Dear All,
Last seminar we had some productive discussions about potential ways of writing things and assemblies into the theses. In the coming seminar, Thursday-Friday 26-27th, we will follow up on the discussions we started around the texts by Latour and Heidegger. I am keen to return to Agamben's Dispositif as we had not too long to discuss it. So the first part of the day (starting 1030) will be a dedicated to the discussion of this text, in relation to Deleuze's conception of the dispositif.

dispositifs:
Agamben's is here: http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1137#attachments
Deleuze's is here: http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1134

We will follow this after lunch with Ayesha's seminar:
On The Dialectical Image, the City as Museum, Collecting.

This seminar is the first of two sessions that explore the forensic potential of Walter Benjamin’s work. Part 1 examines the city as a (hellish) site, the notion of the dialectical image and the story of a lost suitcase. We will look at two essays: “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century” – an adaptation of the “Exposé of 1935” where Benjamin outlined his basic methodology of the Arcades Project; and a selection from “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire.” We will read these essays from a methodological point of view, looking at how they employ the notion of the dialectical image and of the flâneur’s forensic role as immanent critic.
[Part 2, at a future date, will examine the spatiality embedded in the concept of natural history through Benjamin’s earlier work The Origin of German Tragic Drama, and Theodor Adorno’s lecture on “The Idea of Natural History” and the intersections of their conception of the allegorical/history-laden object with the work of Lukács and Heidegger.]

“Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century” is here:
http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1145

"Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire.” is here:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/TzY3a3ZESEJ3TGgzZUE9PQ (file too big for the blog! AH)

This evening - whoever wants - there is this event at the TATE (see attached)

On friday 27th we will have Charles' presentation on "perception management" and the IOM information campaigns. For which he will send us material.

After Charles' presentation we can all go for this...
Sixth Historical Materialism Annual Conference
Another World is Necessary: Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives
27–29 November 2009 at SOAS and Birkbeck, London, WC1

http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/conference2009.htm

Friday 27 November

SESSION FOUR: 4.30–6.15pm

Room B29
ECOLOGIES AND GEOGRAPHIES OF CAPITALISM
Chair: Rob Knox
Andriana Vlachou – Green Capitalist Development and Wind Energy
Romain Felli – Climate Change, International Law, and Capitalist Accumulation
Ayesha Hameed – Vectors of the Global Border.

also - please follow the postings about the Antwerp seminar here:
http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1140