Event overview
In which sense can we say that “the possible inhabits the real as a latent force”--thereby specifying the temporal structure of change and the condition for novelty?
Philosopher, media theorist and feminist thinker Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky will first present Bloch’s idea of potential latency, which is related to the notion of objective tendency. While Bloch underscores that change is associated with novelty, he seems to narrow the question by connecting creation to a subjective revolutionary factor, which he can only think of as a human factor and as the intervention of free will. But if we think of change and the occurrence of novelty as an event, which is not limited to human history, what is part of the history of all living beings? This question leads to Whitehead’s interpretation of Zeno’s arrow paradox. Whitehead states that creation is linked to becoming and that, while there is something that becomes, becoming is not extensive itself. This statement is preceded by the critique of “the prevalent misconception that ‘becoming’ involves the notion of a unique seriality for its advance into novelty.” According to Whitehead, this prevalent misconception is the classic notion of time which philosophy adopted from common sense. Whitehead instead created the concept of real potentiality by interpreting realisation as the realisation of a potentiality rather than of a reality in the course of becoming.
Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky is Professor of Philosophy and Media Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and is an Associate Member of the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. She studied philosophy and German literature in Zürich and Berlin. She worked as editor for the Züricher WochenZeitung in 1990-1994 and is co-founder and editor of the journal Die Philosophin: Forum für feministische Theorie und Philosophie. Before arriving at Bochum, she was research associate at the Humboldt University Berlin’s Cultural Studies department. She has published extensively on topics in feminist theory, representation and mediality, media theory and philosophy as well as religion and modernism. Her publications include: Praktiken der Illusion: Kant, Nietzsche, Cohen, Benjamin bis Donna J. Haraway (Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2007); Lara Croft: Cyber Heroine (Minneapolis, London: U of Minnesota P, 2005); and Der frühe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen: Jüdische Werte, Kritische Philosophie, Vergängliche Erfahrung (Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2000).
This event is free and open to the public.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 25 Feb 2015 | 4:30pm - 6:30pm |
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