Modernity and Civilisation 2.0 Conference
19 – 20 November
Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture
168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.
You are warmly invited to attend the Modernity and Civilisation 2.0 Conference presented by Thesis Eleven.
Last November Thesis Eleven co-sponsored a major event in Chengdu with our friends and colleagues at Sichuan University. Our guest of honour was Agnes Heller. This event in Melbourne was to be the return, or next phase. Agnes died 19 July 2019. The Modernity and Civilisation 2.0 conference will continue these discussions initiated in Chengdu and our guest of honour in Agnes’ absence will be Professor Fu Qilin from Sichuan University, leading Chinese expert on Heller’s work.
Fu Qilin and Agnes Heller, Sichuan University 2018
Papers will encompass broad horizons of these arcs, modernity and civilisation, working within and beyond the fields engaged by Thesis Eleven over the last forty years. Agnes Heller’s theories of modernity and its competing logics offer one frame of reference. The Western discourses she worked within also reach back to the Greeks and beyond. The narratives and interests inhabited by our Chinese colleagues reach into new modernities and back to long Chinese traditions of civilisation.
All Welcome. Please register via the contact form at the bottom of this page.
This event is presented by Thesis Eleven journal, the Thesis Eleven Forum for Social and Political Theory and cosponsored by La Trobe Asia, the College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University and part of a series of events celebrating the life and work of Agnes Heller this November.
Program:
Papers are 20 mins + 10 mins for discussion (except for Keynotes)
Tuesday 19 November
10 – 11am Keynote – Professor Fu Qilin – Heller in China
Chair: Peter Beilharz
11 – 12.30pm Session 1
Chair: Rachel Busbridge
Presenters:
John Grumley – Heller’s late lectures
James Dorahy – Heller’s existentialism
David Roberts – The last European
12.30 – 1.30pm LUNCH
1.30 – 3pm Session 2
Chair: James Dorahy
Presenters:
Howard Prosser – Does modernity matter?
Raul Sanchez-Urribarri – Hybrid authoritarianism and law
Tim Andrews – Humanism and universalism
3 – 3.30pm BREAK
3.30 – 5pm Session 3
Chair: Tim Andrews
Presenters:
Deng FengMing – China’s rural cultures
PLENARY – Jack Barbalet – Guanxi and modernity
Wednesday 20 November
10 – 11am Keynote – Professor Peter Murphy – Renaissance and contingency
Chair: Peter Beilharz
11 – 12.30pm Session 1
Chair: Julian Potter
Presenters:
Andrew Gilbert – Crisis of trust
Alonso Casanueva Baptista – Illich and modernity
Trevor Hogan – Asian urbanisms
12.30 – 1.30pm LUNCH
1.30 – 3pm Session 2
Chair: Alonso Casanueva Baptista
Presenters:
Qin Jiayang – Young Lukacs’ aesthetics
Julian Potter – The Faust myth
Zhang Jiaqi – Goethe’s aesthetic modernity
3 – 3.30pm BREAK
3.30 – 5pm Session 4
Chair: Andrew Gilbert
Presenters:
Henry Paternoster – History and story
Lachlan Ross – Marcuse’s surplus repression
Rachel Busbridge – Contesting Australian nationhood
5.30 – 7pm Special Event
Emily Floyd and Nikos Papastergiardis in Conversation – Gratitude in Precarity: Heller and Art
Please register via this contact form:
thesis eleven 
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