EGS Online Lecture: Judith Butler

The PACT Division of the EGS is delighted to announce an upcoming online lecture by Judith Butler “Losing Touch: Fragments on the Inhabitable World”.

Judith Butler
“Losing Touch: Fragments on the Inhabitable World”

This lecture revisits two questions: what makes a life livable and what makes for an Inhabitable world? The argument is that the two questions are linked and suggests a critical phenomenological reconsideration of the life-world.  The conditions of pandemic establish bodies as ethical vectors, capable of doing and suffering illness, illuminated in an intertwined mortality.  Considering again Merleau-Ponty’s posthumous writing on “the invisible and the visible” in pandemic times, we can ask, what sense of world and livable life emerges when the prohibition on touch is one way of safeguarding another’s life as well as one’s own.  And what sense do we make of care when healthcare workers safeguard the lives of those who are ill by taking on a potentially lethal viral load?  To what extent is touching/being touched breathing each other’s air part of the embodied and social life-world that now inverts in the name of a politics of life?

Admission for this lecture is $5.00.  We are charging for this lecture in order to generate resources for our ongoing “Open Lecture” series.  While we would prefer simply to ask for contributions for such an event, this has not proven technically possible.  We thank Judith Butler sincerely for donating her lecture for this cause.  Please show your support for our work by registering at this modest price.

Link for registration is here.

This event is scheduled for July 15th, at 8 p.m. CET (11 a.m. PST).

Zoom participants will be able to pose questions to Professors Butler at the end of the lecture. 500 applicants will be admitted on a first-come-first-serve basis.