The Sovereign & the Survivor

About the Event:
In this unique lecture, Dr. Marc Nichanian will discuss the theme of sovereignty. Recent and less recent reflections on the concept of sovereignty have expanded on the idea that it was time to question its dominant position in the way we conceive and practice politics, among other things. The less recent reflections belong to Walter Benjamin and the more recent ones to Giorgio Agamben or Jacques Derrida. Each time, the question is: Who comes after the Sovereign? Such a question nevertheless requires an inquiry into the historical workings of sovereignty. It therefore demands a living “archive” in order to produce a convincing genealogy of the figure of the Sovereign. The only living “archive” that we can imagine for carrying out that task is the one of the Survivor.

About the Speaker:
A visiting scholar at AUA, Marc Nichanian is one of the most imporant philosophers and literary critics inside and outside the Armenian world. For over a decade, he taught in the Middle East Depart­ment at Columbia University, as well as holding positions at Haigazian University and other institutions. His many works include Writers of Disaster: Armenian Litrerature in the 20th Century (2002), The Historiographic Perversion (Columbia Univ), Mourning Philology: Art and Religion at the Margins of the Ottoman Empire (Fordham Univ), as well as Armenian translations of thinkers such as Maurice Blanchot and Friedrich Nietzsche. He is the editor of KAM, a periodical publication in Armenian, of which six volumes were published from 1980 to 2005.

Language: English