This seminar is part of the 23/24 CPCT research seminar series on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? Pt.3’ [link].
About the talk
In the last pages of Orientalism, under the subheading “The Personal Dimension,” Edward Said borrows Antonio Gramsci’s words about the imperative to compile an inventory of the historical processes that have deposited in someone an infinity of traces as a starting point for a critical elaboration. Orientalism, Said then notes, is an attempt to “inventory the traces upon me, the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a factor in the life of all Orientals.” This talk takes as its starting point Said’s observation to investigate how his own Metropolitan Palestinian exilic experience informed his early conceptualization of the relation between knowledge and power, which will be further developed in his trilogy Orientalism (1978), The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981).
About the speaker
Fadi A. Bardawil, is visiting research scholar in the department of Near Eastern Studies and visiting Associate Professor in the department of Anthropology at Princeton. His work investigates the traditions of intellectual inquiry and modalities of political engagement of contemporary Arab thinkers at home and in the diaspora, and their friction with the different genealogies of critical theory (Frankfurt school, anti-colonial and post-colonial). In doing so, his research explores how the different relationships to cultural production (creating and thinking), political practice (acting) and generational dwelling (living) in different sites (Global North/South), can help us reckon with questions of power, emancipation and solidarity in an increasingly interconnected, yet fragmented world. His recent Arabic and English writings have appeared in American Ethnologist, boundary 2; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; The Journal for Palestine Studies (Arabic edition); al-Jumhuriya; The Immanent Frame; Megaphone; Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online; South Atlantic Quarterly; and World Records Journal. He is the author of Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation (Duke UP, 2020).
A British Academy symposium on the circulation of images of China in German Jewish letters of the early 20th century.
Venue: Stewart House 2/3, Senate House London Date: May 3, 2024 from 3:30-6:40 pm
Too often, critical discussions around antisemitism and anticolonialism seem completely at odds with one another. This workshop asks whether a consideration of the images of ‘China’ that circulated amongst German Jewish thinkers might help complicate or resolve this impasse by suggesting a different orientation to both the Christian-colonial project and the racialisation of work. How were these images of China used to imagine different ways of organising social, political, and economic life in a context of intensifying antisemitism, capital-critical sentiment, and ambivalence towards the European legacies of imperialism and colonialism in the ‘Orient’?
Free and open to the public, though registration is required.
3:30-3:45 pm Welcome and Introduction: Daoism, Capitalism, and German Jewish Thought Dr. Julia Ng (Goldsmiths)
Ideas circulated from a modernizing China in the 1910s and 1920s amongst major German Jewish thinkers as they grappled with their own modernity and contemporaneity. How useful or limited is “Orientalism” as an interpretive framework for grasping the career of these ideas, and might competing “Orientalisms”—that of Buber, for instance, referring to quite a different “Orient” altogether, or Marx, which points towards China as a historical entity—complicate the picture in illuminating ways?
3:45-4:25 pm Rosenzweig, Hegel, and ‘Oriental Messianism’ Dr. Daniel Weiss (Cambridge)
Hegel famously portrayed Jewish messianism as characterized by an ‘Oriental’ orientation that fails to produce effective agency in history. By contrast, Franz Rosenzweig reaffirmed key elements of Jewish messianism criticized by Hegel, including elements that could outwardly appear linked to passivity or non-action. However, Rosenzweig treats the Jewish orientation not as weak or ineffective, but as a committed stance that will lead the world to messianic redemption and to the overthrow of ‘illusory’ power-claims. We will see that, although Rosenzweig himself criticizes various aspects of Daoism, his account of Judaism shares elements in common with various nineteenth and early-twentieth German portrayals of Daoism. As such, we can understand him as calling into question dominant Christian portrayals of both Judaism and Daoism, and seeking to reclaim the supposedly ‘Oriental’ characteristics criticized by others. Rosenzweig’s development of a modern, challenging account of Judaism can thus be understood parallelling the ways in which European writers contended with ways in which China’s modernizing developments likewise presented a challenge to dominant Western preconceptions.
4:30-5:10 pm Ex Oriente Lux: Martin Buber’s Dao-Hasidic Mysticism of the Worldly Professor Agata Bielik-Robson (Nottingham)
Martin Buber’s interest in Chinese Daoism begins very early in his intellectual career and coincides – not at all accidentally – with his interest in Hasidism: both are treated by him as the cases of “spiritually rich” Orientalism which he opposes to the disenchanted West. Between 1906-1909, he writes The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, The Legend of the Baal Shem, and the Hasidism inspired Ecstatic Confessions, but he also, under the influence of Wang Qingdao, the visiting lecturer at the Berlin Seminar for Oriental Languages, publishes Talks and Parables of Zhuangzi (1910) and Chinese Ghost and Love Stories (1911) which offer a partial translation of Liaozhai Zhiyu, an early eighteenth century compilation of folktales done by Pu Songling. From this time on, Daoism – interpreted in close comparative relation to Hasidism – will never leave Buber, although he will modify his attitude towards its main concept, the Dao, over time. While in Buber’s early phase, Dao is most of all a notion of a “mystical unity” connecting the sage with the essential oneness of the world, in the later dialogic phase (beginning with his 1923 I and Thou), Dao emerges rather as the Path: the dynamic way into and through the world appreciated in its concreteness and multiplicity. Thus, in his Ascona lecture on Daoism, delivered in 1924, Buber repudiates his earlier “escapist” mysticism of the One, which now transforms into a “intraworldly” mysticism of the Two, strongly focused on the ultimate realness of the particulars, never again to be considered as an ontological “illusion.” Just as before Dao represented for him a transcendental oneness underlying all, closely corresponding with the Hasidic understanding of God as the ehad, the One pervading all creation – now it represents for him a Path into the World, where creation is to be conceived as “individuation of all things,” this time corresponding with the other meaning of ehad: not simply one, but strictly singular and unique. In my paper, I will present this trajectory in close parallel with Buber’s changing views on Hassidism, but will also juxtapose Buber’s use of the Chinese motifs with Martin Heidegger’s turn towards Daoism as instrumental for his post-war Kehre which redefined the relation between Being and beings in favour of the latter. In both thinkers, the Dao conceived as a Path into (and of) the World plays an important role in their turn towards the worldly.
5:15-5:55 pm Kafka’s Dao and the Reverse of Possession Dr. Julia Ng (Goldsmiths)
Reading, inter alia, Kafka’s Zürauer Aphorisms and the fragment “Workforce without Possession” alongside works of Daoism and on contemporaneous China that were consulted by Kafka, this paper explores how Kafka’s treatment of figures of ancestrality, nonhuman animation, and reversion opens up questions of ‘race,’ community, and political-economic organisation.
6:00-6:30 pm Roundtable
6:30-6:40 pm Q&A
About the speakers
Agata Bielik-Robson is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely on all areas of Jewish philosophy with special emphasis paid on modern Jewish thought, from Spinoza to Derrida. She is the author of Another Finitude: Messianic Vitalism and Philosophy (Bloomsbury 2019), Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (Routledge 2014), and co-editor of Judaism in Contemporary Thought: Traces and Influences (Routledge 2014) and Tsimtsum and Modernity (2021).
Daniel H. Weiss is is Polonsky-Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. He is author of Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion (2012) and Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence (2023), among other publications, and co-editor of multiple books, including Scripture and Violence (2020) and Tsimtsum and Modernity (2021). Actively involved in the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, he is a recent recipient of a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
Julia Ng is Reader in Critical Theory and founding Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London. She specialises in philosophical approaches to literature, modern German-Jewish thought, early 20th-century Germanophone literatures in their transnational contexts, and history of critical theory. Recent publications include her translation and critical edition of Walter Benjamin’s “Toward the Critique of Violence” (with P. Fenves; Stanford UP, 2021) and articles in Theory Culture & Society, Paragraph, CR: New Centennial Review, Modern Language Notes, diacritics, and Critical Times. Funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, she is currently completing a book on Daoism and Capitalism, which has also received support from the Leverhulme Trust, the Center for Jewish History (NYC), and the British Society for the History of Philosophy.
The Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London cordially invites you to the 5th Goldsmiths Annual Philosophy Lectures 2024
Professor Linda Martín Alcoff (Hunter College, CUNY)
Lecture 1: “Extractivism as a Model for Modern Epistemology”
Extractivist epistemologies work analogously to extractivist capitalism by extracting something of value, transferring it to another location, and then making use of its value. Sometimes, the item being extracted is knowledge, or an object that is thought to contain knowledge. Thus, in this case extractivists seek an epistemic resource of some sort—such as a piece of pharmacological knowledge held by an indigenous community or a rural healer concerning the medicinal potential of a given plant, or an artifact from an indigenous funeral site that can help them understand the nature of that particular culture. I argue that extractivist epistemologies developed in the modern era in a way that was marked by this practice and its implicit assumptions about how value (epistemic or otherwise) can be identified, can be made portable, and can be made use of. The extractivist epistemic approach treats this epistemic resource as separable from its origin, and then renders it into a knowledge commodity with exchange value over which exclusive rights can be contractually defined, protected and enforced. But to do this involves a whole series of metaphysical and epistemological assumptions about the nature of knowing as well as the norms of good knowing. This paper will also offer corrective epistemic norms to address the problems I have identified in extractivist epistemologies.
Lecture 2: “Imperial Museums”
Respondent: Professor Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (Birkbeck)
My focus here will be primarily on archaeological museums that house cultural artifacts from many cultures: these are what I call “imperial museums”. I will focus on the knowledge claims made by such museums, which are used to justify their retention of their collections. The primary way museums legitimate their right of ownership and of display is on the basis of protecting a universal cultural knowledge which has unlimited reach into the future. I will explore and analyze the debates over this claim, looking especially at the issue of human remains of indigenous peoples in the Americas and the effort to repatriate these remains. I will also look at some current options for transforming such museums as developed by Dan Hicks, Ariella Azoulay and Philip Deloria. The principal issue this paper is concerned with is not the right to retain objects but the ideological effect of such museums in the legitimation of Imperialism, both past and present.
About the speakers
Linda Martín Alcoff is professor of philosophy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and Co-Director of the Mellon Public Humanities and Social Justice Program. Her work bridges political and philosophical topics, on epistemology, Latin American philosophy, feminism, critical race theory and continental philosophy. As well as writing numerous academic and public facing pieces in philosophy, her books include Rape and Resistance (Polity 2018), The Future of Whiteness (Polity 2015), and Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self (Oxford 2006), which won the Frantz Fanon Award. She has also edited eleven books and published over 100 articles and book chapters. She is past president of the American Philosophical Association, and is originally from Panama.
Sumi Madhok is Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies and Head of the Department of Gender Studies at LSE. Her work combines critical theory and ethnographic approaches with a focus on South Asia and is interested in social sciences focused on epistemic interventions from the Global South. Her latest book is Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggle for Justice (Cambridge, 2021), winner of the 2022 Susan Strange book award.
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera is Professor of Human Rights and Political Philosophy at Birkbeck Law School. His work covers decolonial and anti-colonial approaches to philosophy, law, art practice, and education, with a focus on the Americas and Atlanticism, emphasising decolonial and visual methodologies, political economy, and racial justice. His What If Latin America Ruled the World? (Bloomsbury, 2010) won the Frantz Fanon Award.
The recordings for the British Academy symposium “Translating China in the Changing Political Economy, 1920s-2020s” (March 25, 2024) are now available on our YouTube channel here:
This seminar is part of the 23/24 CPCT research seminar series on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? Pt.3’ [link].
About the talk
Within a critical history of philosophy, Frantz Fanon is a paradoxical figure. Though he has become a symbol of a fundamental epistemological turn and a paramount figure in new narratives of the history of philosophy, Fanon didn’t subject his own use of the Modern European canon to much questioning. How are we to interpret the disjunction between these two facets of his writing? How is Fanon’s thought connected to the contemporary project of a critical history of philosophy?
To answer this question, I will discuss Fanon’s philosophical practice and the specific ways in which he took up the task of « critique ». I will also draw on a number of contemporary readings of Fanon in order to contrast the philosophical meaning each of them gives to Fanon’s epistemological rupture. This interpretation, I will claim, depends on how we think of the relationship between the critical philosophy of race on the one hand, and the critical history of philosophy on the other – i.e. it depends on the divergent, and somewhat contradictory, meanings imparted to critique at this historical juncture.
About the speaker
Lucie K. Mercier is Senior Researcher at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She was previously Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, London, as well as Visiting Fellow at the University of Paris 8 and at the Program in Critical Theory of UC Berkeley. She recently published ‘The Translatability of Experience: On Fanon’s Language Puzzle’ (Critical Times 6(1), 2023) and ‘Warding Off the Ghosts in the Historiography of Philosophy’, (Critical Philosophy of Race 10(1), 2022).She is a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective and is currently working on a book-length project on Fanon’s philosophy.
A recording of Nick Nesbitt on ‘Marx’s Critique of Capitalist Slavery’ as part of the 2023/24 CPCT research seminar on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? (Pt.3)’.
A recording of Matthieu Renault on ‘Rewriting the “Decline of the West” in the Black Atlantic’ as part of the 2023/24 CPCT research seminar on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? (Pt.3)’.
This seminar is part of the 23/24 CPCT research seminar series on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? Pt.3’ [link].
About the talk
The historicist debate on capitalism and slavery since Eric Williams has largely either ignored Marx entirely while denying the need to define its object (capitalism), or tended to cherry pick random passages from his ouevre that mention slavery. In this talk I will argue in contrast that Marx’s critique of political economy offers the only adequate means to theorise capitalist slavery as a social form, and furthermore, that the construction of this concept (capitalist slavery) must proceed not at random, but in systematic relation to the many relevant concepts in Marx’s critique: profit vs. surplus value, labor vs. labor power, constant vs. variable capital, etc.
About the speaker
Nick Nesbitt is Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Princeton University. He received his PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures (French) with a Minor in Brazilian Portuguese from Harvard University. He has previously taught at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) and at Miami University (Ohio), and in 2003-4 he was a Mellon Fellow at the Cornell University Society for the Humanities. He is the author of Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant (Liverpool 2013); Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (Virginia 2008); and Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature (Virginia 2003). He is also the editor of The Concept in Crisis: Reading Capital Today (Duke 2017), Toussaint Louverture: The Haitian Revolution (Verso, 2008); co-editor of Revolutions for the Future: May ’68 and the Prague Spring (Suture 2020); and co-editor (with Brian Hulse) of Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Music (Ashgate 2010). His most recent book is entitled The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean (Virginia, 2022).
Translating China in the Changing Political Economy, 1920s-2020s
A British Academy symposium on 100 years of China’s place in Europe’s linguistic, political, and philosophical formation.
Venue: Stewart House 2/3, Senate House London Date: March 25, 2024 from 3:30-6:40 pm
We often hear about China in the news in connection to changes in the global political economy—concerning, for instance, the new infrastructural world order (Belt and Road Initiative), supply chains and their dependencies, and rebalances in the relation of law and traditional culture (tianxia or ‘Chinese’ universalism; ‘civilisational’ harmony). Yet much less consideration has been given to the direct impact that cultural translations broadly conceived and moving in multiple directions have on the fashioning of ‘China’ as a new global political and economic actor. Drawing examples from the British-German-Chinese 1920s for the 2020s, this public symposium and roundtable will explore the links between: (i) the teaching of modern non-European languages and the setting up of institutions to facilitate this teaching (e.g., SOAS) in support of British and German trade interests abroad; (ii) the specific role that philosophical and literary translations play in constructing the image of China as a political and economic counterpart during times of shifting geopolitical relations; (iii) the contribution of public intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell and Richard Wilhelm; and (iv) reinventions of Confucian and Daoist traditions by public intellectuals seeking to legitimise or criticise policy in China. How might a consideration of these moments in the translative process help us more deeply understand and critically analyze the pictures of political economy given to us in times of seemingly unprecedented change?
Free and open to the public, though registration is required. Registered attendees will receive (via the registration confirmation email) a booklet containing a collection of ‘artefacts’ selected by the speakers for consideration ahead of the event as well as an opportunity to submit a question for possible inclusion in the roundtable discussion.
3:30-3:45 pm Welcome and Introduction: Translation as Political-Economic Communication? Dr. Julia Ng (Goldsmiths)
How might translation, broadly conceived, serve as a mode of political-economic communication? In these opening remarks, I will outline a constellation of texts, institutions and ideas associated in particular with the German Sinologist and translator Richard Wilhelm, a constellation that intersects with British and Chinese counterparts to suggest an altogether distinct and crucial way of picturing multilinear political economic transformations.
3:45-4:25 pm Laozi: The Story So Far Professor Timothy Barrett (SOAS)
Daoist thought in Europe in the interwar period looked back on a history of translation stretching back at least a century. In 1934 Arthur Waley prefaced his own attempt at situating Laozi in his historical context by contrast with all earlier translators with an assertion that his predecessors had been ‘scriptural’, treating the Chinese text of the Daode jing as an authoritative statement of Daoism to be interpreted as it was, not viewed as a product of a certain time and place. While this may be so, the assumptions behind these earlier translations had their own times and places that are in themselves worth recapitulating. Perhaps the diversity of approaches that a quick background survey reveals may help in situating 1920s and later European responses.
4:30-5:10 pm China’s Russell Paradox: On the Historical Significance of ‘Misunderstanding’ between Russell and China Dr. Jan Vrhovski (Edinburgh)
Between 1920 and 1921, the British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell embarked on a significant journey to China, leaving a significant mark on the country’s intellectual landscape. Russell’s visit and lectures in China catalysed various developments within Chinese academia, intellectual circles, and socio-political discourse. However, even after more than a century, the precise impact of Russell’s philosophy on China remains somewhat enigmatic. Historiographical gaps and ideological paradigms obscure a comprehensive understanding of this encounter, exacerbated by fundamental disparities between Chinese interpretations of Russell’s ideas and his perception of China. In my presentation, I aim to shed light on the historical lineage and intellectual significance of the enduring “misunderstanding” of Russell’s philosophy in early Republican China. This misunderstanding critically shaped the boundaries of Chinese intellectual discourse on science, materialism, and modernity. Conversely, I will explore Russell’s portrayal of China in the years following his return to Europe, during the period of his life which Ray Monk (2000) somewhat provocatively titled “the ghost of madness.” Of particular interest is Russell’s anthology The Problem of China, which offers insight into his perceptions of the country and its intellectual past, present, and future. Special attention will be given to the two decades following Russell’s visit to China, providing a nuanced exploration of the complexities inherent in this paradoxical relationship.
5:15-5:55 pm Global China, or Chinese Global Orders? 1920s-2020s Professor Leigh Jenco (LSE)
In this paper, I will examine the idea of canons, how they are formed, and what political work they do. I will focus on the so-called “Great Books” curricula that were developing starting in the 1920s as a way to discuss what “Great Books” should be and the difficulties of incorporating the Chinese classics into this curriculum, with a comparative look at the canon-formation around the Five Classics (especially the Shangshu and Mandate of Heaven). I will then connect this with Xi Jinping’s “Global Civilization Initiative” to explore its relationship to how we think about cultural appropriation, now and in the past.
6:00-6:30 pm Roundtable
6:30-6:40 pm Q&A
About the speakers
Timothy Barrett is professor emeritus of East Asian History at SOAS, University of London, where he taught from 1986 to 2013, primarily covering Chinese religious history, on which he has published several books, besides some further publications on the reception of the Chinese tradition in Europe. A graduate of Cambridge with a doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale, he had earlier taught in Chinese Studies at Cambridge for over a decade.
Jan Vrhovski is a research fellow at the department of Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies, School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include intellectual history of modern China, history of analytic philosophy, mathematical logic, history and philosophy of science in China, and international history of mathematics. His current book projects include the Science and Metaphysics Debate (Brill, 2024) and Palgrave Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy in China (2025-).
Leigh Jenco (PhD, Chicago) is Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics, specializing in Chinese and comparative political theory. She has served as editor of the American Political Science Review (2016-2020) and currently stands as member of the APSA Council. She has received numerous major grants, most recently the Chinese Global Orders global convening programme funded by the British Academy. Her publications include Making the Political: Founding and Action in the Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao (Cambridge UP, 2010) and Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West (Oxford UP, 2015) as well as articles in American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Modern China, and T’oung Pao.
Julia Ng is Reader in Critical Theory and founding Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London. She specialises in philosophical approaches to literature, modern German-Jewish thought, early 20th-century Germanophone literatures in their transnational contexts, and history of critical theory. Recent publications include her translation and critical edition of Walter Benjamin’s “Toward the Critique of Violence” (with P. Fenves; Stanford UP, 2021) and articles in Theory Culture & Society, Paragraph, CR: New Centennial Review, Modern Language Notes, diacritics, and Critical Times. Funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, she is currently completing a book on Daoism and Capitalism, which has also received support from the Leverhulme Trust, the Center for Jewish History (NYC), and the British Society for the History of Philosophy.
A recording of Asia Theory Network – ‘Field Report’ presented by Li-Chun Hsiao, Oscar V. Campomanes, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Hung-chiung Li as part of the 2023/24 CPCT research seminar on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? (Pt.3)’.
The Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought, Goldsmiths University of London 