In the context of a new global war regime, marked not only by the proliferation of military conflicts across the world, but also by the growing penetration of the logics of war into economic, social, and political relations, we are witnessing the emergence of an “atmosphere” of war, sustained by different forms of coercion, force, and fear, both within societies and at the global level. This militarization of social life is accompanied by the increasing hybridization of war, which expands the grey zone between war and peace and puts into question the distinctions through which war has traditionally been conceptualized.

Against this background, the workshop brings together critical and genealogical approaches in philosophy and political theory that seek to question established ways of conceptualizing war and its relationship to politics. In doing so, the workshop aims to rethink war as a condition for imagining new forms of resistance and a future no longer defined by its necessity.

This workshop has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Grant Agreement No. 101155344 (Project POLEM-WO: Reframing the Relationship Between War and Politics with 20th Century Women Thinkers) PI: Cristina Basili, S: Sandro Mezzadra, Simon Critchley.

Scientific Committee: Cristina Basili, Simon Critchley, Sandro Mezzadra.

SPEAKERS:

Cristina Basili, Silvia Benso, Roger Berkowitz, James Dodd, Marina Lalatta, Valentina Moro, Anne O’Byrne, Scott Ritner.

ORGANIZER:

Cristina Basili (Unibo/NSRR)

INFO: basilic@newschool.edu

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER  1 4
 

10:00–10:30 am
Jay Bernstein (NSSR), Cristina Basili (Unibo/NSRR)

Greetings and Introduction

10:30 am–1:00 pm
Panel I – Female Thinkers, War, and Alternative Genealogies

Chair: Simon Critchley

Marina Lalatta Costerbosa (Unibo)
Forgotten Voices: Progressive Women Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic

James Dodd (NSSR)
The Purest and Loveliest of Mirrors: Reflections on Simone Weil’s Iliad

Cristina Basili (Unibo/NSSR)
On Force and Resistance: Weil and Bespaloff on the Iliad

Discussion

1:30–2:30 pm

Lunch

3:00–5:00 pm

Panel II – Tragedy, Feminism, and the Reconfiguration of Politics

Chair: Cristina Basili

Valentina Moro (Stony Brook University)
Tragedy as the “Oxymoron”: Political Membership, Eris, and the Agon

Silvia Benso (RIT)
Reconfiguring Power and Subjectivity through Carla Lonzi’s Feminism

Discussion

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER  1 5
 

9:30 am–12:00 pm
Panel III – War, Democracy, and the Crisis of Modern Politics

Chair: Silvia Benso

Roger Berkowitz (Hannah Arendt Center-Bard College)
When the Hell That Is War Loses Its Power

Anne O’Byrne (Stony Brook University)
“The Internal War of an Enclosed City”: Jean-Luc Nancy on War and Democracy

Scott Ritner (University of Colorado Boulder)
Simone Weil’s theory of War’s two fronts Discussion