Schooly Don

Schooly Don

Well, just got back from a very successful, very exciting trip to Belgium and the Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics conference at the University of Ghent. This event featured 5 or 6 of the biggest names in the history of deconstructive theory, including J. Hillis Miller, Derek Attridge, Carol Jacobs, Hayden White, and featuring a refreshingly (if not well thought-out) against-the-grain presentation by Dominic Di Capra. I presented on a panel entitled Power and Emprise, consisting of myself and Marc Redfield. Our papers were "Ethics in Empire: The Ethical Rhetoric of 9/11" (mine) and "War on Terror" (Redfield's). The conference papers will be published as a collection, so you can read all of the highlights when it comes out! One of those highlights was Carol Jacobs' de Manian reading of Plato's _Republic_. It was really marvelous, and featured one of the most accutely modern readings of the problem of Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric, illuminated through the most ancient text dealt with in the conference.