Conference: Specters of Kant, They Say

Haunting has been the name—the signature, writing, event—of Immanuel Kant in 20th-century France. Impetus to many commentaries, controversies, and indeed to the emergence of singular thoughts, the French reception of Kant’s texts has not been simple or straightforward. Yet, unlike a certain “French Hegel” (or “Marx,” or “Nietzsche,” or “Freud,” or “Heidegger”), the (his)stories of Kant’s French specter/s remain to be written. This bilingual workshop/conference explores Kant’s traces in the work of Jacques Lacan, Georges Canguilhem, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, seeking to track the relations of each of these thinkers and writers with Kant’s thinking, and to recall the promise of their Kantian apparitions.

Organizers:
Ârash Aminian Tabrizi (Comparative Literature, NYU)
Gabriela Basterra (Comparative Literature, NYU)

Participants include:
Gabriela Basterra (Comparative Literature, NYU)
Geoffrey Bennington (Comparative Literature, Emory University)
Olivia Custer (Independent Researcher)
Andrew Cutrofello (Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago)
Stefanos Geroulanos (History, NYU)
Jean-Michel Rabaté (Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania)
Philippe Sabot (Philosophy, Université de Lille)
Juliette Simont (Philosophy, Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Daniel W. Smith (Philosophy, Purdue University)

For additional description, schedule, details, see the Department of Comparative Literature’s site.

Sponsors:  Department of Comparative Literature; Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture; Department of German; Department of Philosophy; The New York Institute of Philosophy; Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures; The Program in Poetics and Theory; NYU Center for the Humanities; NYU Provost’s Global Research Initiatives