Title: “Uncountable Matter”: “Speculative Realism” and “New Materialism”
Lecturer: Jacques Lezra (Professor, Department of Comparative Literature and Spanish at New York University)
Chairperson: ZHANG Chuntian (Research Fellow, Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, May 6th, 2016 (Friday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
From the perspective of phenomenology and logic -- or rather, from the crossed point of the two fields -- Professor Jacques Lezra examines in details the so-called “speculative realism” and “new materialism” as a radical theoretical trend in contemporary Western philosophy started with Quentin Meillassoux’s critique of “correlationism,” and discusses the role of literature in this new theoretical trend and the possible challenges against it in and by literature.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Jacques Lezra, Professor in the department of Comparative Literature and Spanish at New York University. His main fields include Shakespeare studies, critical theory, Spanish literature, etc. He is the author of Wild Materialism (Fordham, 2010), Unspeakable Subjects (Stanford, 1997) and the editor of Lucretius and Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Dictionary of Untranslatables (Princeton, 2014), etc.