Arthur Bradley Lecture and Seminar Series

ZRC SAZU, Institute of Philosophy

invites you to a lecture and seminar series by

Dr. Arthur Bradley

The lecture and seminars will be held in English.

The lecture will take place in the Atrij ZRC, ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, Friday, 24 November at 18:00.

Human Interest: Towards A Bestiary of Money

This lecture revisits a set of classic and economic scenes in the (early) modern debate on usury from Martin Luther to Milton Friedman.  To summarize my argument, I contend that the theory of usury --- which polemically mobilizes Aristotelian tropes of the breeding, reproduction and husbandry of money --- might also be read as a theory of what Michel Foucault famously calls pastoral power. If this debate nominally concerns the repeal of the ancient prohibition against moneylending at interest, I argue that what is really at stake here is the pastoral production of a new theory of the subject as not merely human capital but human interest. In conclusion, I situate this genealogy of human interest within the larger history of the self-interested, entrepreneurial and chronically indebted subject from Albert O. Hirschmann, through Michel Foucault, to Maurizio Lazzarato.

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The seminars will take place in the conference room of the Institute of Philosophy, ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, 3rd floor at 12:00.

In the Theater of Sovereignty: Three seminars on theater and political theory

Tuesday, 21 November at 12:00 in the conference room of the Institute of Philosophy, ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, 3rd floor:

1. In the Chair: Shakespeare, Kant, Bacon, Ionesco

In Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist drama Les Chaises [The Chairs] (1952), an old man and woman arrange empty chairs for a crowd of important guests who, perhaps, do not exist. To begin my exploration of the theatre of sovereignty, this lecture explores the political figure of the empty chair from the Roman and Christian “empty throne” up to what the modern political theorist Claude Lefort famously calls the “empty space” of democracy in which the seat of power remains permanently in circulation. If the ancient royal throne was a permanent fixture that signified the king’s dignitas --- which is to say the sovereign power to reign in perpetuity irrespective of the natural life of any one monarch --- the modern, democratic and literally “mass-produced” chair is symptomized by a certain virtual and real political moveability (from the Latin mōbile and the French meuble, literally a “moveable” and also, of course, “a piece of furniture”.) In a series of readings of scenes of real or symbolic coronation, investiture, and inauguration from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (c.1606) to Francis Bacon’s “Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953), this lecture constructs a political theatre of the meuble, mobile or “moveable” where no-one or nothing finally takes place.

Tuesday, 28 November at 12:00 in the conference room of the Institute of Philosophy, ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, 3rd floor:

2. Under the Clothes: Montaigne, Kafka, Genet, Agamben

In Jean Genet’s play Le Balcon [The Balcony] (1956), a group of clients at a high-class brothel dress up as bishops, judges, and generals whilst, outside, a revolution is overthrowing the real pillars of the political, legal and religious establishment. To enter Genet’s libidinal “house of illusions,” this second lecture argues that we must also assume or take on a long tradition of what we might call the political theology of cosplay, clothing, or investments (from the Latin vestire, “to clothe,” vestis, “robe”) which stretches from Montaigne’s Essays (1580) to Agamben’s “Nudities” (2009),  If premodern political theology frequently sees clothing as the privileged figure of a Christian theological anthropology --- which traces the itinerary of humanity from prelapsarian innocence, through original sin, atonement and covenant, to real or possible grace --- political theory from Rousseau onwards seeks to release humanity from this theological straitjacket and reveal the “natural man.” In new readings of scenes of religio-political investitures and divestitures --- dressing up and defrocking --- from Montaigne’s Essays (1580) to Agamben’s “Nudities” (2009), this lecture concludes that political modernity’s defining gesture of denudification itself remains vestigially theological: what we call “nudity” is our original form of clothes.

Thursday, 30 November at 12:00 in the conference room of the Institute of Philosophy, ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, 3rd floor:

3. In the Crowd: Jarry, Freud, Kelsen, Foucault

In 1896, Alfred Jarry’s obscene play about popular sovereignty Ubu roi [King Ubu] famously provoked a riot amongst its opening night audience. To bring my discussion of the theatre of sovereignty to a close, this final lecture explores what I want to call the political massentheater -- which is to say both the theatrical representation of the crowd and the crowd as itself a kind of theatrical phenomenon -- in twentieth century drama, psychoanalysis and biopolitics. If crowd theory or psychology is really a kind of anti-crowd theory, which seeks to reverse engineer the collective fantasy whereby a disparate group of individuals begin to hypostatize they are part of a new collective subject called “the crowd,” this lecture seeks to argue that it also betrays the fear that this process of hypostatization may be irreversible. In new readings of crowd theory from Le Bon’s Psychology of Crowds (1895) to Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975), I argue that the figure of the crowd theorist themselves succumbs to the hypostatizations they seek to diagnose and becomes just another member of the crowd.

Arthur Bradley is Professor of Comparative Literature at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and he has also held visiting positions at the American University of Beirut and Durham University. He works at the intersection of comparative literature, political theory, theology and philosophy and has published widely in these fields. His most recent book is Unbearable Life: Genealogy of Political Erasure (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019) and he has recently co-edited (with Elettra Stimilli) the collection of essays Teologia politica oggi (Rome: Quodlibet, 2023). In 2023, he is completing a new book entitled In the Theater of Sovereignty: Theory, Theater, Thaumaturgy.  

You are cordially invited!