Graduate Programme in Social & Political Thought's Annual
Symposium
Strategies of Critique XI:
End of Knowledge or the Knowledge of Ends
April 18-19, 1997
York University
Programme
Friday 18 April
Session One 10:00 - 12:00noon."Once upon a time..."
Moderator: Lori Bremner
What is the status of stories as we ponder whether narrative is unified, polyvocal, authentic or
even existent? These papers trace their way from binary distinctions through double entendres to
polysemic resonances, all embedded within understandings of both narratives and their ends
themselves.
Barbara Rose (English, Memorial University): "The End of Ideology, the End of History,
the End of Metanarrative: Teleology, Apocalypse, and American Postmodernism"
Shanna Braden (Sociology, York University): "The Antimony of Experience in Arendt and
Bakhtin"
Gregory Cameron (Social & Political Thought, York University): "From One End to
the Other"
Lunch 12:00 - 1:15pm.
Session Two 1:15 - 3:15pm. "There's no place like home."
Moderator: Gerald Butts
With the denaturalization of the nation, national identities have become "imagined
communities." This panel considers the politics of these imaginations, and the negotiations
across spaces, places and times which constitute "the nation."
Anthony Spanakos (International Relations/Comparative Politics, University of
Massachussetts -- Amherst): "Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity: Diaspora Nations and
Hegemonic States"
Nadia Habib (Social & Political Thought, York University): "Exquisite Grief: When
the Subject's Referent is Lost, the Loss of Umm Kulthum and Egypt's Turn to Islam"
Break 3:15 - 3:30pm.
Session Three 3:30 - 5:30pm. "Beam me up, Scotty; there's no intelligent life down
here."
Moderator: Theresa Kiefer
Since our fall from scholastic monasticism, the "intellect" can no longer be considered apart
from its context, a process exacerbated by our newest electro-technical obsessions. These papers
consider the implications of this socialization of knowledge.
Derek Hrynyshyn (Political Science, York University): "New Information Technologies
and Intellectual Production"
Michael Pollex (Anthropology & Sociology, University of British Columbia): "The
End of Metaphysics or the Death of Minds? A Social Critique of the Connectionist Theory of
Artificial Intelligence"
Pierre Ouellet (Social & Political Thought, York University): "Knowledge in
Jeopardy, or "What's epistemology, Alex?""
Reception 5:30 - 8:00pm
Saturday 19 April
Session Four 10:00 - 12:00noon. "Names, battle slogans, and costumes."
Moderator: Mike Palamarek
The "end of knowledge" does not necesarily imply an end, but rather, a transfiguration
and/or mutation of old epistemologies and ideologies. This panel discusses the political
dynamics and historical configurations which govern the naming of ends and the identifying of
responsible actors.
Janice Schroder (English, University of Alberta): "Beginning at the End: Victorian Women
and the Use-Value of Cultural Education"
Rob Heynen (Social & Political Thought, York University): "Fixing the World: Marx,
Lenin, Stalin and the Problem of Knowledge"
Thaddeus Murawski (Rockefeller College, SUNY -- Albany): "Foucault and the
Construction of Political Identity: Writing Theory as Identity"
Lunch 12:00 - 1:15pm.
Session Five 1:15 - 3:30pm. "Better a new daemon than an old god"
Moderator: Sarah Clift
"God is dead, but it has not yet reached the ears of men." Well, the word is finally out; the
papers in this panel consider the ramifications, reactions and retrenchments which follow the
decline of hegemonic epistemologies.
Jason Scott Robert (Philosophy, McMaster): "Cellular Cells and Secular Souls"
Patrick Phillips (Philosophy, York University): ""Primitive Societies": Imperializing
Interpretations and the Spectre of Relativism"
Richard Day (Sociology & Anthropology, Simon Fraser University) & Guy Letts
(Sociology & Anthropology, Simon Fraser University): "Chaos, Catastrophe, Complexity,
Theory"
Robert Richardson (Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University): "Desiring Production and
Deterritorialization: Deleuze and Guattari on the form of critique"
Break 3:30 - 3:45pm.
Session Six 3:45- 4:30pm. "I don't know about art but I know what I like."
Moderator: Catherine Adams
The artifact, as object and subject, often falls under particular forms of analysis, critique and
judgement. This panel assesses the tension between the exhibit as a space of introspection and
retrospection, and the social agenda which may haunt the purity of this space.
Michael Davidge: (English, Concordia University): "A la recherche de Lost
Paradise"
Break 4:30 - 4:45
Open Round Table 4:45 - 6:30. Terminal Knowledge
|SPT Programme
Information| GRW ~ Graduate
Workshops|
|Strategies of
Critique (SPT conference)|
|SPT Social
Events|Links|25th Anniversary|
|J-SPoT ~ The
Journal of Social and Political Thought|
|SPT Speakers'
Series| SPT Graduate Students'
Association|
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York University
last updated: February 16, 2001
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