THINKING ABOUT POLITICS AND BIOLOGY TODAY

	Lancaster University can boast of a uniquely rich variety of
approaches to analysing the contemporary convergence of biology and
politics. The Institute of Advanced Studies, the Faculty of Arts and
Humanities, the International Office and CESAGEN are jointly sponsoring
a series of events, aiming to integrate these diverse approaches. 

	***Attendance is free and open to anyone interested***

	Hugh Raffles, 'On the language of bees, as such'
	Tuesday 29th June 2004
	Furness Lecture Theatre 1, 11-1pm

	Honey bees, the ethologist Karl von Frisch told the world, have
language. His lighting on the boundary that Western philosophy has long
marked as the symptom of human-nonhuman difference was no accident. Yet
it raised problems that remain both generative and confounding. What
kind of language was this? Who spoke it? And what might they conceivably
be saying?

	Karen Rader, 'The metaphor of domestication: From eugenics to
oncomouse'
	Tuesday, 29 June 2004
	Furness Lecture Theatre 1, 4-6pm

	How are the 'natural' and the  'artificial' defined in, and defined
by, the current debates over genetically modified organisms? Professor
Rader will argue that the current efforts to genetically domesticate
'life' are different from past ones, even from early 20th century
eugenics, because their political implications are weightier still.

	Workshop on 'What is 'life'? Agamben, bio-power and governmentality'
	Wednesday, 30 June 2004
	Cartmel Room, 10-4pm

	Giorgio Agamben, a legal and political philosopher, has argued in
Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, 1998) that Michel
Foucault's characterisation of the contemporary convergence of the
political and the biological is inadequate: the convergence is not a
matter of historical contingency, but the disclosing of ontological
assumptions about 'life' that have underpinned political thought since
Aristotle. Agamben's thesis is important to scholars across Lancaster
University, and in the workshop they will introduce how it fits in their
work.

	Speakers: Bülent Diken (Sociology), Michael Dillon (Politics),
Paul Fletcher (Religious Studies), Adrian Mackenzie (Culture, Media, and
Communication), Nayanika Mookherjee (Sociology), Stewart Motha (Law),
and Paolo Palladino (History).  Chair: Bron Szerszynski (IEPPP)

	Karen Rader, 'Displaying 'life': Museums and biopower'
	Thursday, 1 July 2004
	Furness Lecture Theatre 1, 2-4pm
	
	How does one think about the convergence of the 'life' sciences and
contemporary cultural, social, and political organisation? Professor
Rader will outline her approach to this question by drawing on her most
recent work on the public display of 'life'. 

	Karen Rader, Marilyn Simpson Chair for Science and Society at Sarah
Lawrence College, has written widely on the relationship between
genetics and American culture and politics. Her many publications on the
subject are synthesised in Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for
American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 (Princeton, 2004). She has also
been involved in the organisation of Wonderful: Visions of a Near
Future, an exhibition on the intersection of science and art that will
be coming to Britain in Winter 2004.

	Hugh Raffles is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. His first book, In Amazonia: A
Natural History (Princeton, 2002), an ethnographic account of the making
of Amazonian nature, has received awards from the Society for Humanistic
Anthropology, the American Ethnological Association, and the American
Library Association. He is currently working on The Illustrated
Insectopedia, an alphabetical investigation of human-insect relations.

	For further information, contact Paolo Palladino
(P.Palladino@lancaster.ac.uk) or Katrina Stengel
(K.Stengel@lancaster.ac.uk)


Paolo Palladino
Senior Lecturer and Director of Admissions
Department of History
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YG

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/history/histwebsite/personnel/staffbiogs/palladino.htm

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