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The Spirit of Revolution: Beyond the Dead Ends of Man

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Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

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The Spirit of Revolution: Beyond the Dead Ends of Man
Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in collaboration with the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London

Speaker: Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University

Chair: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Birkbeck, University of London

In recent years, some theorists have effectively disavowed both 'the human' and revolutionary politics. In the face of massive geopolitical crisis, post humanists have called for us to reconsider the superiority and centrality of humankind and the human, and question how Man can presume to change the world by revolutionary action, particularly when such hopes and dreams seem to have been swept into the dustbin of history. Professor Cornell seeks to provoke us to reaffirm agency and the struggle against colonialism and capitalism through a series of creolised readings: Foucault with Ali Shari'ati, Lacan with Fanon, and Spinoza with Sylvia Winter. Can 'political spirituality' have a place in the current debates between humanism and post-humanism?

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The Birkeck Institute for the Humanities stimulates research, public debate and collaboration among academics and intellectuals on important issues of our time. Key to its remit is the promotion of new ideas and forms of understanding in the humanities.

Research at the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London centres on critical legal theory, philosophy, and socio-legal approaches to Law and Criminology. it is a top 10 research institution in the UK and top 3 in London, while its research environment was judged conducive to producing research of the highest quality*.

*Times Higher Education 2014 Research Intensity rankings

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