The Unsaveables: Sovereignty and Biopolitics in the 18th Brumaire
Dr Dimitris Vardoulakis (UWS)
Date: Tuesday 6 August
Time: 1 p.m.
Venue: Morven Brown 310, University of NSW (map reference C20: (1.7MB))
I approach the 18th Brumaire from a double trajectory. First, I examine its relation to how the exception was thought in the work of Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin’s response to it. Second, I analyze the ways in which the rise of Bonaparte to power was carried out through forms of regulating the behaviour of those sections of the population who supported him. A key insight in Marx’s analysis, according my reading, is that every time society is “saved” the circle of power contracts. The question I pose, then, is whether it is possible to identify anyone who is “unsaveable” – in other words, anyone who resists the workings of sovereign power.
Dimitris Vardoulakis is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Western Sydney. His books include the monographs The Doppelganger: Literature’s Philosophy (2010), and Sovereignty and its Other: Toward the Dejustifications of Violence (2013), both with Fordham UP. He is also the editor of the volume Spinoza Now (U of Minnesota P, 2011).
Coordinator:
Dr Joanne Faulkner, j.faulkner@unsw.edu.au
School of Humanities and Languages
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