Brunel University: Modern Political Thought

Home
United Kingdom
Uxbridge
Brunel University: Modern Political Thought

MA in Modern Political Thought: Violence and Revolution The concepts of violence and revolution stand at the centre of our understanding of political modernity.

New Masters degree in the Department of Politics and History at Brunel University:

MA in MODERN POLITICAL THOUGHT: VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION

‘Violence is the midwife of every old society, pregnant with a new one’. This MA programme introduces students to a range of theoretical perspectives on the concepts on violence and revolution in modern political thought, from the crisis of the Renaissance, t

hrough the long seventeenth century and the Enlightenment, to the critique of political economy and theories of revolution and counter-revolution in the twentieth century. The programme focuses in particular on the importance of historical context for understanding the transformation and reformulation of classic themes in modern political thought. The MA also provides students with the research skills, methodologies and historical understanding required for analysing and assessing key texts. Students will join a thriving and expanding research environment, including a regular research seminar series in social and political thought with national and international guest speakers. The core teaching staff on the MA programme have expertise in themes of violence and revolution across the full spectrum of modern political thought. Filippo Del Lucchese, author of Conflict, Power and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza (2009). Mark Neocleous, author of The Monstrous and the Dead: Burke, Marx, Fascism (2005) and five other books on political theory. Peter D. Thomas, author of The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (2009). Students will take four modules of intensive guided study in small groups focused on the classical theorists of modern political thought. Modules include:

Violence and Revolution in Early Modern Thought;
Enlightenment and Revolution;
Capitalism and Revolution in the Nineteenth Century;
Revolution and Counter-revolution in the Twentieth Century. Students also complete a dissertation on a topic or thinker of their own choice. Apply now for 2011 entry:

Visit the Brunel Social and Political Thought Research Group website:

15/10/2013

Re/Dis/Order

Brunel Social and Political Thought Research Group Seminar Series 2013/14

Following successful seminar series and international conferences in the last years, the Brunel Social and Political Thought research group will organise another seminar series in 2013/14: ‘Re/Dis/Order’. This seminar series aims to explore the different ways in which the constitution, transformation and negation of political order have been understood by some of the key theorists of modern political thought, from the early modern period to contemporary social and political theory. Seminars are open to all.

Term 1

Wednesday 30th October 2013, 4:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

State and Capital

Andrea Bardin (Brunel University)

‘Mechanising the Organic: Hobbes and the Epistemological Revolution in Civil Science’

Matthijs Krul (Brunel University)

‘Neoliberal Visions of Order: Theories of the State in the New Institutional Economic History’

Wednesday 13th November 2013, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Fabio Raimondi (University of Salerno)

‘Althusser, Machiavelli and the Problem of Political Power’

Wednesday 27th November 2013, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Sara R. Farris (Goldsmiths, University of London)

‘From the Jewish Question to the Muslim Question’

Wednesday 11th December 2013, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Fillippo del Lucchese (Brunel University)

‘Machiavelli and Constituent Power’

Term 2

Wednesday 8th January 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Peter D. Thomas (Brunel University)

‘“We Good Subalterns”: Gramsci’s Theory of Political Modernity’

Wednesday 29th January 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 210

Banu Bargu (SOAS)

‘Sovereignty as Erasure’

Wednesday 5th February 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Nathaniel Boyd (Brunel University)

‘Organising the Body Politic: Hegel's Corporate Theory of State’

Wednesday 19th February 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Jamie Pitman (Brunel University)

‘Castor and Pollux? The Marx-Engels Relationship’

Ebubekir Dursun (Brunel University)

‘“Stubborn, Insociable, Froward, Intractable”: the History of the Excluded in Hobbes’s Leviathan’

Wednesday 5th March 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

John Roberts (Brunel University)

‘Beyond Flows, Fluids and Networks: Social Theory and the Fetishism of the Global Informational Economy’

Wednesday 26th March 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Mark Neocleous (Brunel University)

Book Launch

‘War Power, Police Power’
(Edinburgh University Press, 2014)

All seminars take place at Brunel University. Directions to the campus can be found here:
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/campus/directions

For further information, please contact:

Peter Thomas

Visit the Brunel SPT Research Group webpages:

Other Brunel SPT Activities in 2013/14

Film Screening Series
(Organised in Collaboration with the Isambard Centre for Historical Research)

Paths of Shame: WWI in Cinema

1st October: S. Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957)

15th October: R. Bernard, Wooden Crosses (1932)

29th October: J. Losey, King and Country (1964)

12th November: J. Renoir, La Grande Illusion (1939)

26th November: F. Rosi, Many Wars Ago (1970)

10th December: D. Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

All screenings in Gaskell Building Room 239 @ 5:30pm

Organised by Alison Carrol and Filippo del Lucchese

For more information, contact:
Alison Carrol
Filippo Dellucchese

Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude (I)

The process of construction of identity, both individual and collective, and the genesis of political subjectivity, are largely grounded on concurrent ideological mechanisms that define otherness: subjectivity, alterity and identity are the complex outcomes of one intellectual and cultural process, historically produced by the encounter with the Other, whether real or imagined.
Notwithstanding the effort in conceptualising this encounter in the global and multicultural context of contemporary societies, its historical genealogy is often underestimated: a genealogy that is rooted in the theoretical definition of the concepts of normality, abnormality, and monstrosity. Developed in the early modern age, these concepts have produced and keep producing their cultural, social, and political effects.
The main objective of this seminar is to reconstruct the genealogy of the modern problem of identity, subjectivity, and otherness through an historical analysis of the idea of monstrosity within scientific, philosophical, and literary discourses of early modernity.
During the first semester of this seminar we will focus on the radical alterity represented since the 17th century by the theoretical figure of the multitude. Hobbes, for example, develops the idea of the Leviathan’s sovereign body through the homogeneous unity of the people. By definition, the people is opposed to the conflictual multiplicity of the multitude in the state of nature. In contrast, Spinoza grounds the idea of a free State on the multitude’s conatus – its drive to actualize its own nature – and its right of resistance against the sovereign. This right is irreducible and monstrous, thus introducing the natural dimension into the State rather than excluding it from society.
While Hobbes confined the multitude to the edges of the political map, with Spinoza it takes centre-stage, becoming the beating and conflictual heart of political life. Starting with the indirect dialogue between these two authors, we will focus this year on radical and monstrous alterity – the sense of otherness and how that is defined – in early modern and contemporary thought.

Organised by Filippo Del Lucchese (Brunel University, London and Collège International de Philosophie) and Caroline Williams (Queen Mary, University of London). For more information, contact:

Filippo Dellucchese
Caroline Williams

Location: QMUL, ARTS TWO (room TPC) 5:00pm

Dates: 26th February, 26th March, 14th May, 11th June

Directions to Brunel University in Uxbridge West London - Kingston Lane, Middlesex, UB8 3PH