Carolina Lectures in Critical Thought Series Features Roberto Esposito

Italian political philosopher Roberto Esposito will visit UNC and Duke University Monday, April 13, through Wednesday, April 15, to participate in a series of lectures and discussions dealing in part with his recently translated book Bios (2008). Esposito’s visit is part of the Carolina Lectures in Critical Thought series.

Esposito

Founder and vice-president of The Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Naples, Italy, Esposito seeks in Bios to move beyond Foucault's and Agamben's ruminations on biopolitics in order to map out how the modern individual strives to attain immunity from the contagion of the extraindividual, namely, the community.

Largely unknown in the United States, Esposito's Bios (along with additional forthcoming translations of his work on immunity and community) is poised to make significant inroads in English-language intellectual debates about biopolitics in the coming years.

The Series of Events

On Monday, April 13, Esposito will deliver a keynote lecture entitled "Biopolitics and Philosophy" in the Hyde Hall University Room on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill at 5 p.m.

Tuesday, April 14, Esposito will join Michael Hardt(Duke), Timothy Campbell (Cornell) and Sofia Näsström (University of Stockholm) in a roundtable discussion at 4 p.m. on "Biopolitics and Biopower" in Hyde Hall at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Wednesday, April 15, Esposito will deliver a second lecture titled "Community and Violence" at noon in the Nelson Music Room on Duke's East Campus. Those attending Esposito's Duke lecture are encouraged to read his lecture "Community and Violence" in advance; it can be accessed online here.

To conclude the series, political scientist Sofia Näsström will deliver a lecture at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15, in the FedEx Global Education Center (room 1005) on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Additional Information

For more information about Esposito's visit (including detailed information about the speakers and event times and locations), please visit the Carolina Lectures in Critical Thought or write to clct@unc.edu.

The Carolina Lectures in Critical Thought (CLCT) seek to foster lasting intellectual exchange between the many disciplines in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

An initiative funded primarily by the College, CLCT is, above all, a prestigious annual lecture series intent on bringing some of the world’s most innovative thinkers in the humanities to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

The series is sponsored in part by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. For the full list of sponsors, click here.