Program

Sunday, 24 July 2022

Münster Lectures: "Breaking the Silence"
("We exist, we are here" & "A Question of Silence")

18:00-20:00
Studiobühne WWU, Domplatz 23

The Münster Lectures are ongoing iterations of WWU Münster's project of bringing academia together with activism. In 2022, the Münster Lectures will kick off the Summer School 2022. Both will focus on silence’s ethical and political dimensions, paying particular attention to how silence is both a means and ends in discursive orders––producing margins, exclusions, as well as a method of hiding state violence.

Abstracts:

1. Butalia

This talk will focus on women in India and will trace, through the history of the setting up of the first feminist publishing house in India, the trajectories of the women's movement in addressing the many silences women live with. Kali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house, set up in 1984, came about as a direct result of the absence of knowledge about women on which activists could base their activism. Can knowledge address silence and absence? This is the key question the talk will address.

2. Kamau

In the last 10 years International Women* Space has produced books, audio-reports, podcasts and videos in order to make migrant struggles documented and visible. For this lecture, Jennifer Kamau, co-founder of IWS, will present a 18min video "Kämpfer*innen", which is part of the current documentary film in the making from IWS. A discussion about the topics of authorship and visibility will follow.

KÄMPFER*INNEN DOCUMENTARY WORK IN PROGRESS

Website Kämpfer*innen

Poster here.

Monday, 25 July 2022, 08:30-12:00

Masterclass I: Politics of Silence

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130

Required Reading:

• "Women" (pp. 109-171) and "Honour" (pp. 175-245) from The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India by Urvashi Butalia
• First extract (pp. 1-24), Second extract (pp. 25-40), Third extract (p. 147) from Following a Prayer by Sundar Sarukkai
• Partition document of the Indian government with a preface by A. L. Fletcher (pp.1-5)

Monday, 25 July 2022, 13:15-16:45

Masterclass I: Poetics of Silence

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130

Recommended Reading:

• "The End of the Poem" (pp. 109-115) from The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics by Giorgio Agamben
• "What is a Poem?, Or, Philosophy and Poetry at the Point of the Unnamable" (pp.16-27) from Handbook of Inaesthetics by Alain Badiou
• "Introduction" (pp. xi-xvii) and "The Signature of All Things, Paradigms and Signatures" (pp. 3-28) from Agamben and Indifference: A Critical Overview by William Watkin
• "Introduction" (pp. 1-24) and "Being: Separation, Void, Mark" (pp. 45-70) from Badiou and Indifferent Being: A Critical Introduction to Being and Event by William Watkin

Monday, 25 July 2022

Public Lecture 1

"Multiplicities of Silences", Prof. William Watkin (Brunel University)

18:30-20:00
Johannisstr. 4, JO1

In "Multiplicities of Silence", Prof. William Watkin will look at the different philosophical, aesthetic, and political ideas around silence.

Abstract:

Sigetics is the name for the philosophy of silence. It is concerned with what philosophers cannot say or name. As such it constitutes the outside of philosophy, that thinkers need to make their various systems consistent. Yet sigetics as a discipline is also marked by an essential paradox, the saying of the unsayable. In his brief history of sigetics, Prof. Watkin visits the quiet cells and still offices of many thinkers (the Gnostics, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Husserl, Bataille, Blanchot, Derrida, Agamben, Ranciere and Badiou) and asks if their multiplicities of silences might be less a limit to philosophy, than a mute indication of its future. For what is silence but that which has no distinction, discernibility or difference? And what is sigetics but the philosophy of this radical indifference?

Zoom-Link:

https://wwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5ckf-ihpjkuGtdF0zIRaHRnMbb7UhPZ4iPo

Poster here.

Tuesday, 26 July 2022, 08:30-12:00

Masterclass I: Theory of Silence

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130

Recommended Reading:

• Beyond the Pleasure Principle (pp. 1-59) by Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey
• Sublime, Necessarily Sublime, Christine V (pp. 8-18) by Marguerite Duras, translated by Andrew Slade

Tuesday, 26 July 2022, 13:45-16:45

Masterclass II: Theory of Silence

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130

Recommended Reading:

• "Schweigen" (pp. 131-197) from Theodor Storm: Novellen 1881-1888 edited by Karl Ernst Laage (German version)
• "Der Kuß von Sentze" (pp. 143-174) from Adalbert Stifter's Werke und Briefe: historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, edited by Alfred Doppler (German version)
• "Stifter" (pp. 111-113) from Walter Benjamin's Selected Writings, edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (English version)
• "Stifter" (pp. 608-610) from Walter Benjamin's Gesammelte Schriften: Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (German version)

Tuesday, 26 July 2022

Public Lecture 2

"Wer kann schweigen? Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Bergman", Prof. Alexander García Düttmann (Berlin University of the Arts)

18:30-20:00
Johannisstr. 4, JO1

In "Wer kann schweigen? Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Bergman", Prof. García Düttmann takes a philosophical-theoretical approach to the topic of silence.

Der Vortrag kreist um die doppelte Schwierigkeit, zwischen Rede und Schweigen und zwischen Schweigen und Stummheit zu unterscheiden, und um die politische Tragweite dieser Schwierigkeit.

Zoom-Link:

https://wwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5AvdeGgpzwvHdSsxH4vFI-YML2SKacLkyL2

Poster here.

Wednesday, 27 July 2022, 10:00-15:00

Young Researchers' Work-in-Progress Presentations

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130 | ES 2 | ES 3 | ES 333

As the conference portion of the Summer School, early career researchers will present their own papers and receive feedback from each other and the panels of experts.

Program here.

Wednesday, 27 July 2022

Public Lecture 3

"Toward a Political Theology of Silence", Prof. Adam Kotsko (North Central College)

18:30-20:00
Fürstenberghaus | F4, Domplatz 20-22

In his lecture "Toward a Political Theology of Silence", Prof. Kotsko will approach the topic of silence from a theological-political perspective.

Abstract:

My talk attempts to make a connection between political theology, conceived as the study of systems of legitimacy, and silence starting from the role of silence in music. According to philosopher Susanne Langer, true rest or silence only occurs in the context of a musical work. Going a step further, Jacques Attali argues that the silence of the audience is foundational for Western classical music, just as the silence of the masses is foundational for the early modern political order. After showing the parallels between political theology and Attali's political economy of music, I turn to abortion politics in the US as an example of the foundational role of silence for politics. Drawing on Lauren Berlant's analysis of the cultural effects of fetal photography, I argue that the reactionary right has found the perfect "silent majority" in the unborn -- a perfectly passive, permanentaly silent victim on whose behalf they can say or do absolutely anything. I conclude by asking whether this perverse attempt to "give voice to the voiceless" is merely an abuse and parody of a positive political strategy or whether it should instead cause us to ask serious questions about the politics of silence.

Zoom-Link:

https://wwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Akf-CurTgqHtDMyxQ5_hoLULYXnYwJba53

Poster here.

Thursday, 28 July 2022, 08:30-12:00

Masterclass II: Politics of Silence

Prof. Peter De Graeve (University of Leuven)

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130

Recommended Reading:

• "Metaphor and the Ineffable" (pp. 110-125) and "The pre-philosophic Assumptions of Pre-Socratic Philosophy" (pp. 129-141) from The Life of the Mind, Vol. 1: Thinking by Hannah Arendt
• "How To Avoid Speaking: Denials" (pp. 143-195) by Jacques Derrida, from Psyche: Inventions of the Other, Vol. 2, edited by Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth G. Rottenberg
• "The Convalescent" (Book III) (pp. 173-179) from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Adrian Del Caro
• "Section 7" (p. 89) from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Tuesday, 26 July 2022, 13:45-16:45

Masterclass II: Theory of Silence

Johannisstr. 12-20, ES 130

Recommended Reading:

• "Experimentum Linguae" (pp. 3-10) from Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience by Giorgio Agamben
• "Experimentum Vocis" (pp. 1-28) from What is Philosophy? by Giorgio Agamben
• "America, 'Fat,' the Fetus" (pp. 83-144) from The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship by Lauren Berlant

Thursday, 28 July 2022

Public Lecture 4

"On Being Silenced (Echoes of the Ineffable)", Peter De Graeve (University of Leuven)

18:30-20:00
Johannisstr. 4, JO1

In "On Being Silenced (Echoes of the Ineffable)", Prof. De Graeve connects the topic of silence with approaches from philosophy and politics.

Abstract:

Early modernist philosophy first noticed and conceptualized the irrevocable loss of "big silence" (in ancient Myth, Religion, Metaphysics). Huizinga and Heidegger are cited as examples in this respect. Especially Heidegger's Being and Time can be read as a thorough analysis of (or accusation against) modernity as the epoch of noise, responsible for silencing silence and for shaping - or "essentializing," if you like - contemporary Man as noisy animal, das Lärmtier. Heidegger's silent struggle with modern noisiness will be examined.

However painful or even fatal - "nefastus" - the historical loss of big silence may be, contemporary philosophy doesn't seem to realize its own maladjusted reaction(s) to it. For a long time, maybe even still, it set its hopes on the meticulous de(con)struction of Western metaphysics - of onto-theology -, expecting some salvation from this ambitious endeavor. Yet, "breaking up" the old ontological structure (Jean-Luc Nancy), or else "weakening" it (Gianni Vattimo), did not offer us much of a relief, at least not for now. Admittedly, the alleged ecstasies-of-Being (Heidegger) might have vanished but Being itself (ontology) remained firmly in place - and our modern noisiness with it. We just seem to be stuck in the middle (of both being and noise).

That is why we venture to introduce a new task - both "beyond" and "before" taciturnity - for us, philosophers of the future, as Nietzsche called us: silencing being. Getting access to some alternative acoustics, so to speak, will be our final focus: by reinventing new echoes of the past (which are always, by nature, the very old ones), and by starting to write humanity's echography - next, not just opposed, to its ontology.

Zoom-Link:

https://wwu.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5UkduuprzouEt1G7xRBo8xwHlVBWRgcRb-3

Poster here.