Month: April 2017

Reminder: Tomorrow is Text and Context at the University

Here is the schedule. I will be discussing Derrida’s God (I had promised my grad course I would write something up explaining quixotic passages from Rogues on Heidegger’s phrase “only a god could save us,” which Derrida takes up and affirms. It takes place April 19-20, 2017, Science Building, SN-2000. Lots of good things on the schedule:

Day 1 (Wednesday, April 19) Sessions Moderated by Barry Stephenson

9:15-9:30 Opening Remarks (Kim Ian Parker)

9:30-11:00 Session #1: Being and Becoming Étienne Gilson on ‘Being, Essence, and Existence’ (Gil Shalev) Heiddegger, Levinas, and the Verdict of Phenomenology (Parker Biehn) A Philosophical Personalism for the 21st Century (Michelle Rebidoux) 11:00-11:15 Coffee Break 11:15-12:45

Session #2: The Death of God? A Brief History of the Life and Death of God (Kim Ian Parker) Derrida’s God (Peter Gratton) Derrida’s Solution to the Nihilism of Ontotheology (Stephanie Butera) 12:45-1:30 Lunch (on site & provided) 1:30-2:45 Plenary Session On Being Global: A Movement in Three Parts (Hillary Kaell, Concordia University) 2:45-3:00 Coffee Break 3:00-4:00 Session #3: Recovering Biblical Women Marital secret-keeping in French medieval plays on the story of Abraham and Isaac (Anne G. Graham) Paul’s View of Women in Leadership (Kara Osmond) 4:00-6:00 Reception (on site) Religious Studies Department Text and Context Symposium IV Day 2 (Thursday, April 20) Sessions Moderated by Kim Ian Parker 9:30-11:00 Session #1: Religion and Modernity Hashtagging Canadian Islamic Identity: Hashtags and the Religious/Secular Divide in the Lives of Muslims in Winnipeg and St. John’s (Cory Funk) Cultural Trauma and Religious Heritage (Barry Stephenson) How Resurrection Scenes in Jesus Films Reflect Tensions in Christian Thought: An Examination of Risen and The Passion (Taylor Conway) 11:00-11:15 Coffee Break 11:15-12:45 Session #2: Gang Aft Agley The “Magickal” Kingdom: When You Wish Upon a Pentagram (Jessica Williams) Sacred Space and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Kristen Burry) Creation Episode III: Blessing Restored (Michael DeRoche) 12:45-1:30 Lunch (on site & provided) 1:30-2:45 Graduate Workshop (Led by Dr. Hillary Kaell) 2:45-3:00 Closing Remarks (Barry Stephenson) 5:00 Reception (Yellowbelly Brewery, 288 Water Street)

Lecture on Khôra, Place, and Metaphysics

Here is an audio of my keynote at the University of Windsor this past weekend. I had a wonderful reception (actually that’s a key term I take up), and I should say that from the undergraduates to the graduate students to the faculty, it showed itself to be an excellent philosophical community. In some sense, even as I don’t lean on Derrida’s own writings on khôra all that much (I quote him once only to say there is more to Plato than Platonism), one could say this paper would head toward something like a “deconstructive” thinking of place already available in Plato, despite what figures from Aristotle to Plotinus to Heidegger would have one believe. Ultimately I try to show this realist thinking of place offers a “democratic,” open thinking of place always open to thinking it otherwise, over and against the dogmatic, reactionary thinking of place one often finds within various nationalisms, thinkers of blood and soil, and so on.