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George Steiner 'On Meritocracy'
The Young Foundation lecture series, Queen Mary University, London,
16 November 2005
Steiner's
lecture was an erudite, entertaining, and combative critique of the
social and intellectual currents prevailing in the era of late capitalism.
But if you'd expected a discussion of the merits of meritocracy, you'd
have been disappointed.
Simon Cooke
The Camera Never Lies?
Art Monthly panel discussion, Camden Arts Centre, London, 30 November
2005
From
the photographer's point of view, if he strives to capture things as
they are, without wanting to comment on the event he witnesses, without
wanting to impose his own mark on the portrayal of that event, he may
as well give up.
Nathalie Rothschild
Bag Searches on the NY Subway
WNYC debate, the Graduate Centre, New York,
12 September 2005
Surely
scaring ourselves to death is not the right strategy - in fact, it ends
up giving the terrorists what they want: us reorganising our lives around
threats. Ultimately, we are the losers.
Alan Miller
'The Rise of China Spells the Decline of
the West' Intelligence Squared
Debate, London, 1 November 2005
China
may be able to export its way to prosperity, but whether it will forge
the political movements and ideas of the future is still an open question,
and one worth considering in debates such as these.
Philip Cunliffe
Economist Debate: 'Respect for human rights
is essential for economic development'
London School of Economics, 13 October 2005
Oxfam's
Phil Bloomer's argument was not for improving people's lives, as much
as an ethical sounding apology for restraint. After all, if economic
growth can exist without development, then the opposite is also true.
Hence, sustainable development.
David Clements
'Tyrants should be left free to tyrannise
their own people' Intelligence
Squared Debate, London, 14 September 2005
Having
effectively given self-determination with one hand to take it away with
the other, Luttwak left the audience with no options, effectively ceding
the argument to Rubin and Buruma.
Philip Cunliffe
Michael Morpurgo
Edinburgh International Book Festival 2005
Morpurgo
reveals that his next book is going to be about an author of adventure
stories who is so fed up about people asking whether his stories are
autobiographical that he decides to go on an adventure.
Austin Williams
Susan Nathan
Edinburgh
International Book Festival 2005
When
she finds herself criticised for being a self-hating Jew - she says
that it is 'precisely because I like myself that I've taken this political
position'.
Austin Williams
Etienne Balibar on Constructions and Deconstructions
of the Universal Birkbeck Derrida
Lecture Series, London, 3 June 2005
Balibar's
proposition is that rather than focusing on the dialectic of the universal
and the particular, we should focus on how universalism is produced
through its internal contradictions.
Philip Cunliffe
Slavoj Žižek: 'Respect for otherness?
No thanks' Birkbeck Derrida Lecture
Series, Birkbeck College, London, 20 May 2005
In
seeking to unite politics with ethics, Žižek usefully exposes
the political choices and consequences behind actions such as humanitarian
intervention, and others which involve moral grandstanding without any
idea of how this translates into a real intervention in the world.
Chris Bickerton
Professor Robert Springborg on the Democratisation Industry
And The Middle East
Inaugural lecture, School of Oriental
and African Studies, London, 24 May 2005
The
professor outlined what he sees as the reasons for the paucity of freedom
across the Middle East, in particular the existence of powerful, rich
elites, the entrenchment of power through anti-colonial rhetoric, and
the difficulty of removing long-standing incumbents.
Dean Nicholas
Jean-Luc Nancy on 'Mad Derrida'
Birkbeck Derrida Lecture Series, Brunei Gallery, London, 6 May 2005
What
is most worrying about the 'public intellectual' discussion is that
a group of esteemed philosophers coming over to lecture on philosophy
is not deemed to be a sufficient end in itself.
Patrick Hayes
Professor Robert Reich: What to expect
from the second Bush administration, and why
LSE Miliband Public Lecture, 22 March 2005
The
reason that the Republicans have been so successful, Reich believes,
is that they have firmly entrenched their narratives in the public consciousness.
The
suggestion that narrative takes precedence over political nuance may
be a truism, yet if so it is a deeply depressing one.
Dean Nicholas
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