A CPTRG research event

A One-Day Conference on William E. Connolly’s A World of Becoming

26 May 2011 - 10am to 6pm

Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DN

(Click here for Podcast of Conference)

One of the leading voices in political theory today, for over three decades William E. Connolly has systematically brought the critical insights of Nietzsche and Foucault, Bergson and Deleuze, complexity theory, radical neuroscience, and more to bear on questions of individual and collective identity, the role of faith in public political life, the problematic nature of territorial sovereignty in a globalized age, the changing nature of transnational capitalism, and the micropolitics of affective experience. A World of Becoming (Duke University Press, 2011) is Connolly’s most recent contribution to the development of a pluralist politics and ethics appropriate to a world composed of open and complex systems, existing on different temporal registers and interacting in ways that can engender profound but sometimes unpredictable changes. This conference will interrogate this book and Connolly’s thought more generally from the perspectives of geography, philosophy, critical legal studies, international relations, and political theory.

This event is organized by the Contemporary Political Theory Reading Group at Royal Holloway, University of London and the Department of Politics, University of Exeter, with the support of Royal Holloway’s Humanities and Arts Research Centre and Faculty of History and Social Sciences.

Confirmed Participants

Terrell Carver (Bristol)

Dario Castiglione (Exeter)

Clayton Chin (Queen Mary)

Robin Dunford (Exeter)

Stuart Elden (Durham)

Kimberly Hutchings (LSE)

Craig Lundy (UNSW, Middlesex)

Victoria Ridler (Birkbeck)

Rory Rowan (Royal Holloway)

Nathan Widder (Royal Holloway)

William E Connolly (as respondent and final speaker)

Attendance is free but spaces are limited. If interested, please register by email with lisa.dacunha@rhul.ac.uk.

William E. Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His The Terms of Political Discourse (1974) received the biennial Lippincott Award in 1999 for the "best book in political theory still influential fifteen or more years after publication.” He is also author of Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (1991), The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality (1993), The Ethos of Pluralization (1995), Why I am not a Secularist (1999), Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (2002), Pluralism (2005), and Capitalism and Christianity: American Style (2008).