Dr. Martin Crowley: The Politics of Finitude

King's Event

Dr. Martin Crowley: The Politics of Finitude

March 29, 2010

The University of King’s College and the Contemporary Studies Programme (with SSHRC support through the King’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research) are pleased to present an upcoming event with Cambridge University’s Martin Crowley on Monday, March 29, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in Alumni Hall (1st floor, New Academic Building, 6350 Coburg Road).

Martin Crowley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of French at Queen's College. His area of expertise lies in the field of post-war French literature and philosophy, with a special emphasis on issues of social justice, politics, ethics and testimony. Alongside numerous journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, he is the author of L'Homme sans: Politiques de la finitude (Lignes, 2009), with an afterword by Jean-Luc Nancy, The New Pornographies: Explicit Sex in Recent French Fiction and Film (co-authored with Victoria Best; Manchester University Press, 2007), Robert Antelme: L’Humanité irréductible (Lignes, 2004), Robert Antelme: Humanity, Community, Testimony (Legenda, 2003), and Duras, Writing and the Ethical, Making the Broken Whole (Oxford University Press, 2000). Martin is also the editor of Contact! The Art of Touch/L’art du toucher (L’Esprit Créateur, Fall 2007) and Dying Words: The Last Moments of Writers and Philosophers (Rodopi, 2000).

His talk, entitled “The Politics of Finitude,” will engage some key questions emerging in the field of post-foundational political and ethical theory: who gets to be the subject of an effective politics? How does such a subject—however defined—establish a claim on something like social justice? Furthermore, how can such a claim seek to ensure that it is not, itself, a form of injustice?

Dr. Crowley’s talk will approach these and related questions via a thinking of radically finite human existence, arguing—against the virile fears of its detractors—that this shared finitude compels the pursuit of a radically egalitarian politics.

This event is open to the public and attendance is free. It will be followed by a reception in the Senior Common Room. For more information, please contact Alison Lang at (902) 422-1271 ext. 136 or at alison.lang@ukings.ns.ca.