The London Graduate School Summer Academy in the Critical Humanities

26-29 June 2017

 “1967”

 

 

The London Graduate School is pleased to announce details of its 2017 Summer Academy, an intensive week-long programme offered annually for postgraduate students of any institutional affiliation. This year’s Summer Academy is held in conjunction with the Oxford Literary Review and the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University.

What does 1967 mean to critical thinking today? The recent publication of a new edition of Gayatri Spivak’s translation of Derrida’s Of Grammatology, one of three major works he published that year, has reignited debate about this landmark volume.  It has given us reason to reflect on its reception over the past five decades, and to reconsider the future of Derridean thought in its relationship to other critical discourses.  The appearance of Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena alongside this seminal text would seem to make 1967 Derrida’s year, and yet other extremely important writings mark their fiftieth anniversary in 2017: Deleuze’s book on masochism, Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’, Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Arendt’s essay ‘Truth and Politics’, published in The New Yorker, are just a few examples. 1967 also marks major turning points and events in the life and work of critical figures such as Foucault, Lacan and Althusser. It was also a year that presaged a future of new political horizons on the global stage.

How, then, are we to assess 1967 as a major year in continental philosophy? What connects or separates the texts and authors with which it may be associated? What was the impact of the political and cultural events of the day on these writings? What are the legacies of this time for our contemporary moment?

This year’s programme will feature:

Etienne Balibar

Andrew Benjamin

Geoffrey Bennington

Peg Birmingham

Peggy Kamuf

Catherine Malabou

Elissa Marder

Michael Naas

Nicholas Royle

Elizabeth Rottenberg

Registration is free, but by application only. The number of places is strictly limited. The closing date for applications is 3rd February 2017. To apply, please send an expression of interest outlining why you would benefit from participation in the Summer School, current CV, and sample of recent work by email to Professors Simon Morgan Wortham and Martin McQuillan at the following email address: . Please head your email “London Graduate School Summer Academy 2017”. Students must make their own arrangements for accommodation during the week. All tuition and course-attendance is wholly free of charge for all selected candidates.

The Summer Academy expresses our commitment to the future of rigorous and provocative thought, supporting new generations of scholars in the critical humanities. We want to reaffirm the transformative potential of the legacy with which we engage, believing that its critical renewal is best served by bringing together the strongest expertise and the most exciting new talent.

This event is in conjunction with:

“1967 + 50: The Age of Grammatology”

1967 was perhaps the annus mirabilis for the oeuvre of Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference, Speech and Phenomenon and Of Grammatology all appeared in French in that year. More generally, 1967 figures as a decisive moment in the history of what came to be called ‘theory’, ‘continental philosophy’, ‘post-structuralism’ and ‘deconstruction’. The Oxford Literary Review is holding a one-day symposium on Friday 23 June 2017 at the University of Sussex, in order to celebrate, commiserate and otherwise reflect on the 50 years since the French publication of Of Grammatology. We invite papers (20 minutes in length) from scholars working in any subject or area of research touched by or touching on ‘the Age of Grammatology’. We envisage a day of talks, concluding with a roundtable discussion with Geoffrey Bennington (Emory), Peggy Kamuf (USC), Michael Naas (DePaul), Nicholas Royle (Sussex) and Sarah Wood (Kent).

Send proposals to: Nicholas Royle at by 1 December 2016.