28 September 2011

Recorded Lecture: Sylvère Lotringer, "Biopower"

Slyvère Lotringer's "Biopower" is the most recent addition to extensive list of seminar discussions recorded and archived at The European Graduate School. Lotringer stages a discussion of Foucauldian biopolitics through a detailed analysis of sections of Jean Baudrillard's Forget Foucault.

Working through Baudrillard's argument, Lotringer adeptly intwines a diverse range of topics, from elements of Foucault's work on power relations and the presence of death in Georges Bataille's writing, to a potted history of the critical response to liberalism and neo-liberalism as well as a neo-Marxist reading of feudalism, finally capping the seminar with a small diatribe against the current political and economic climate in America. His lecture is an expansive, hour-long history of the development of this area of critical thought.

Throughout 2010 and 2011 (and more sporadically in previous years), the EGS have been putting these recordings of critical and communication theory lectures online as an open access resource. This seminar session and many others by Lotringer are available for viewing on the Video Lectures page of the EGS website. While there, you may want to cast your eye over the ridiculously long list of thinkers that comprise the faculty of the European Graduate School, many of whom have lectures and workshops of their own available in the site.

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