With responses from Jodie Williamson (Dundee) and Ole Thijs (Wageningen, The Netherlands)
3-4.30pm, Monday 18 May
Dalhousie Building, Room 2F14
University of Dundee
And online on Teams: SCCP Book Launch: Dominic Smith, Bridging Benjamin | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams
In Bridging Benjamin, Dominic Smith engages afresh with Walter Benjamin’s radio work of 1927 to 1933 (some 93 broadcasts), positioning it as a focus for channelling the entire span of Benjamin’s multifaceted but often elusive and fractured thinking. Though it was cast off as inconsequential by both Benjamin and his contemporaries, Bridging Benjamin argues that Benjamin’s radio practice needs to be reevaluated as a dynamic site of philosophical experimentation and an amplifier for three integral but underappreciated aspects of his work that are timely for our contemporary networked age: his philosophies of technology, place, and education.
In the spirit of a practice of ‘localising philosophy’ that is argued for in the book, Dominic will be joined by Jodie Williamson and Ole Thijs. Jodie – a PhD student at Dundee, with a project that cuts across Philosophy, Education, and Art and Media – has helped develop ‘Localising Philosophy’ into an education outreach project that has worked with over 2000 pupils across Scotland. Ole – a PhD student and lecturer at Wageningen University in the Netherlands – is currently writing a thesis in Philosophy on the importance of locality in the age of planetary technology. By bringing Smith, Williamson and Thijs together to celebrate the launch of the book, we seek to do justice to its themes by bridging the local and the international.
Format:
– ‘Irradiating Education: Three Stories of Walter Benjamin’s Radio Work’ (25-minute presentation by Smith)
– Localising Philosophy for Today (25-minute discussion between Smith, Williamson and Thijs)
– Open questions/discussion (25-minute open discussion).
Dominic Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He runs the educational project Localising Philosophy, Democratising Technology through schools in Scotland. His previous book, Exceptional Technologies, was published by Bloomsbury in 2018.
Full details of Bridging Benjamin here: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517919658/bridging-benjamin/