Badiou’s answer is in French: The communist hypothesis.

Edited by Oliver Marchart with texts from Judith Butler, Simon Critchley, Torben Bech Dyrberg, Ernesto Laclau, Thanos Lipowatz, Rado Riha, Anna-Marie Smith, Urs Stäheli, Yannis Stavrakakis, Jelica Šumić-Riha and Slavoj Žižek.

Im Mittelpunkt dieses Bandes steht ein Briefwechsel zwischen Judith Butler und Ernesto Laclau, der die gegenwärtige Renaissance der politischen Philosophie belegt und demnächst auch in Diacritics publiziert werden wird.

Politik kommt heute, nach dem Wegfall der Leitdifferenz Ost – West, zu Bewusstsein als das Wagnis einer Unternehmung ohne sicheren Ausgang. Nichts garantiert ihren Erfolg, ja es ist zweifelhaft, worin der Erfolg denn bestünde – etwa in der Erreichung des Ziels einer perfekt ausbalancierten, hegemonialen Gesellschaft befriedet-befriedigter Bürger? Zynisch resümierte man, dass dies eine Gesellschaft der Langeweile wäre, geschichtslos, leblos, aber gerecht, die Vorwegnahme des Todes.

Ein politischer Diskurs, der dem Politischen wieder Form geben will, muss den Prozess der Differenzierung wieder thematisieren, jenen kaum fasslichen Vorgang der Gesellschaft, in dem sich Politik situiert. Zu diesem Unternehmen, das Laclau und Butler ins Zentrum des Interesses stellen, bietet der Band auch eine Reihe weiterer Beiträge, von Slavoj Zizek bis zu Simon Critchley, sowie Texte von Ernesto Laclau und Judith Butler selbst.

The Method School’s aim is to highlight the state of the art in the field and discuss
which research questions can be tackled by which computer-aided content and discourse
analysis. Large-n content analyses have become popular, as content data is now
accessible in digital format. Some of the new approaches go beyond counting single terms
in documents, and seek to understand the structure and the context of the content
analysed. Several approaches have entered the stage at which it becomes possible to
combine quantitative and computer-aided qualitative coding. The Method School will,
therefore, offer an introduction into some of the most widely used software packages in
the field, but also introduce the basics of content and discourse analysis.

Besides introductions by experienced lecturers, the programme includes intensive group
work, practical sessions using traditional and new computer software and possibilities
for students to bring in their own research ideas and approaches. Some common social
activities in the beautiful city of Berlin will round off the programme.

The Winter Method School is particularly designed for early doctoral students (first two
years) with a research interest in the public sphere and no or limited prior knowledge
in the field of content and discourse analysis. In exceptional cases, graduate students
will be accepted if they can demonstrate a profound interest in these research methods
and have plans to use them in their PhD studies. All applicants should be fluent in
English.

Places available: 20

Institution: Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Fachbereich Politik- und
Sozialwissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin
Beteiligte Personen: Prof. Dr. Thomas Risse, Freie Universität Berlin
Dr. Marianne van de Steeg, Freie Universität Berlin
Dr. Roel Popping, Groningen University
Dr. Veronika Koller, Lancaster University
Brit Helle Aarskog, Bergen University
Kontaktperson: Wiebke Wemheuer
Email: methodschool-jmce AT polsoz..fu-berlin.de
Fax: +49 (0)30 – 838-55049
Adresse: Ihnestraße 22
14195 Berlin
Germany

Japan’s modernity has been formed in three different system-specific constellations and corresponding self- and hetero-descriptions, i.e. formations of identity discourses. For the Meiji-System they can be summarized as Japonisme or Nipponism (with the focus on an aestheticized high-culture), for the post-war system as Nihon/jin-ron (everyday and consumer goods), and the last 1 ½ decades can be labeled Cool Japan or J-culture.

Continuously, images of the “Self” have been constructed by internalizing the foreign/western perspective. At the same time, this heteronomy has always been a field consisting of three elements, that means, national identity has always been constructed via the ethnic triade “West-Japan-(East-) Asia”. There are, however, also striking differences between the J-culture discourse and the previous two discourse formations: first, the dominance of popular cultural elements, such as Manga, Anime, Games, pop music, fashion, food; and, secondly, the multitude and variety of actors engaged in this discourse, reaching from so-called “ordinary” people (not only youngsters !) up to political and other elites.

J–culture is fundamentally formed by the two semantic fields of cool and beautiful. [...more...]

School as a social institution cannot be separated from its context; it is part of and influencing social reality (cf. New London School; Gee; Yurén). However, few schooling practices take into account this dimension of ‘agency’ of schools as institutions as well as of the implied individual actors, in the re-/co-/construction of social reality. The present project tries to cope with this lack by deconstructing institutionalised discursive constraints of agency in a Luxembourgish primary school, and by elaborating a critical concept of agency at the intersection of French discourse theory and critical educational research, that is adapted to the Luxembourgish socio-cultural context. It aims at finding ways to empower actors, in particular learners, to actively participate and take over responsibilities in the re-/co-/construction of the reality of school, classroom and learning activities, as well as of the individual life as social being and of society as a whole.

Craig Mulholland (GB) trained as a painter but his practice encompasses sculpture, installation and film making, addressing themes of alienation and complicity in the contemporary cultural economy. ‘The dominant concerns within Mulholland’s recent work have centred on Foucauldian theories of power – “the political dream of the plague […] the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life”.’

‘Fragments of Machines’ is a group exhibition of painting, sculpture, textiles and video work by five contemporary artists based in Glasgow, Berlin, New York and Paris, alongside a rare screening of Lillian Schwartz’s seminal computer-animated 16mm film ‘Googolplex’, made in 1972.

Curated by Will Bradley. Featuring Tauba Auerbach, Claire Fontaine, Travis Meinolf, Craig Mulholland, Lillian Schwartz, Hayley Tompkins

Party “Body Xerox”, 29 May, 11pm.

…image: “Anger Management (2008) by Craig Mulholland

Janet Holmes. (2006). Sharing a laugh: Pragmatic aspects of humor and gender in the workplace. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1): 26-50. (Abstract)

Humor serves a wide range of functions at work, one of which is to foster collegiality. An analysis of interactions in New Zealand workplaces showed that one of the most important functions of humor was the construction and maintenance of good relations with fellow workers. Such workplace collegiality is often constructed and maintained through extended sequences of humor. This paper examines some of the ways in which humor is used to construct collegial relations at work, with particular attention to the dimension of gender in the workplace.

Janet Holmes & Meredith Marra. (2002). Having a laugh at work: how humour contributes to workplace culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(12): 1683-1710. (Abstract)

Daniel C. O’Connell, Sabine Kowal. (2006). Laughter in the Film The Third Man. Pragmatics 16(2&3): 305-327 (pdf)

Daniel C. O’Connell, Sabine Kowal (2005). Laughter in Bill Clinton’s My Life (2004) Interviews. Pragmatics 15(2&3): 275-299 (pdf)

Daniel C. O’Connell, Sabine Kowal (2004). Hillary Clinton’s Laughter in Media Interviews. Pragmatics 14(4): 463-478 (pdf)

Nick O’Donnell-Trujillo & Katherine Adams. (1983). Heheh in conversation: Some coordinating accomplishments of laughter. Western Journal of Communication, 47(2): 175 – 191.

Complete abstract: Despite its frequency in everyday life, we know very little about the interactional characteristics of laughter. This paper explores some of the pragmatic features of laughter in conversation. Laughter is examined as: (1) a turn taking cue, (2) an instruction to hear, (3) a display of hearership, (4) an invitation to elaborate, and (5) a resource in affiliation.

…image thanks to composed volcano...

This course engages with a particular body of socio-political theory which has been rather underexposed in organisation and management studies; that of the Argentinean political theorist, Ernesto Laclau. Laclau is most famous for his book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (co-authored with Chantal Mouffe), which could be regarded as one of the most important post-Marxist texts written in the past twenty years. This course will closely read this book and the subsequent work of Laclau within the wider tradition of progressive socio-political theory while focussing on its implications for the discourse of organisation and management studies (OMS). ‘Reading’ here means that we will not simply incorporate Laclau into OMS; on the contrary, we will read Laclau against the contemporary hegemonic discourse of OMS and vice versa. Reading is a praxis of translation as well as one of critique, and in this way this course aims to contribute to a project of re-reading organisation and management studies through the lens of Laclau’s project.

Looks like a good place to start looking for recent research for all those working in OMS and interested in discourse, hegemony and other post-structuralist appraoches.

More tutorials on human communication by Dennis O’Neil.