Watson Events

The Politics of the Event and the Fragility of Things

"The Politics of the Event and the Fragility of Things", with William Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, considers the differing degrees of real creativity in three domains: in cultural processes, in some nonhuman forcefields, and in a host of culture/nature imbrications. When such a perspective is joined to an account of the expansion, intensification and acceleration of neoliberal capitalism, we are brought face to face with the fragility of things today­-that is, with the growing gaps and tensions between the demands neoliberalism makes on human activities and nonhuman forcefields and on the capacity of both to meet those demands. This talk will contend that a sufficient sense of the fragility of things requires both a refined sensitivity on our part to a variety of contemporary role definitions and non-human processes. And that these sensitivities must also be linked to a new politics of militance. 

Location:  The Cogut Center for the Humanities, Pembroke Hall 305