G. CATANZARO, WANG HUI, R. LAUDANI, S. MEZZADRA - ON THE CRITICAL TASK OF THE UNIVERSITY TODAY

THE CRITICAL TASKS OF THE UNIVERSITY

International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (UC Berkeley)
Chair on The Academic and the Civic (Utrecht University)
The Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory

VIDEO (Opening remarks)
VIDEO (part 1)
VIDEO (part 2)

PANEL 1

On the Critical Task of the University Today

 
Chair: RAFFAELE LAUDANI (University of Bologna)
 
“Challenges to/of Humanities: a Chinese Perspective?”
WANG HUI (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Tsinghua University)
 
“The Figure of the Activist Scholar: Within and Against the Global University?”
SANDRO MEZZADRA (University of Bologna)
 
Respondent: GISELA CATANZARO (University of Buenos Aires)

 

GISELA CATANZARO is Researcher at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), a research institute for accomplished scholars in Argentina, and Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani in Buenos Aires. She has multiple appointments at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in the School of Political Science, the School of Sociology, and the doctoral program in social sciences of the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is the co-author of Las aventuras del marxismo occidental (with Ezequiel Ipar, Gorla 2003) and co-editor, with Leonor Arfuch, of Pretérito imperfecto: Lecturas críticas del acontecer (Prometeo 2008). Her book La nación entre naturaleza e historia: Sobre los modos de la crítica (Colección Sociológica, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011) received first mention for the National Sociological Essay Prize. Her research spans and links the fields of sociology and political theory, and she connects the tradition of the Frankfurt School to the critical practice of essay writing in Argentina. RAFFAELE LAUDANI is Director of the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Human Cultures at the Università di Bologna, where he teaches the history of political thought and Atlantic studies. Laudani has published several volumes and essays on the Frankfurt School, globalization, disobedience, and African-American abolitionism. He is the editor of the Italian edition of Herbert Marcuse’s uncollected papers. At the moment, he is studying the Atlantic dimension of modern political thought. He has participated in and organized several international meetings and seminars and participated in numerous collective national research projects. He created and edits the book series “Marcusiana” (Manifestolibri) and is member of the editorial boards of the journals Filosofia politica and Storicamente.  Since 2006, he is the director of the Bologna International Committee for the Cartography and Analysis of the Contemporary World and of its website, www.cartografareilpresente.org. He is a contributor to several cultural and political newspapers, including Le Monde diplomatique and il manifesto. Among his recent works are Politica come movimento: Il pensiero di Herbert Marcuse (Il Mulino, 2005); Disobedience in Western Political Thought: A Genealogy (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort (Princeton University Press, 2013); and Il movimento della politica: Teorie critiche e potere destituente (Il Mulino, 2016). SANDRO MEZZADRA is Associate Professor of Political Theory at Università di Bologna and is adjunct fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society of Western Sydney University. In the 2017-2018 academic year, he will be Visiting Professor at The New School for Social Research, New York City. He has published widely on the areas of migration, postcolonial theory, contemporary capitalism, Italian operaismo and autonomist Marxism. He is an active participant in “post-workerist” debates and one of the founders of the website Euronomade (www.euronomade.info). He is the author of several books, among them - with Brett Neilson - Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013). Mezzadra and Neilson just completed a new book, The Politics of Operations. Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (forthcoming, Duke University Press). Sandro Mezzadra has worked on several FP7 European research projects (including ATACD, GEMIC, and MIG@NET) and is currently a partner researcher on the ARC Discovery project “Logistics as Global Governance: Labour, Software and Infrastructure along the New Silk Road” (http://logisticalworlds.org/). WANG HUI is Changjiang Scholar Professor in the Department of Chinese Literature and the Department of History at Tsinghua University and Director of the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1988. His research interests include Chinese intellectual history, modern Chinese literature and social/political theory. His recent publications include China’s Twentieth Century (Verso, 2016), Reversal (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2015; in Chinese), The Short Twentieth Century: The Chinese Revolution and the Logic of Politics (Oxford University Press, 2015; in Chinese), China from Empire to Nation-State (two volumes) (Harvard University Press, 2014), and The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity (Verso, 2011). He was previously a Pusey Fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) in 2010, and a HYI Research Associate from 1992-93. In 2013, he was the co-winner of the Luca Pacioli Prize.