Friday Honi Haber talk!

[Joshua]

Check out this talk, this Thursday, by 2003 UCD philosophy graduate,
Geoff Pfeifer, who is now a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of
Florida.

University of Colorado Denver Department of Philosophy Presents:

"When Knowledge isn’t Power: Althusser and Žižek on Materialism and
Ideology Critique"
Geoff Pfeifer
Ph.D. Candidate, University of South Florida


Abstract:

Traditional conceptions of ideology critique rely on a
hard and fast distinction between a true reality and a false,
ideologically constructed one. As traditionally conceived, it is the
job of ideology critique to examine our everyday relationship to the
world and expose the ways in which our understanding of both ourselves
as beings, and the world we live in, does not reflect the true reality
that underlies this understanding. According to those who hold this
view of ideology critique, it is in exposing this false relation to
the world, that we become able to liberate ourselves from it (and the
oppressive nature of its grip on us). Thus, from this perspective
ideology critique has emancipatory potential because it gives us
knowledge of the true nature of our world that underlies our false, or
mistaken, beliefs about it. Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek develop
theories of ideology that call this classical conception of ideology
critique into question. According to these thinkers, the knowledge of
one’s ideological entrapment is not nearly enough for emancipation.
This is because ideology works on a much more practical, bodily, and
material level than simply the level of knowing. This paper explores
the ways in which these two thinkers develop this revised notion of
ideology, the conception of materialism that is developed in
connection with this, and ultimately it seeks to show how this view
offers us a much more robust account of how ideology functions and
what might be necessary for any emancipation to be possible.



Bio:

Geoff Pfeifer received his undergraduate degree in
philosophy from the University of Colorado at Denver in 2003. He went
on from there to the University of New Mexico where he completed his
masters degree in 2005. At New Mexico, he focused on 19th and 20th
century continental philosophy, writing his masters paper on Hegel and
Schelling. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of
South Florida where he is in the process of finishing a dissertation
focusing on the materialist arguments offered by Louis Althusser,
Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek. His areas of specialization are
contemporary continental philosophy and social and political
philosophy. In his non-academic life, he is in the process of being
raised by his 20 month-old son Elan.



Friday, November 12, 2010

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Honi Haber Library

Plaza Building, Room M108A



Refreshments will be served