ANTHEM

Magnetic Movie

Peter Erdélyi — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:59:51 +0000

An interesting coming together of art and science. The interview with the artists on the BBC’s Culture Show is also highly recommended: it’s an excellent STS case study in itself. Apparently many scientists took this for a recording of an experiment, as it looks so convincing. Fact or fiction? You decide…

Update: We had to remove the embedded video as some of the browsers couldn’t handle it. You can watch Magnetic Movie here instead.

Graham Harman’s abstract for Deleuze2008

Peter Erdélyi — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:21:34 +0000

The abstract for Graham Harman’s keynote address at the Deleuze2008 conference at Stavanger:

Graham Harman
‘The Assemblage Theory of Society’

This lecture considers the interesting ‘assemblage theory’ of society found in Manuel DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society (2006), which links up with some of the key issues of classical and present-day metaphysics, not to mention some of the central themes of this conference.

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The State of Things: Towards a Political Economy of Artifice and Artefacts

Peter Erdélyi — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:50:21 +0000

A very interesting call for papers started making the rounds yesterday on various blogs and mailing lists, emanating from the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy (CPPE) at the University of Leicester. “The State of Things: Towards a Political Economy of Artifice and Artefacts” conference is to take place between 29 April and 1 May 2009 at Leicester. It brings together the concerns of modern and classical forms of political economy regarding the nature of the capitalist mode of production with recent object-orientated inquiries into economic ordering that draw on actor-network theory, especially within economic sociology and science and technology studies. The deadline for proposals is 28 November 2008. The full call for papers is reproduced below.

Update [18 July 2008]: A nice PDF flyer is now also available.

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Deleuze2008: Call for Papers

Peter Erdélyi — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:39:32 +0000

The Deleuze2008 Conference in Stavanger, Norway is one of the city’s 2008 European Capital of Culture projects. It will take place on 7 and 8 November 2008 and it will also mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of Gilles Deleuze’s (1968) Difference and Repetition. Keynote speakers are Simon Duffy, Roland Faber, Graham Harman, Christian Kerslake, Daniel W. Smith and James Williams. The deadline for submitting abstracts is 12 September 2008. Further information on the call for papers is available here and on how to register here.

A turn to ontology in STS?

Peter Erdélyi — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:26:18 +0000

A thought-provoking gathering took place yesterday (25 June 2008) at Oxford University, organised by the STS group at the James Martin Institute. “Is there a turn to ontology under way in Science and Technology Studies?” - asked the provocation piece written by Steve Woolgar and colleagues. Ted Schatzki, Mike Lynch, Noortje Marres, and Arie Rip laid out their thoughts in response, each presentation accompanied by the comments of two discussants. The papers and the comments can be downloaded from the Saïd Business School website. There are also additional comments by Annemarie Mol and John Law.

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Distinktion No 16: The Technologies of Politics

Peter Erdélyi — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:26:43 +0000

Issue 16 of Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory is out and it is packed with interesting articles on the technologies of politics, several of them engaging with actor-network theory. Authors include Kristin Asdal, Noortje Marres, Peter Sloterdijk, John Law, Richie Nimmo, Guro Ådnegard Skarstad, and Nigel Thrift.

Bruno Latour to give Henry Myers Lecture 2008

Peter Erdélyi — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:51:08 +0000

The 2008 Henry Myers Lecture of the Royal Anthropological Institute will be given by Bruno Latour on 25 September 2008 at the British Museum in London. The lecture is entitled “Nature and Creation: What good is it for a man to gain his soul, yet forfeit the whole world?” Further details can be found on the RAI website. Here is the abstract:

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On the Horrors of Realism: An Interview with Graham Harman

Peter Erdélyi — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:10:38 +0000

The most recent issue of Pli - The Warwick Journal of Philosophy has an interview with Graham Harman “On the Horrors of Realism.” Harman speaks to Tom Sparrow about object-oriented philosophy, phenomenology, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger’s fourfold, Meillassoux’s correlationism, Lingis, Derrida and Foucault, DeLanda’s realism and Latour’s relationism, speculative realism, Whitehead, Leibniz, Zubiri, H.P. Lovecraft and China Miéville, and of course metaphysics. Harman speaks of weird things, about the horror of the real.

4S/EASST: Actor Network Theory meets (Post) Phenomenology

Peter Erdélyi — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:34:12 +0000

The draft programme for the 2008 4S/EASST Conference in Rotterdam is now available from the 4S website [1MB PDF]. There are just too many interesting talks here for us to be able to even begin to list them, so we will stick with highlighting just the one session that is most closely in line with the ANTHEM theme: Session 1.3.16 “Actor Network Theory meets (Post)Phenomenology,” between 13:30-15:30 on 21 August 2008 in Room T3-31. Session organisers: Jack Post and Peter-Paul Verbeek. The talks:

“I have never been Modern - nor has Postphenomenology been so,” by Don Ihde, State University of New York at Stony Brook
“Posthuman Perceptions: on hybrids and human-technology relations,” by Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente

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International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation

Peter Erdélyi — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:16:54 +0000

Two calls for papers from the new International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation (IJANTTI):

for the Special Issue:”Approaches to Technological Innovation,” due 1st August 2008
for the regular issue: due 1st September 2008