May 10-11, 2024

Hershey Hall Salon (Room 158)

RSVP HERE

Please join us on May 10-11, 2024 for “Time and Language: An Encounter Between Philosophy and Philology,” an interdisciplinary workshop on the topic of linguistic change.

Outside of analytic philosophy, there is a strain of contemporary research in fields such as Comparative Literature, German, French, and Religious Studies that approaches the study of language through the lens of philology. Much of the recent popularity of philology is due to the late Werner Hamacher, whose works, including “95 Theses on Philology” and “For—Philology” are inexhaustible wells of philological insight. Presently, philosophers remain largely ignorant of such philological research, just as philological researchers may be unaware of the contemporary philosophical interest in philologically relevant topics like metasemantics, the evolutionary origins of language, semantic drift, and conceptual engineering/amelioration. This event is a first-of-its-kind opportunity for philosophers and philological researchers to come together and share their research on topics like these and much, much more.

Suggested Readings

Werner Hamacher, “95 Theses on Philology” in Give the Word ed. by Richter and Smock, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

—, What Remains to Be Said in Give the Word ed. by Richter and Smock, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

—, “For—Philology”  in Minima Philologica, Fordham University Press, 2015.

Participants

Josh Armstrong (UCLA)

Ding (University of Arizona)

Ari Koslow (UCI)

Jürgen Lipps, (UCLA)

Serena Lückhoff (Brown University)

Kristina Mendicino (Brown University)

Jan Mieszkowski (Reed College)

Eleonore Neufeld (UMass, Amherst)

Julia Ng (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Dominik Zechner (Rutgers University)

Conference Program

Friday, May 10th

9:30 – 9:50 AM: Coffee & pastries

9:50 – 10:20 AM: Introductions & Opening Remarks by Jürgen Lipps and Serena Lückhoff: “Setting the Stage: Sites of Harmony and Divergence Between Philosophy and Philology”

10:30 – 11:45 AM: Seminar by Kristina Mendicino, Jan Mieszkowski, and Dominik Zechner on Derrida’s “Rams: Uninterrupted Dialogue—Between Two Infinities, the Poem” – Suggested Reading

11:45 AM – 12:45 PM: Lunch

12:45 – 1:45 PM: Dominik Zechner: “The Lack of Philology”

1:55 – 2:55 PM: Kristina Mendicino: “Lines of Aphiliation: On Language, Oblivion, and Love in Hamacher, among Others”

3:05 – 4:05 PM: Jan Mieszkowski: “Made in Germany: Negation in Freud and Wittgenstein”

Saturday, May 11th

9:30 – 9:50 AM: Coffee & pastries

9:50 – 10:50 AM: Julia Ng: “Unlikely Possibility”

11:00 AM – 12:15 PM: Seminar by Josh Armstrong on “Origins of Language” – Suggested Reading

12:15 – 1:15 PM: Lunch

1:15 – 2:15 PM: Ari Koslow: “What Open Texture Isn’t”

2:25 – 3:25 PM: Eleonore Neufeld: “Engineering Social Concepts”

3:35 – 4:35 PM: Ding: “Equality and the Metasemantics of Gender”

RSVP HERE