Simon Glendinning (London School of Economics & Political Science) "Democratic Desire" April 15, 2010

"Democratic Desire"



ABSTRACT: In a discussion of Europe’s identity, historian Norman Davies notes that there is growing opposition to the ‘Eurocentrism’ that has for so long been a feature of European self-understanding. He identifies four ‘sources’ of that opposition: ‘Opposition to Eurocentrism comes at present from four main sources. In North America… in the world of Islam… in the third world…, [and] in Europe it is widespread.’ What interests me in this rather banal looking summary is that it quietly presupposes that Europe can be unproblematically identified independently of the Eurocentric trajectory that has so stubbornly marked it. Davies is more alive than many to the poverty of merely geographical conceptions of Europe. But here – and within a discussion aimed at exploring the question of Europe’s identity – he takes for granted as unproblematic a given geographical determination of Europe. In this talk I will explore the widespread opposition to Eurocentrism in Europe in a fundamentally different way. Defending the idea that “what Europe is” has been so closely bound up with a certain Eurocentric heritage that ‘opposition to Eurocentrism in Europe’ implies a torsion or a turning movement within a space, I will argue that the ‘source’ of this mutation is not to be sought for in terms of a location of the global surface but in the opening up of a world run through by a distinctive form of democratic desire.



Simon Glendinning (London School of Economics & Political Science)





Simon Glendinning realised he could make a career in philosophy when he spent two hours successfully untangling the twisted strings of a stunt kite. Wittgenstein says that 'philosophy unties knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but philosophizing has to be as complicated as the knots it unties'. Simon has a BPhil and a DPhil in Philosophy from Oxford University and has been exploring knots for a living since 1994. He is still not clear whether philosophy is a complicated education for grown-ups or just a simple occupation for grown-ups who never made it beyond childhood.

Location:

6 E. 16th St., Rm. 906/913, New Wolff Conference Room

Admission:
Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served

Official Website: http://www.newschool.edu/NSSR/eventsList.aspx?id=43239&DeptFilter=NSSR+Philosophy