From the 2011 Telos Conference: Interview with Timothy Stacey

In this video from the 2011 Telos Conference, held on January 15–16 in New York City, Russell Berman interviews Timothy Stacey from Goldsmith University, UK. Tim’s paper was entitled “Toward a Phenomenology of Justice,” and an excerpt from it appeared last month here. In the interview, Russell and Tim discuss “excellence critique,” terrorism, and the justice system.

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From the 2011 Telos Conference: Interview with Peter Candler

In this video from the 2011 Telos Conference, held on January 15–16 in New York City, Adrian Pabst interviews Peter Candler from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Peter gave a controversial and provocative paper entitled “Outside the Church There is No Death.” The starting point of the paper is the recent health care reform in the United States and the dominant discourse on life and death. The conversation discusses how much of secular discourse reduces life to little more than chemical processes that terminate with death. By contrast, the Christian idea of Incarnation and Resurrection offers a different account of human life in terms of personhood and of death as a genuinely a tragic loss that nevertheless does not mark the end but the transition to a different kind of union of body and soul.

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From the 2011 Telos Conference:Interview with David Pan

In this video, Adrian Pabst interviews David Pan about the current issue of Telos, a special issue about Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play. David has translated Schmitt’sHamlet or Hecuba and also co-edited the special issue together with Julia Lupton. The significance of this book for a proper understanding and assessment of Schmitt’s oeuvre can hardly be overstated. It highlights the centrality of culture and literature in his political thought, including the role of myth, theater, representation, and tragedy. The conversation with David also touches on the concrete contemporary relevance of these themes for politics, in particular a broader notion of truth and values than technocracy or managerialism.

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Non-market Motives at Work in the Market:

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2011 Telos Conference, “Rituals of Exchange and States of Exception: Continuity and Crisis in Politics and Economics.”

In light of the 2008 global financial crisis, a reassessment of the global market system seems to be afoot. If neoliberalism (too much market) yields the Great Recession, if socialist planning (not enough market) produced the failed economies of the former Soviet bloc, and if social-market combinations (too much centralization of the market) progress towards the slow economic growth and high-cost programs of Western Europe, what are better options?

“New evangelicals,”[1] perhaps unexpectedly for non-believers, offer a few ideas—interesting for their mix of market and common-good positions, and for an apparent paradox. “New evangelicals” work with a sophisticated notion of the common good—though their beliefs and practices rely on the very eighteenth-century principles that fostered unregulated market development. That is, they uphold unencumbered entrepreneurialism in markets, but this commitment makes them entrepreneurs for the benefit of others. This becomes more interesting when one considers that the “new evangelical” paradox has significant effect on the circulation of money and people worldwide. The material here is taken from field research that I did between 2005 and 2010 and which will appear in a book later in 2011 (Eerdmans Publishing).

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Instabilities and Critical Opportunities:Guy Debord's Contributions to Crisis Theory

The following text was presented at the 2011 Telos Conference, “Rituals of Exchange and States of Exception: Continuity and Crisis in Politics and Economics.”

(For the people of Tunisia.)

There is a tension in Guy Debord’s crisis theory, which stems from a particular bifurcation in his own consideration of crisis. On the one hand, Debord sought to completely deconstruct the Marxian logic of crisis, but on the other, his own situationist theory of praxis depended on the relationship between crisis and opportunity. In short, Debord abandons any notion of the grand crises of world-historical significance, and looks instead to minor crises of ideology and critique.

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From the 2011 Telos Conference:Interview with Marcia Pally

In this video from the 2011 Telos Conference, held on January 15-16 in New York City, Adrian Pabst interviews Professor Marcia Pally from NYU. Marcia is Professor of Multilingual and Multicultural Studies, and her current work is on “new evangelicals” in the United States and elsewhere. The conversation with Marcia revolves around the long, progressive tradition of evangelicalism going back to the nineteenth century that is coming once more to the fore. Instead of endorsing big government or championing big business, the “new evangelicals” view civil society was more primacy than either state or market. For this and other reasons, they appeal to non-market motives such as solidarity and sympathy in order to transform market institutions and address pressing problems such as poverty, inequality and social exclusion.

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