91福利

Naomi Waltham-Smith is giving an invited talk at a conference on Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity: Derrida鈥檚 Geschlecht III at Goldsmiths on 8–9 April 2019 to celebrate the publication of this newly discovered text.

Paper Title: 鈥淯nflappable鈥�

Abstract: Taking off from the 贵濒眉驳别濒蝉肠丑濒补驳 or coup d鈥檃ile in Trakl鈥檚 poem to which the 鈥�Ein鈥� of 鈥�Ein Geschlecht鈥� responds with the Grundton of the Gedicht, this paper explores the play of sonorousness and silence in Geschlecht III. I go down two paths, sounding out two sets of echoes. One traces this (noisy) wing-flapping as a metaphor for the force of reading (aloud) in exchanges between Derrida and Cixous in Voiles, Insister, and other texts. The other—following a series of threads between this and the last of the Geschlecht essays, as well as Derrida鈥檚 final seminar—teases out how this force is associated, on the one hand, with the Walten and Austrag of ontological difference and, on the other, with the tragen or carrying of the voice of the friend or the lost one.

Web link:

Helena Su谩rez Val is presenting 鈥淎ffect amplifiers: feminicide, feminist activists and the politics of counting and mapping gender-related killings of women鈥� at the XVII Encuentro de Ge贸grafos de Am茅rica Latina in Quito, Ecuador (9-12 April 2019).

Link to programme:

Abstract: Since 2015, I have been carrying out a digital mapping of cases of feminicide - understood as the violent deaths of women related to gender - where cases are geolocated and information is displayed about each woman killed in Uruguay (feminicidiouruguay.net). In writing about violence against women, I once described the Uruguayan feminist movement as 鈥渋ndignant, sad and fierce鈥� (Su谩rez Val 2014), and feminist activists have mobilized these and other emotions into online and offline actions, denouncing and protesting against the indifference of society, the erroneous and sexist treatment of cases in the media, and the inaction in the political sphere regarding violence against women. The stark contrast between feminist activists and the indifferent and apathetic atmospheres of society, the media and politics reveals the emotional and affective struggles at play. In this paper I put into dialogue theories of affect and emotions, conceptualizations of feminicide, and feminist scholarship on the use of quantitative and geographic methods, to propose that digital mappings of feminicide act as feminist affect amplifiers: interactive visual artefacts through which data -modulated through feminist emotions and affects- are recirculated to the world to provoke social changes.

Su谩rez Val, H. (2014). Indignadas, tristes, feroces. No Te Olvides, 18. Available at

What does the phrase 'people like you' mean to you, and what are your experiences of personalisation? is hosting a competition to find out - creative entries particularly welcome! Further details here:

Keynote: The Uselessness of Ears

Naomi Waltham-Smith is giving one of the plenary lectures at the Simp贸sio M煤sica Anal铆tica in Porto.

Link:

Abstract:

Another look at Haydn鈥檚 playful (mis)use of cadential formulas and at processes of cadential liquidation in late 18th-century repertoires gives occasion for developing a new theory of musical form that has its roots in philosophical scepticism about notions of property and sovereignty. In order to explain the creative and sometimes aporetic ways in which composers and listeners relate to musical material, I start by tracing the deconstruction of the Adornian dialectic between generic convention and particular expression—between proper and improper, and propriety and impropriety—and then complicate this opposition by way of a secondary distinction, cutting across the first, between musical material and its use. More specifically, I turn to the idea of usure that Derrida develops in his thinking about metaphor to show the negotiation between, on the one hand, the exhaustion or wearing out of musical material and, on the other, the usurious generation of surplus profit or potential for new adventures. In this way, I hope to show the fruitful and deleterious effects of a deconstructive, post-Adornian philosophy of musical form for analytical praxis.

Loup Cellard (PhD Student, CIM) and Anthony Masure (Universit茅 de Toulouse) published together an article entitled in a special issue on the tyrannies of transparency, edited by Emmanuel Alloa and Yves Citton, of .

Abstract of the paper (in english) :

"Historically, one of design鈥檚 objectives was to make the world intelligible by structuring the mediation of the visible. Such an operation of selection necessarily runs against a (transparent) understanding of the real, as fantasized by mathematical computation. Computation spread through digital interfaces which become unavoidable mediators of any form of human activity. As a consequence, design finds itself trapped between three double-binds, which this article attempts to investigate and overcome."

The paper can be downloaded here.

CIM PhD Student Loup Cellard contributed to the released on Friday 15th March by Etalab, the french open data task force. In 2018, Loup conducted an ethnographic fieldwork at Etalab. This service attached to the prime minister assists administrations in applying a new legal framework on public algorithms. This guide, and published as part of is composed of three parts that can be read independently. The first part gives contextual elements: what is an algorithm? How are algorithms used in the public sector? The second part details the issues in terms of ethics and responsibility. The third part presents the legal framework applicable to the transparency of algorithms, particularly following the adoption of . The blogpost of the announcement is available .

Our colleague Ren茅 Westerholt (Assistant Professor at CIM) was awarded the Dissertation Prize Geoinformatics 2019 last Thursday. This prize is awarded by the  at the Technical University of Munich and is endowed with 2500鈧� prize money. Part of the award regulations was also an audience voting for the  at the , a conference for GIS experts from academia, business and public administration. The aim of the Runder Tisch GIS e.V. is to promote and link different actors in the GIS sector in Germany. The prize committee consisted of five leading German GIS professors:  (TU Munich),  (University of Rostock), (RWTH Aachen University),  (University of Augsburg), and  (Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences).

Abstract:

In what sense is the world audible after human extinction? And what does it mean to suggest that an increasing lapse of attunement to our environment and its survival is symptomatic of a certain self-extinguishing character of human aurality which lives on only by destroying itself? If the Anthropocene, as geological strata, will be readable long after geologists and human reading will have become extinct, this paper presents a similar thought-experiment to speculate about listening after human listening. The anthropogenic destruction of the planet and of other species can be tracked by ear, and yet it is typically far more audible to technological or animal ears—through ocean tomography, for example, or in the traces of animal perceptions of noise left in changing patterns of migration. I look back in the opposite direction along history鈥檚 unfolding to the evolution of the mammalian ear and specifically the role of epigenetic changes so as to explore possibilities for non-human modes of listening at once beastly and prosthetic.

On International Women鈥檚 Day Naomi Waltham-Smith is giving a paper at the American Comparative Literature Association annual conference in Washington DC on Anne Dufourmantelle鈥檚 notion of gentle listening and hospitality to women鈥檚 voices in the thought of Jacques Derrida.

 Link to programme:

 Abstract:

Language is never safely in my possession but is always the language of the other, always at risk of its becoming unheimlich, at risk of descending into madness. Such is Derrida鈥檚 thinking of the oikos and of the oikonomia of hospitality, which is no less threatened by perversion. Derrida鈥檚 thought of hospitality demands a respect for singularity—for the kind of singularity that distinguishes, for example, 鈥渢he promise of an as yet unheard language鈥� of the other, 鈥渋naudible yesterday鈥� from the language of the other as colonizing master. And yet that unconditional hospitality—the categorical imperative to respect the otherness of the other—is in danger of becoming appropriative, colonizing, exploitative. For refugees and migrants, the possibility of making a new home has perhaps never been more urgent or more in jeopardy as hospitality, weaponized, teeters towards 鈥渁 gateway to barbarism鈥� in Dufourmantelle鈥檚 phrase. But it is not Derrida鈥檚 appeal for 鈥渃ities of refuge鈥� that detains me here, rather Dufourmantelle鈥檚 鈥渋nvitation鈥� and its offer to shelter his thought within. In particular, I examine the weight she gives in her reading to listening to spoken words, connecting this with her reflections elsewhere on listening and gentleness. I focus on the constellation into which she inserts listening alongside the nocturnal, exiled side of speech and the maternal madness that inhabits language, threatening the promise of homeliness.

This article makes a contribution to interface criticism through the notion of chrono-design: the deliberate shaping of experiences of temporality and time through contemporary software techniques and digital technologies. This notion is articulated through discussions of network optimisation, user experience design, behavioural tracking, Hansen鈥檚 work on 21st-century media and Hayles鈥� framework of cognitive assemblages. In particular, the argument considers how contemporary user interfaces complicate conventional notions of the rational, self-reflexive subject by operating beyond consciousness at vast environmental dimensions and accelerated micro-temporal speeds. These conditions, we argue, provide opportunities for new forms of behavioural suspense and captivation best exemplified through the figure of the trap. The politics and aesthetics of captivation, accordingly, should be considered as central to any expanded ecology of cognition. The article then concludes with a short demonstration of experimental uses of chrono-design methods applied critically to political economies of user tracking and data capture as a prompt for further interdisciplinary applied research in this domain.