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WINTER 2005

MARCH 7 - 18, 2005

TAIAIAKE ALFRED
WASASE : INDIGENOUS PATHWAYS OF ACTION AND FREEDOM

This two week graduate seminar consists of a detailed reading and discussion of Taiaiake Alfred's new book, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, which focuses on the restoration of the warrior ethic as the basis for regenerating indigenous identities and struggles to free ourselves from colonialism.

Taiaiake Alfred is a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) philosopher, writer and teacher and has emerged as an influential figure in the new generation of Indigenous leaders. Taiaiake holds a Canada Research Chair and is a Professor in the Indigenous Governance Programs and the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. He is the author of two books, Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors and Peace, Power, Righteousness. Supported by : Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture.

VIDEO EXCERPTS

session1 - part one

session1 - part two

session2 - part one

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS ALL SESSIONS

MARCH 16, 2005

STUART J. MURRAY
"LIFE" AND THE RHETORIC OF THE MULTITUDE

This presentation joins the conversation concerning the changing value and meaning of the term “life,” bios. Specifically, by what terms, whose grammar, which techniques and technologies, are we coming to understand “life” in the contemporary scene?

I will turn to Foucault’s late work on ethics as the “care of the self,” which is characterized as that style of life that unfolds in the self’s transformative relation to itself. I contend that in this shift from biopolitics to bioethics, Foucault employs two antithetical notions of life. It is the latter, relational, notion of life that I read alongside Italian theorist Paolo Virno’s recent work, A Grammar of the Multitude (2004).

Stuart Murray received his PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently holds a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he is also a Senior Fellow at The McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology.

VIDEO EXCERPTS

video - part one

video - part two

Audio Downloads [AAC format | m4a:
Part 1 | Part 2

JANUARY 25 - 26, 2005

WILLIAM LEISS
BIOTECHNOLOGY, RELIGION AND THE BODY

WILLIAM LEISS F.R.S.C is Canada's leading thinker on risk and responsibility in the age of biotechnology. He is the author of numerous influential books, including: Under Technology's Thumb, The Domination of Nature, In the Chamber of Risks, Risk and Responsibility and Mad Cow and Mother's Milk. A "public intellectual" in the tradition of Thorsten Veblen, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, Dr. Leiss has projected his critique of technological determinism into public life, serving as President of the Royal Society of Canada and advising widely on the social and ethical implications of risk controversies and public policy.

William Leiss is a Fellow and Past-President of the Royal Society of Canada; NSERC/SSHRC Research Chair in Risk Communication and Public Policy in the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary; Professor, memeritus School of Policy Studies, Queen's University; and Executive-in-Residence, Mclaughlin Centre for Risk Assesment, University of Ottawa. His most recent book The Herasaga: A Work of Utopian Fiction www.herasaga.com

SESSION ONE :
GENETIC ENHANCEMENT : THE NEW TECHNOLOGY OF BODY AND MIND