With the decline of modernist urban design since the 1960s we are once again facing an approach to the city where the hand of the designer is concealed rather than stressed. From the many current plans for a ‘European City’ to the projects of the New Urbanism in the United States to some of the new towns in China, the designer is at the same time present and absent, at once exerting individual influence on the design process and yet claiming to step back in favour of collective forces.

Carthage, AD 203. A group of three men and two women is condemned to death because of their Christianity; the martyrs are thrown to wild beasts in the city’s amphitheater and finally killed with the sword. These events are narrated by the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas), a text which belongs to the body of early martyrological literature known as the acta martyrum. Although fairly brief, this text poses a surprising number of complex questions, and the aim of this conference is to address as many of these as possible.

Three different ‘voices’ speak in the text. First comes the somewhat mysterious preface composed by an anonymous redactor. This is followed by Perpetua’s own diary, in which she describes her last days in prison and writes of four visions that she sees. The redactor’s voice then briefly returns, only to introduce the words of Perpetua’s comrade Saturus, who gives a report of his own visions. Finally the redactor brings the text to a close with a narration of the execution of the martyrs.

The Passio is not only one of the most impressive texts surviving from early Christianity but, because it includes what purports to be the personal diary of a woman, unique in the history of ancient literature. One way the text can be read is thus as a psychological map made of images and symbols. A remarkable combination of echoes of the archaic and hints at modernity, Perpetua is a woman who fights but who must become a man in order to be victorious.

At the ICI Berlin on Tuesday, July 10:
15:00-19:30 Talks in German and English
19:30 ‘Per auditum’ – Performance

In the wake of the events of September 11th, the task of reconciling issues of security with a respect for fundamental human rights has emerged as one of the key challenges facing governments throughout the world. Although the issues raised by the rise of security have been the subject of considerable academic interest, to date much of the debate surrounding the impact of security on human rights has taken place within particular disciplinary confines. In contrast, this collection of essays from leading academics and practitioners in the fields of criminal justice, public law, international law, international relations, and legal philosophy offers a genuinely multidisciplinary perspective on the relationship between security and human rights. In addition to exploring how the demands of security might be reconciled with the desire to protect established rights, Security and Human Rights offers a fresh perspective on the broader legal and political challenges that lie ahead as states attempt to control crime, prevent terrorism, and protect their citizens. Benjamin J Goold is a Lecturer in Law and Fellow of Somerville College, University of Oxford.

Alain Badiou hat von 1969 bis 1999 an der Universität Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) unterrichtet und wurde anschließend Professor für Philosophie und Direktor an der École Normale Supérieur mit zusätzlichen Lehraufgaben u.a. am Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. Er gilt als einer der innovativsten und politisch aktivsten Denker in Frankreich, bekannt als Gründer und Mitglied der Organisation Politique und seit 2003 als Autor der Reihe Circonstances mit ihren Interventionen in aktuelle politische Debatten. Zu seinen in mehrere Sprachen übersetzen grundlegenden philosophischen Werken zählen u.a. L’Éthique (1982);  L’Être et l’événement (1988), zweiter Band unter dem Titel Logiques des mondes (2006); Beckett (1995); Le siècle (2005); außerdem auf Deutsch u.a. Kleines Handbuch zur In-Ästhetik (2001); Paulus. Die Begründung des Universalismus (2002); Deleuze. Das Geschrei des Seins (2003); Über Metapolitik (2003) und ein Streitgespräch mit Slavoj Žižek: Philosophie und Aktualität (2005).

Alain Badious Mosse-Lecture an der HU Berlin:

Was sagen uns, vierzig Jahre nach der sog. 68er Revolte, die klassischen Texte der Theorie der Revolte und der Kritik der Gewalt? Eine Zeitreise mit Texten von Boris Savinkov, Albert Camus und Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

Science fiction Roman, weibliche Robinsonade, melancholische Bestandsaufnahme der menschlichen Natur, Klassiker der Emanzipationsliteratur, Plädoyer gegen die Falle des Konsumismus und den Schrecken der Atombombe.  Bei seinem Erscheinen im Jahre 1963 spaltete der Roman Die Wand Kritiker und Publikum. Interpretationen reichten von: ‘Wiederkehr des Sisyphus Mythos’ über ‘Apokalypse einer gottlosen Welt’ bis zu ‘radikale Utopie der absoluten Freiheit’.

Eine Katzengeschichte nannte Marlen Haushofer selbst das Buch. »Ich musste mich nur in die Lage jener Frau im Wald versetzen, und wenn ich ein Bild vor mir habe, geht es weiter wie von selbst.«

»Einen Meister der Apokalypse« nannte Susan Sontag den 1954 in Gyula (Ungarn) geborenen Schriftsteller László Krasznahorkai. Als visionärer Wanderer durch geographische und historische Welten entführt er den Leser in Grenzgebiete zwischen Realität und Transzendenz. »Die Universalität von Krasznahorkais Blick zerstreut alle Zweifel an der zeitgenössischen Literatur.« (W.G. Sebald)

So will die Tagung »Krieg in Worten« den Wechselwirkungen von Krieg und seinen spezifischen Wissensformen nachgehen, die den Kriegsdiskurs von der griechisch-römischen Antike bis zur frühneuzeitlichen Wissenskonfigurierung begleitet und charakterisiert haben. Dabei soll insbesondere versucht werden, der schriftlichen Dimension des Diskurses über den Krieg nachzugehen, innerhalb dessen eine Antike erst konstruiert wird. Denn die Auseinandersetzung mit einer exemplarischen, normierenden und immer gültigen Antike hat sich einer erhöhten Symbolizität gerade in dem Moment bedient, in dem die technologischen Entwicklungen Fortschritte versprachen, die die Kriegsprozesse radikal zu verändern drohten. Somit wird Krieg im Sinne von »Transformationen der Antike« als Kreuzungspunkt unterschiedlicher Disziplinen und Methoden verstanden. Although the paradoxical reality of war may elude any definition, it represents a constitutive dimension of Western culture which, when seen in a historical perspective, exposes an area of productive tension between various traditions and models of knowledge. Sometimes treated as an art or even a science, sometimes described as a mere technical capability, war represents a constantly renewable configuration of a wide range of forms and discourses. Clausewitz himself observes that no single attempt at defining the phenomenon can be entirely satisfying; war is a ‘living, reacting object’ whose systemic workings do not lend themselves to straightforward comparison with the arts or sciences.

As early as in the 1980s, some US-American and British artists, filmmakers and intellectuals – such as Lisa Tickner, Jacqueline Rose, Kate Linker, Victor Burgin, Craig Owens, Stephen Heath, Mary Kelly, Laura Mulvey, Martha Rose, Teresa de Lauretis, Kaja Silverman and others – focused on representation in their critique of processes naturalising social, gender and cultural/ethnical differences in society. However, while describing these processes, they used the term ‘representation’ slightly differently to its standard use in daily language, namely to address the social and economic as well as the psychic and imaginary content of images and words as the mediating agents constructing desire, individuals, subjectivity and social values. One could say that part of the concept of performativity developed by Judith Butler and of the relation between the imaginary and the real it describes was already defined in the concept of the processes of representation.

The lecture analyzes W.G. Sebald’s take on Grünewald, the painter about whom we have only very few biographical data, and the writer’s engagement with Grünewald’s paintings as a way to explore models of realism and representation.

The reflection on images is a crossing point of many different theoretical fields and disciplines: art, aesthetics, symbolism, iconology, psychology, sociology and religion. This ample range of disciplines might be a trace of the complexity and vitality of the notion of image itself. It is not surprising that in the centuries different interpretative tools and different attitudes towards images have been developed, sometimes there have been even clashes between an iconoclastic and a philo-iconic attitude. Needless to say, in the contemporary age the media – with their powerful use and sometimes even abuse of images – challenge the thinking on this ground, calling the attention once again on the status of images.

Generally speaking, the problematic nature of images may be summarized as follows: on the one hand, an image appears eminently self-explanatory, its meaning immediately understandable beyond any linguistic content (it is not by chance that images were used as didactic and educational tools on the walls of Christian churches, or that they are the focus of contemporary political propaganda and marketing). On the other hand, however, an image manifests something which is not there, as it is implied in a cultural, theoretical and/or political context which has to be recalled and referred to in order to fully understand the image itself. In this sense, the meaning of an image is actually the invisible behind it, which has to be investigated, explained and brought to light, in order to fully catch it. Also, the image can lay claims to a unique mode of signification: to capture what is otherwise ineffable, either intrinsically or temporarily. Finally, an image can be evoked through a linguistic expression (metaphors, allegories, visualization practices), thus becoming evidently and intrinsically linked to the linguistic context itself, but even integrating – or overcoming – it.

Thus, an image cannot be fully understood at a first glance, or just on the basis of its appearance: it needs a careful and long reflection, aiming at grasping the meaning lying in the image and beyond it, at the same time.

Poetologische und philosophische Reflexionen der Zeitgrundierung ästhetischer Erfahrung stehen im Zentrum der drei Sektionen: Die erste Sektion versucht die Subjektivität der Zeiterfahrung mit ihrer Ästhetik zu vermitteln. Die zweite Sektion diskutiert, wie sich Zeit und Kausalität in Erfahrung abbilden. Die dritte Sektion verhandelt „Aktualität“ als ästhetisch folgenreichen Topos der Moderne. In many respects aesthetic experience is bound to time: the time of reading, the rhythm of a filmic montage, the temporal construction of a story. Without such temporal markers as these, aesthetic experience would neither be comprehensible nor would it even be possible.

Das Phänomen aus dem Schatten herauszuholen verspricht eine nachhaltige Bereicherung der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung und wird dazu beitragen, einige in diesem Schatten verborgene komplexe Voraussetzungen zu erhellen. Denn »Philister« ist ein Begriff, der sich nicht nur im Alten Testament findet, sondern auch im Schnittpunkt von Antisemitismus und Nationalbewegung im 19. Jahrhundert; er tritt nicht nur in – und seit – Goethes "Leiden des jungen Werthers" als Gegenbegriff zum Genie auf, sondern sein semantisches Potential lässt sich über 1968 bis in die gegenwärtige Literatur- und Kunstproduktion (C. Schlingensief und andere) nachverfolgen.]