2023-24 Speaker Series

Each year The Speaker Series brings in several visiting guest lecturers. Speakers over the years have included Jean Baudrillard, Lauren Berlant, Peter Brooks, Norman Bryson, David Carroll, Anthony Cascardi, Wlad Godzich, Jean-Joseph Goux, Elizabeth Grosz, N. Katherine Hayles, Linda Hutcheon, Martin Jay, Michael Hardt, Agnes Heller, Barbara Johnson, David Farrell Krell, Murray Krieger, Arthur Kroker, Dominick LaCapra, Jerome McGann, J. Hillis Miller, Chantal Mouffe, Christopher Norris, Mark Poster, Richard Rorty, Charles Scott, Thomas Sebeok, Kaja Silverman, Gayatri Spivak, Bernard Stiegler, Samuel Weber, Hayden White, Slavoj Žižek, and many others.

Upcoming speakers:   

May 4, 2024
4:00 p.m. EST

Dr. Alenka Zupančič

Professor, European Graduate School in Switzerland
Research Councilor, Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana

The Logic of Fantasy

It has been suggested that Lacan's concept of fantasy - as that which gives us access to reality - in some way echoes the Kantian notion of the transcendental. The lecture will explore this claim further, with the aim of showing what constitutes Lacan's truly revolutionary contribution to modern philosophy, particularly when it comes to questions of objectivity, objective knowledge and the subject's place within it. Is desire an obstacle to objectivity or rather the condition of objectivity? The lecture will also consider some of the social and political implications of Lacan's theory of fantasy.

Alenka Zupančič works as Research Councilor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana. She is also professor at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Notable for her work on the intersection of philosophy and psychoanalysis, she is the author of numerous articles and many books, including Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan; Why Psychoanalysis?; The Odd One In. On Comedy; What is Sex?; Let Them Rot: Antigone’s Parallax.

 

Watch some of our previous talks on YouTube

Past Speakers:

Dr. Mariana Ortega
Carnal Light and Border Crossing, Sensing a Photographic Archive of Feeling Brown
November 6, 2023

Gabriel Rockhill
Ideology, Art & Class Struggle
October 5, 2023

Rocío Zambrana
Metamorphosis of Value: Epistemic Protocols in the Long 17th Century
April 3, 2023

Alia Al-Saji
Making the Colonial Past Hesitate: Fanon, amputation, and a politics of refusal
March 13, 2023