to examine, more radically, the meaning of disaster itself and the social conditions by which minor tremors in one place could mean catastrophe in another.
In this talk, Jane and Lewis Gordon will explore these themes through discussion of the movement from disaster to notions and fears of disastrous people, to the warnings by which such people echo an age of monstrous speech.
Drawing upon resources from literature and horror movies, the Gordons will explore these themes in the context of recent events and examine their political significance as we face, as did so many other civilizations, the question of what to do with messages that, for all intents and purposes, fell upon us from the heavens.
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ABOUT THE LECTURERS |
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 Jane Gordon received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania as a William Penn Fellow and a Rowe Fellow. She now teaches in the Department of Political Science at Temple University, where she also holds an affiliation in Jewish Studies and is Associate Director of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies.
 Lewis Gordon is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker, musician, and cultural critic. Gordon achieved his PhD in Philosophy with distinction from Yale University and is the founder and co-director, with his wife Jane Gordon, of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University. His formal academic appointments are as the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Temple University, the Jay Newman Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College (spring 2010), and Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica.
Thursday March 25, 2010
Doors open at 7:00 p.m. Lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.
Hamilton Specator Auditorium
To reserve your seat:
e-mail sciencecity@mcmaster.ca
Or by phone 905-525-9140, extension 27965
*THIS IS A FREE PUBLIC LECTURE. ALL ARE WELCOME*
Click here for directions to The Hamilton Spectator
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