PARRHESIA and COLLAPSE present a one day symposium (31st July 2008) with title:

THINKING NOTHING – the void and its resurgence in contemporary thought

From the emergence of empty set as a basis for ontology, to materialist negative theology, to Metzinger’s ‘nemocentric’ destitution of the subject, contemporary thought seems to be obsessed with nothing. But the politics of this nothing seems drastically different from its earlier existentialist and postmodern nihilistic incarnations. This symposium seeks to explore the problem of nothing in contemporary thought, asking precisely how the postulation of an inherent negativity as a productive realm of philosophical discourse has come to characterise our intellectual landscape, and how the contemporary void relates to those of Ancient and Modern philosophical traditions.

Speakers:

  1. Justin Clemens (University of Melbourne; Author of The Mundiad, Avoiding the Subject [with Dom Pettman], and coeditor/translator of Alain Badiou’s Infinite Thought)
  2. Ray Brassier (Middlesex University; Author of Nihil Unbound, Translator of Alain Badiou’s Saint Paul)
  3. John Sellars (University of the West of England; Author of The Stoics and The Art of Living)
  4. Robin Mackay (Middlesex University; Editor of Collapse, Translator of Alain Badiou’s Number and Numbers)
  5. Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England; Author of Philosophies of Nature After Schelling)