Thinking the Unthinkable: Catastrophe Practice
On Wednesday, February 2, n+1, in partnership with France’s renowned cultural institute, La Villa Gillet, and Eugene Lang College, the New School for Liberal Arts, will present Catastrophe Practice, a panel discussion on how the specter of catastrophe haunts our thinking, and how we can learn to live with it. Catastrophe Practice will be take place at 7 p.m. in Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, and is free and open to the public.
From the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 up through the atomic age and our anthropocene, era, we live with “the imagination of catastrophe.” Not only have disasters become all too probable, but the idea of disaster haunts how we think about our lives on every level, from global planning to individual relationships. How then may we learn to live and think with and within the expectation of catastrophe?
Moderated by n+1 editors Marco Roth and Mark Greif, Catastrophe Practice will begin with the premise that catastrophe is the norm or rule of modern life, a nightmare inversion to the Enlightenment account of human progress. Panelists include Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a philosopher, a risk theorist and a Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the âĂącole Polytechnique, Paris; Jonathan Lear, a philosopher, a psychoanalyst, and the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the legendary Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago; Michel Lussault, a French urbanist, geographer. and president of Universitâ© de Lyons; and Josh Neufeld, a Brooklyn-based artist and graphic novelist famous for his portrayal of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in the bestselling A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.
For more information, please visit the event listing on the university events calendar.