The Paris Reading Group
Fall/Spring 2016-2017
Prof. Florent Jakob* & Prof. Daniele Lorenzini**
The purpose of this reading group, which runs parallel to the New York seminar led by Columbia University Professors Bernard Harcourt and Jesús Velasco on the Columbia campus, is to explore the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s work on a number of philosophers and critical thinkers in the twentieth century, thus trying to “map” the tradition of contemporary critical thought that has emerged and is still developing in the wake of Nietzsche. Each of the 13 sessions of the reading group will be devoted to the discussion of an excerpt of one of Nietzsche’s text put in dialogue with an excerpt of a text or texts written by one of Nietzsche’s readers: Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze, Hannah Arendt, Aimé Césaire, Sarah Kofman, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, and Ali Shariati.
Here is the reading group schedule for the first and second semester:
Martin Heidegger (Oct. 5, 2016, 5-7pm)
Georges Bataille (Oct. 26, 2016, 5-7pm)
Maurice Blanchot (Nov. 2, 2016, 5-7pm)
Hannah Arendt (Nov. 16, 2016, 5-7pm)
Gilles Deleuze (Nov. 30, 2016, 5-7pm)
Aimé Césaire (Dec. 15, 2016, 6-8:30pm) – joint session with the New York seminar
Sarah Kofman (Jan. 5, 2017, 10am-5pm) – one-day conference
Aimé Césaire & Sarah Kofman (Jan. 18, 2017, 5-7pm)
Frantz Fanon (Feb. 1, 2017, 5-7pm)
Michel Foucault (Feb. 22, 2017, 5-7pm)
Luce Irigaray (Mar. 8, 2017, 5-7pm)
Jacques Derrida (Mar. 29, 2017, 5-7pm)
Hélène Cixous & Ali Shariati (Apr. 19, 2017, 5-7pm)
Conclusion (May 3, 2017, 5-7pm)
The Paris reading group will be led by Florent Jakob, Daniele Lorenzini, Christine Valero, and Loren Wolfe. The sessions will be held at Columbia Global Centers | Paris, 4 rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris (metro line 4 Vavin or RER B Port-Royal).
The reading group is open to everyone. Please inform us by sending an email explaining your interest to Loren Wolfe at <lw2505@columbia.edu> and do bring your ID.
Welcome to the Nietzsche 13/13 Paris Reading Group!
*Florent Jakob, agrégé, received a PhD in Philosophy from Paris 10 with a thesis entitled The Death of God and the Being of Language (La Mort de Dieu et l’être du langage, 2010). His work focuses on German philosophy and, more specifically, on Nietzsche and Benjamin. He has published several articles including: “Trancher sur la forme ou se laisser fasciner par une seule image: l’intentionnalité comme voie d’accès à l’esthétique” (La Part de l’œil, n° 27-28, 2013) and “Nietzsche, a ‘Lofty’ Sign when Putting Power into Question” (Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Volume 43, no. 1, 2012). He teaches classes and seminars in several French institutions, notably le Collège International de Philosophie, Paris II, and the University of Lorraine. For the last several years, he has been a faculty member in the undergraduate and masters programs for Columbia University in Paris.
**Daniele Lorenzini is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institut des Sciences Juridique et Philosophique de la Sorbonne (University of Paris 1/CNRS) and at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, attaché to the Columbia Global Centers–Paris. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris-Est and La Sapienza University of Rome. Post-Kantian European philosophy constitutes the center of gravity of his work, but he possesses secondary areas of scholarly and teaching expertise in political philosophy, moral philosophy, ordinary language philosophy, ancient philosophy, medical ethics, bioethics, and the history of human rights. He is the author, most recently, of Éthique et politique de soi: Foucault, Hadot, Cavell et les techniques de l’ordinaire (Vrin, 2015).