2017-01-27
Wendy Brown. In the account of Neoliberalism. 2016
source: European Graduate School Video Lectures 2017年1月25日
http://www.egs.edu Wendy Brown, Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS. Saas-Fee Switzerland. August 13 2016.
Wendy Brown is Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Her research interests include the history of political and social theory, Continental philosophy, and critical theory, together with the examination of contemporary capitalism. In her research into the problems that plague contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism, she employs theoretical works of Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Frankfurt school.
In 1983, Wendy Brown received her doctoral degree from Princetown University. She subsequently taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz and also at Williams College. Since 1999, she has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.
Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics (2005) consists of seven articles which were all written for some particular occasion. Brown emphasises this trait of her book and claims that “such occasions mimic, in certain ways, the experience of the political realm: one is challenged to think here, now, about a problem that is set and framed by someone else, and to do so before a particular audience or in dialogue with others not of one’s own choosing.” Every essay in this book begins with a particular problem: what is the relationship between love, loyalty, and dissent in contemporary American political life?; how did neoliberal rationality become a form of governmentality?; what are the main problems of women’s studies programs?, etc. According to Brown, the aim of these essays is not to produce definitive answers to the given questions but “to critically interrogate the framing and naming practices, challenge the dogmas (including those of the Left and of feminism), and discern the constitutive powers shaping the problem at hand.”
In Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (2006), Wendy Brown subverts the usual and widely accepted conception that tolerance is one of the most remarkable achievements of the modern Western world. She argues that tolerance cannot be perceived as a complete opposite to violence, but that can also be used to justify violence. In order to substantiate this thesis, Brown associates tolerance with figures like George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Samuel Huntington, Susan Okin, Michael Ignatieff, Bernard Lewis, and Seyla Benhabib and claims that “tolerance as a political practice is always conferred by the dominant, it is always a certain expression of domination even as it offers protection or incorporation to the less powerful.”
Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (2010) examines the revival of wall-building in the contemporary world. She shows that the function of these walls is ultimately problematic because they cannot stop crimes, migration, or smuggling, cannot play a defensive role in the case of a war like they did in the past, and they cannot do anything against potential terrorist attacks. However, even if they cannot stop all these threats, walls still have an important symbolic function which Brown explores in her book.
Her most recent work Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015) uses Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics to analyze the hollowing and evisceration of democracy under neoliberal rationality. Brown describes neoliberalism as a furtive attack on the very foundation of democracy. She treats “neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is “economized” and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not merely a matter of extending commodification and monetization everywhere, as in the old Marxist depiction of capital’s transformation of everyday life. Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres—such as learning, dating, or exercising—in market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value.” To be saved, democracy again needs to become not only the object of theoretical rethinking but also of political struggle.
The myth behind the Chinese zodiac - Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen
source: TED-Ed 2017年1月26日
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-myth-be...
What’s your sign? In Western astrology, it’s a constellation determined by when your birthday falls in the calendar. But according to the Chinese zodiac (生肖), it’s your shuxiang, meaning the animal assigned to your birth year. Of the many myths explaining these animal signs and their arrangement, the most enduring one is that of The Great Race. Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen recounts this classic myth.
Lesson by Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen, animation by Marta Prokopová.
Emmanuel Levinas on Maurice Blanchot
source: Eidos84 2012年10月9日
Emmanuel Levinas on his early relationship with Maurice Blanchot. From Hugo Santiago's 'Maurice Blanchot' (1998).
Trans. Kris Pender and Philippe Salmon
Emmanuel Levinas: The Right To Be (English Subtitles)
source: Eidos84 2011年6月22日
"The Right to Be", section two of "Penser Aujourd'hui: Emmanuel Levinas" (1991).
Levinas discusses the idea that the "perseverance of Being" is the source of all evil and suffering. For Levinas, such perseverance is not to be understood in terms of the individual's right to be, but rather in relation to a perceived right to violence and excess. Levinas also discusses the Biblical Genesis story. In this account, evil, as the immoderate or excessive aspiration of man towards Being, is absent. Evil is subsequent to the Creation, which was "good"; evil is therefore of a secondary nature to the good and, Levinas claims, is solely manifested in relation to man.
Thanks again to Salmon Philippe [youtube user "salmonfishandships"] for assistance with the translation.
Emmanuel Levinas: The Strong and the Weak (English Subtitles)
source: Eidos84 2011年6月26日
"The Strong and the Weak", section three of "Penser Aujourd'hui: Emmanuel Levinas" (1991).
Levinas discusses his famous analyses of the face. For Levinas, the face expresses a weakness and demands responsibility for the other. Levinas links this notion of responsibility to the Biblical ideas of "holiness" and "election/the elect".
Thanks to Salmon Philippe for assistance with the translation.
Interview with Levinas (English Subtitles)
source: Eidos84 2011年5月6日
On June 29 1993 Michel Field interviewed Emmanuel Levinas on the occasion of the recent publication of "Dieu, la Mort et le Temps", a collection of Levinas's course materials. Field questions Levinas about the lateral character of his approach to philosophy at the crossroads of different civilizations. Levinas also talks about one of his favourite themes, the relation between one human and another, which consists of transcendence, "the exit from oneself".
Emmanuel Levinas: Being in the Principle of War (English Subtitles)
source: Eidos84 2011年6月10日
"Being in the Principle of War", section one of "Penser Aujourd'hui: Emmanuel Levinas" (1991).
Interviewed by Catherine Chalier, Levinas first explains what brought him to philosophy and ontology, and his early engagement with Heidegger. In relation to the experience of Being, Levinas discusses "the sadness of (self-)interestedness" (la tristesse de l'intéressement), which is a product of contemporary experience. Levinas makes the distinction between self-interestedness and "disinterestedness'' (le desintéressement); disinterestedness is "to lose interest in oneself", and is peculiar to human being. For Levinas, the idea of disinterestedness is essential to his philosophy, and can also be called "holiness." Finally, in response to the claim that values of holiness are largely disengaged from historical reality, Levinas states that, on the contrary, his philosophy is deeply concerned with history, and the experience of holiness, in historical periods succeeding Biblical times, is precisely "the rationality of history".
Many thanks to my good friend Salmon Philippe [salmonfishandships] for assistance with the more difficult aspects of translation.
Before and After: Experiences from Newly Built and Renovated Conservation Laboratories
source: Yale University 2016年12月15日
Panel discussion on the designing and renovation or construction of conservation laboratories for treatment of library and archival collection materials.
BOSTON ORIGINALS: Season Finale Reading | Woodberry Poetry Room
source: Harvard University 2016年12月20日
Our season finale features eight dynamic representatives of Boston-area poetry and of the vital work that is emerging among us. The readers in set No. 1 are Tanya Larkin (author of My Scarlet Ways/Saturnalia), Sandra Lim (author of The Wilderness/W.W. Norton), Audrey Mardavich (recent poems published in No Infinite and Let the Bucket Down), and Clint Smith (author of Counting Descent/Write Bloody Publishing). The readers in set No. 2 are: Keith Jones (author of Fugue Meadow/Ricochet Editions), Gail Mazur (author of Forbidden City/UChicago Press), Jill McDonough (Where You Live/Salt Publishing) and David Rivard (Standoff/Graywolf Press).
For additional information, visit hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom.
Date: December 8, 2016, at the Woodberry Poetry Room.
Askwith Debates – Pass/Fail: How Test-Based Accountability Stacks Up
source: HarvardEducation 2016年12月5日
**Note the 6 p.m. start time.**
Speakers:
• Mitchell Chester, Ed.M.'88, Ed.D.'91, Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
• Rebecca Holcombe, Ed.M.'90, Ed.D.'16, Secretary of Education, Vermont
• Thomas Kane, Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and Economics, HGSE
• Daniel Koretz, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, HGSE
Moderator: Andrew Ho, Professor of Education, HGSE
Test-based accountability has been a cornerstone of education policy in the United States for decades, and testing now has a tremendous influence on daily life in schools. With the replacement of No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states have more leeway than previously to change the ways in which they use testing. This shift provides an ideal time to take stock of the effects of high-stakes testing and to rethink how testing is used. Proponents and skeptics will debate the pros and cons of high-stakes testing. How much has student learning really improved? Can we trust the increases in scores that states and districts and individual schools often report? What have been the effects of high-stakes testing, both good and bad, on the practices of educators? What impact does test-based accountability have on children, families, and teachers?
The Basics of Stoic Ethics
source: Gregory B. Sadler 2016年12月30日
This was an invited lecture at Rockford University, hosted by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, provided to students during one of the class sessions.
In the course of the lecture, we discuss some of the ideas central to Stoic Ethics, including what is in our control and what is not, the nature of genuine goods, the cardinal virtues (wisdom or prudence, temperance or moderation, justice, and courage), and the nature of duties, including how they fit into our roles and relationships.
We also discuss a bit about moral theories in general, and what it is that we want moral theories to do or to provide for us.
Uses of Philosophy for Living: Freedom
source: Wes Cecil 2016年10月21日
This lecture explores the concept of Freedom as an example of how to think about core ideas in a philosophical matter. The life of Martin Luther King jr. is used as an exemplar of different types of freedom and how they can be achieved. Delivered by Wesley Cecil PhD. at Peninsula College.
The end of mass incarceration?: The moral purpose of prison - Dr Jeffrey Howard
source: UCL Lunch Hour Lectures 2016年12月12日
Speaker - Dr Jeffrey Howard, UCL Political Science - Thursday 8th December 2016 #ucllhl
The United Kingdom has doubled its prison population, twice, in the past 65 years. By outlining a philosophical account of the moral purpose of prisons, Dr. Jeffrey Howard will explain how we can transform our criminal justice system to make it fairer, cheaper, and better at preventing crime.
Lawrence Levy: "To Pixar and Beyond [...]" | Talks at Google
source: Talks at Google 2016年12月21日
The never-before-told story of Pixar's improbable success.
“Hi, Lawrence?” the caller asked. “This is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a few years ago and thought we’d work together someday.” After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he turned his attention to a little-known graphics art company that he owned called Pixar.
One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Silicon Valley executive to whom he had never spoken before, in the hope of persuading Levy to help him get Pixar on the right track. What Levy found in Pixar was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the extraordinary story of what happened next: How Levy, working closely with Jobs and the Pixar team, produced and implemented a highly improbable roadmap that transformed the sleepy graphics art studio into one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories. Set in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the book takes readers inside Pixar, Disney, law firms, and investment banks. It provides an up-close, first-hand account of Pixar’s stunning ascent, how it took risks, Levy’s enduring collaboration and friendship with Jobs, and how Levy came to see in Pixar deeper parallels that apply to all aspects of our lives.
Get the book here: https://goo.gl/HbsR16
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