The theme of this presentation is the relations between language and politics. More accurately, it deals with the way in which conceptions and practices of what may be called “language”, “tongue”, “lip” or “speech” – the question of the name is here of the essence – interact with conceptions and practices of what may be called “the polity”, the “commonwealth”, the “res publica”, the “state” or “diaspora”. My point of departure is the two fundamental and contradicting political functions or powers operated by language: language unites; language separates. I will indicate two basic articulations of this tension, pointing at two types of conceptual origins and traditions, as suggested by the two titles of the talk: the concept of “logo-politics” itself, of Aristotelian inspiration, and the biblical quotation “after their tongues, after their nations” (Gen 10).
Do 09 Jun 2016 | 16:00–19:00
On Logopolitics. After Their Tongues, After Their Nations.
Elad Lapidot (Freie Universität Berlin/ Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg), Chair: Islam Dayeh (Freie Universität Berlin)
Freie Universität Berlin, Holzlaube, Raum 2.2051, Fabeckstr. 23-25, 14195 Berlin
Elad Lapidot is a researcher, translator and lecturer of philosophy and rabbinic literature at Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität and Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg. He has translated into Hebrew various philosophical works from French and German, among others by Levinas, Sartre, Weber and Husserl, and is currently working on the first Hebrew translations of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Heidegger’s Being and Time. Among his publications: Etre sans mot dire. La logique de Sein und Zeit (2010), Translating Philosophy (2012), Fragwürdige Sprache. Zur modernen Phänomenologie der Heiligen Zunge (2013), „Du, der mit Buchstaben und Beschneidung ein Gesetzesübertreter bist“: Paulus und die Grundlegung des Judentums (2014).
