 So hi everyone, it's my pleasure to warmly welcome you to the third lecture of the Sours World Philosophies Lecture series. Dr. Elvis Imafidou, I'm one of the lecturers in the World Philosophies Program here at Sours. The Sours World Philosophies Lecture series is designed to create a space for conversation about philosophy as a human experience, and to explore the rich heritage of the various philosophical traditions, the West, the East, Africa, the Islamic world, and so on. And it resonates with understanding of philosophy here Sours as a human experience, not a Western experience or an Eastern experience, but a human experience that has this very rich tradition, which is often not always fully explored in the history of philosophy as we have it. So the idea is to rethink the exclusion and the colonization of philosophical knowledge that we have in human history and provide a space for decolonizing it and allowing for diversity and inclusion in the study of philosophy. And we are therefore very pleased to have an iconic figure in this regard with us today. Before he is introduced, I would also like to introduce Dr. Sean Hawthorne, who is the subject head for the World Philosophies Program. If you could just say hi. And we also have with us here Dr. Andrew Hines, who is also a key member of the World Philosophies Program here. He was very, very instrumental in getting this particular lecture organized. So I'd like to invite Dr. Hines to introduce our guest speaker. Thank you very much Elvis. And can I just quickly ask, as a bit of housekeeping, for everyone to make sure your microphones are muted so that we don't cross talk over each other unless you're talking, of course. Well, thank you so much for coming. And today we have the honor of being joined by Professor Hamid Dabashi. I'm going to give kind of a generic biography and then two sentences or three maybe. Well, why I think he's particularly interesting for this lecture series. So Professor Dabashi is the... Do I have that right? Professor of Iranian Studies in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He's taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. And he's very famously written 22 books and edited several different volumes with many chapters. And he's also a very prominent writer in Al Jazeera and other news outlets. So he's somebody who stretches multiple disciplines. And I think that kind of is one of the first reasons why I thought he would be a very interesting person to contribute to this lecture series. Because one of the things we bumped up against as lecturers and thinking about the question of how to teach philosophy from a world perspective is the realization that we have to maybe step outside of the disciplinary approach to philosophy as it's typically taught in a European model university. So bringing in other disciplines. And I think that's something that Professor Dabashi has certainly done in his own career in his writing. But I also think there's something theoretical that's very interesting about him in this space. And so I'm going to actually bring up he is a professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia. And I myself did a PhD in Comparative Literature. And one of the debates was between what's called the Velta Tour. So the idea of world literature. And then a post-structural sleeve of literature. And I want to really quickly talk about why I think I'm so sorry somebody's beeping at my door. So you have to excuse me. It's the perils of working from home. I think I'm going to close this door briefly so it doesn't interrupt us too much. I'm so sorry. Definitely need to get a different doorbell. Sorry, it's one of those. Let's all take this is a good moment for us to take a deep breath and laugh, I think. Anyway, so there's on the one hand, we might think about the world through this lens of what's called the Velta Tour. The term comes from Goethe. And it's this idea that some text, whether it be literature, philosophical, belong to the world and not just one nation. And it's a great idea. And in some moments, it's a very interesting idea. But at the same time, one of the things we bump up against with this idea is that somebody sets the parameters of what ends up being a great work of literature, a great work of philosophy, et cetera. And so we realize that it has a limit. On the other hand, we might go along with somebody like Foucault who says the future of philosophy has to be in the world. And in Foucault's vein, he's critiquing the heritage of his own tradition. But then at the end of the day, both still speak from the perspective of European philosophers trying to wrestle with the question of the world. Where is the voice of the other person fundamentally? And that's something I find very fascinating and poignant about what Professor Debashie's work might bring to us today. And so without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to you and just say thank you so much again for being with us today. My pleasure. Can you hear me? Great. First and foremost, please allow me to start by thanking Dr. Ian Pines for his kind invitation to give this talk today. I can only hope to deliver only an inkling of the fun that he and I had discussing the topic of my talk over a couple of exchanges which resulted in the speculative title I offered him to draw attention of his colleagues and so on. Let me also thank Dr. Elvis Imafidun for his equally kind attention to details of this talk and sending me the handsome poster that you have prepared to stage this talk on the omnipotent omniscient and omnipresent Almighty Zoom on which I have been teaching it looks like forever. I only wish, by the way, I knew of his wonderful book, African Philosophy and the Otherness of Albinism. When I was writing my book on the Shahnamein, which I have a discussion of Albinism in the figure of the legendary hero Zal, who was born with white hair and his royal father ordered him abandoned to wilderness, it's quite an extraordinary story. I equally regretted not knowing of Andrew Hines' metaphor in European philosophy after Nietzsche when writing my other recent book on Europe and its shadows, where I begin with Nietzsche's famous suggestion that truth is a mobile army of metaphor, etc. But I placed that as I habitually do next to Fanon's proposal that Europe is literally a creation of the third world. He meant it more, of course, metaphorically, but I meant it more literally. This, in short, is to say that after a couple of email exchanges I felt already at home in the company of my colleagues at SOAS. As I told Andrew, I terribly miss London, especially SOAS. I wrote my doctoral dissertation back in the 80s, early 80s in SOAS. I don't know any one of you remembers that shape of SOAS before its renovation now looks very fancy. So it is not just the product of this year's confinement because of the COVID, I just missed London. I also want to share that in one of his last emails to me Andrew wrote, and I quote, also just to let you know, we will be having a workshop on Ebensina and Ernst Lo. Earlier on that day of your lecture, I'm unlikely to have several of the presenters in the audience of your talk, etc. This reminded me of a famous anecdote we have, that this guy from Johnston, Pennsylvania dies and goes to paradise. St. Peter's come forward, this is a Christian paradise, comes forward and says, you know, we have a custom here that anybody who comes from the other world, so the man from Pennsylvania, Johnston says, yeah, I can share a story. We had this famous flood, flood of Johnston back in 1898. I can tell the story of flood. So St. Peter said, well, that's a wonderful story. But keep in mind, NOAA is in the audience. So no idea what's the connection between Ebensina and Ernst Lo, but I am absolutely convinced that there would be some, there has been some wonderful talks, I wish I could hear them. Now, as to the title, as the way that the title suggests itself, you can tell that for quite some time now, the focus of my thinking has shifted from what to where. I'm no longer concerned with, it is beyond my capacity, what is world literature or world philosophy or world religion, but where is world literature, philosophy, etc. What is, and as you know, the adjective, adjectival, world appears in multiple places. What is world cinema? What is world religion? To me, the question is, where is such a world performed, world philosophy or world religion or world literature or world cinema? Where is it performed, the staged or interrogated? I've always found something irritating and quite frankly arrogant about asking the question, what is world literature or music or philosophy or cinema? Especially when the word ethnos comes, for example, in our own department, music here in New York, Colombia, we have ethnomusicology. I always say if Mozart sneezes, and I'm absolutely convinced Mozart sneezes beautifully, melodiously, that's music, but the most sophisticated Indian or Arabic or Persian or African music is ethnomusicology. I wonder what is this ethnos doing there? The reason that this what is troubling is that the person who asks this question is placing himself occasionally herself in the metaphysical assuredness to tell us what these things are, the same way that as Andrew just said, Goethe said, let's pay attention to world literature, this is his world. Whereas the question of where has a sense of wonder and being lost. It is like asking for an address or direction in a city you don't know well. I always love the initial sense of being lost in a city. I do not quite know well. And the minute we know it, it loses its mystique and mystery. As I was sharing with my colleague, I've been looking and thinking about the title of your own department. And I'm reading from a BA in word philosophies in plural that you're offering in program may also be studied as a single subject degree. I got it off your website. Philosophy has been a significant activity in most cultures for several thousands of years, which is true. It seems to be a natural development of human societies to ask complex questions about the fundamental nature of reality, etc. A degree in philosophy from so as with its focus on the philosophical tradition of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe offers you the opportunity to become conversant moves on. Now, the aspiration of this project is of course entirely admirable. But at the same time, it generates a certain number of questions. What does exactly the adjectival world does to myself? No, I will hear you now. Yes. Yeah, I was certainly muted. The adjectival world does to philosophies or how universal is or could this claim on philosophy be? These are two but not entirely unrelated questions. Let's say Islamic philosophy or Vedic philosophy or philosophies of Taoism. What happens to them when we place the world, the world world in front of them? To be sure, Islamic and Vedic philosophies as well as Taoism have had a world of their own. It was not a world. It was a that world. In other words, any philosophies, it's a factor and right off the bat, as we say, is a world philosophy. In fact, to itself, the world philosophy. The issue is how does the word world implicate or accepts Greek philosophy? Is Greek philosophy also a world philosophy, the same way that Islamic philosophy or African philosophy is a world philosophy? Or is it the world philosophy? And what happens to this Greek philosophy when it goes east to inform Islamic or Jewish philosophy? Long before it comes to Europe to become European philosophy. There is also the issue of things that Muslims or Africans or Chinese or Japanese do if it is also philosophy or is it something else? Muslims have used the word khikmah, but they have also used the word falsafah. But is falsafah philosophy or is it something perhaps slightly different? I recently provoked a distinguished Palestinian philosopher friend that I said falsafah is not philosophy. Falsafah is falsafah. It has a different etymology. It has a different genealogy. As Heidegger says in that famous exchange with his Japanese interlocutor, he hears aesthetic and he hears Greek. Well, you might say, let him hear Greek. So what? Why is it we must ask him? He hears Greek and he hears German. Why is it that he hears Greek and he does not hear Arabic or Hebrew or Persian? Languages and philosophical traditions hosting Plato or Aristotle or Xenophon long before German, French, English or any other so-called European languages hosted Plato. And even today in what sense are these languages quote-unquote European? What happens when Mudimbe writes African philosophy in English and thinks in French or Enric de Sel thinks his liberation philosophy in Spanish with the Latin American inflection? Or Abul-Fattah clitu thinks his literary philosophies in Arabic but writes in French or thinks in French but writes in Arabic? Or the most prominent arguably European philosopher is an Algerian Jew who can only write in French about the monolingualism of the other as he puts it himself. So when we come to the problem of religions in plural and philosophies in plural in the school of history singular, religions and philosophies, is it a singular or is it plural? Why is history in singular and why religions and philosophies in plural? This pluralism has been kindly extending to religions and philosophies but not to history. I'm just playing with the words I'm sure there's a history for this but it still retains its Hegelian capital H and in the singular geist that cannot travel except towards the Brandenburg Gate where Hegel saw history on a horseback when Napoleon was marching in Berlin. So in short we are in a condition when philosophically we are biting more than we can chew. Otherwise we are at the moment when Levinas said as you know quoting Levinas I often say though it is dangerous thing to say publicly that humanity consists of the Bible and the Greeks. All the rest can be translated. All the rest all the exotic is dance end of quote. Now I for one have no issue with a distinguished French French philosopher considering only Bible and Greek to amount to humanity. I see nothing dangerous about the proposition uttered privately or publicly. The issue is why would a French philosopher even a Jewish French philosopher think the Greek and the Bible are his and not mine too. If I went to Plato and said Mr Plato I am Persian he would know who I am even though he may not like me but if Levinas went to Plato or Xenophon and said he is French neither of them would not have a clue who he is. The issue is this bizarre contorted and utterly flawed sense of entitlement to the Greek or to the Bible. Disregarding the Greek preoccupation with the Persians or the Babylonian Talmud in its ambience, Sassanid context that brings me to the famous passage in that video that I said of when Derrida is asked bringing the question of gender when Derrida is asked which philosopher would be could be his mother and I want to share if I could Andrew. If you have a choice what philosopher would you like? No let me first share my screen where is my screen? I think Elvis you might need to make Professor de Basche covers. Yeah hold on a minute I'll make you I think it's working. Yeah it's working. So you can see my screen right? You may have seen this I'll just do a couple of minutes of it. That's his style that is his own style. Okay let's see what I'm doing. You can all see it right like Andy? Andrew you can see the screen good. If you have a choice what philosopher would you like to be your mother? That's his style that is his own style. I've not already answered this question let me give me some time. My mother the good question it's a good question. In fact I absolutely adore this moment of pause. This is the master the constructionist mind you okay and he is out maneuvered beautiful. It's interesting because I try to tell you why it's impossible for me to to have any philosopher as a mother that's the problem. My mother couldn't be a philosopher again a moment of absolute revelation he resorts to his mother tongue in order to say that his his mother no philosophy would be his mother. Okay he he goes on let me stop sharing you can watch it the mind the point that do you want me to show you that you are okay. Yes just please remind everyone to please keep yourselves muted. Yeah the the point of the of showing I hope you will you will watch it on your own is is quite a wonderful. It is one of the products of teaching on zoom because there is a limit to how much I can share text with my students. I roam the the internet in such of these magnificent videos of wonderful philosophers. So when you listen to to this wonderful interview he does concede that his daughter he said no philosophy could be my mother this is the whole point of Hello Logo Center critique of Hello Logo Centerism moves on but then he says yes my daughter could be my a philosopher. Then as I was talking to Andrew I said how I thought to myself we could flip the question even higher and let it come down head or tail asking Derrida or any other European philosopher thus located what Muslim or Chinese or Indian or African or Latin American philosopher could be his father mother sister brother even distant cousin or did I say perhaps illegitimate son or daughter born and being raised out of the wedlock in that spirit I wonder where this is this is the point of my raising the question where not what is worth philosophy and how is she doing because now the whole question of gender and homo eroticism you know I need not tell you all the way back to the Greek and of course Persian and Jewish and African and Latin American context comes comes to the fore that raises the question of whether or not what for example people do in Africa or in Islamic context or Jewish context is that philosophy and for that I want to share again a couple of minutes of another video of a conversation between the Portuguese philosopher Boventura de Sousa Santos and Mudimba again I'm going to share my screen and go here probably that's a different thing Professor Debashie we can hear you pardon me we can hear this the video but can't see it so if it's visually important let us know otherwise we can hear it that's okay but I wonder why because I'm sharing my screen if I share my screen and it's my sharing my screen you should be able to see this can you see my screen we just see black at the moment actually oh so just trust me is the conversation between the Santos and Mudimba but I hope you can hear it right Professor Debashie could you stop sharing and then share again and start again it could work now I just tried soon okay I stopped sharing yeah can you see it now can you see the screen no we can hear it so perhaps we should proceed this conversation of the world with Valentine Mudimba and the Sousa was held in 2013 we see a garden wonderful garden there were different conceptions in the western tradition but if you now try with this more humble in fact more humble idea that there are different ways of expressing so I would have no problem in conceiving of sagacity or or Lucas philosophy as philosophy I wouldn't say well philosophy is Greek no philosophy is so Santos's position is he has no problem as a European philosopher to think of African philosophy as philosophy and this is Mudimba's response in terms of tradition in terms of conceptualities and in terms of ways of transmitting it that's one thing and in different cultures non-western cultures we have also systems of knowledge if we decide to call them yeah the Vettash Congen in Africa or Latin America yes they are organized and open systematic systems of knowledge you see this is my point of dancing around the concept systematic organized way of thinking knowledge instead of philosophy and then he jumps to philosophy and we can and we can translate them into French or into English and teach those systems of knowledge within a class of philosophy because we are submitted to the tradition that tells us what is astronomy by the method of doing astronomy the same for physics and the same for philosophy nothing absolutely nothing prevents us from accepting the idea we use every day there is a philosophy of MDs in let's say the United States which is different from the German there is a philosophy of let's say younger people living in the desert of Africa in Sahara there is a highly remarkable series of books which are called classic African African classics yes it is presented systematically with notations very demanding with a translation and anyway I'm going to the conversation is called conversation of the world Valentine Madimbe and Wabintura the Susa Santos is available online and I can later send a link if you if you wanted to watch let me stop sharing so you're back there is another video I wanted to share but because you can see it I won't is a conversation with with with Hannah Arendt that in which initially when the conversation begins she is complimented that she was the first woman to be interviewed in a philosophy forum to which she responds by paradoxically philosophizing about how she was a political theorist and not a philosopher okay that is in other words the what she speaks is what today you can you can teach in a course in philosophy but she insists she's not a philosopher I mean she has the shadow of Heidegger both professional and personal on her mind now my issue of question of location whether or not something that happens that is done by a philosophical political theories like Hannah Arendt or by Madimbe or by Enrique Ducell is it philosophy or is it something else especially in a case of somebody like Enrique Ducell who is in deep and close and intimate conversation with Levinas is goes back to that infamous passage in Kant observation of the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime in which again I draw your attention to the name of your own institutions full of Oriental and African Studies because for Kant Africa is part of the Orient in fact conception of Kant's Orient is anywhere east of the Danube River around the globe to the west of English Channel that's the entirety of that is is Orient this is his conception of Oriental and they are incapable of philosophy the infamous passage of the Negro you remember in the 1764 text pre critical text of Emmanuel Kant observation on the feeling of the beautiful and sublime the Negroes of Africa have by nature no feelings that arises above the trifling as the Hume challenges you know the passage so I will not repeat it that this person may have said something intelligent but it was obviously stupid because the man was black now usually philosophers African philosophers other philosophers who come to this passage are obviously agitated by its racism and begin to criticize its racism whereas I think the issue is not its racism the issue is is something else this is a pre-critical text that in his more mature or more elaborate critical text critique of pure reason critique of practical reason and then the third in the first critique critique of pure reason we have the constitution of the knowing subject and that knowing subject for Emmanuel Kant predicated on this passage in pre-critical text is a European knowing subject and the content of the second critique critique of practical reason is the constitution of a noble world so you have a knowing subject and standing in front of a noble noble world and people in Asia Africa Latin America are part of the noble world could not be a knowing subject without dismantling the system there is a video of James Baldwin in a talk that he in fact gave in London after Raul Peck's film I'm Not Your Negro that video is no longer available online in which James Baldwin says at some point in the in the context of a conversation if as much as I stood up and walked from here to there as if I had a right to be here I'm almost quoting him verbatim the entire structure of western civilization would collapse I mean think of the in and he is very careful with his words and what he says why would the structure of western civilization collapse is that if an African-American walk from here to there my proposal is that he posits himself as a knowing subject and if an African or a woman or a Latin American or a gay or a lesbian anything that is outside the parameters of the knowing subject that's constituted by Kant assumes the position of a knowing subject that is where the post Kantian or post Hegelian this word post is abused begins to to take shape now as you all know none of these questions we are asking today are entirely new philosophy has always questioned itself and philosophers have wondered what it is they're doing what has changed is the world in which we are asking these questions and precisely for that reason we need to come to terms with the world where we live and have a sustained course of critical thinking about the world we inhabit it is not surprising that as a postcolonial subject a creature of the condition of coloniality determined to interrogate its power and hold over the matter and manner of our thinking have been relentlessly at work wondering where in the world we are not what but where and what constitutes our subjectivity I just finished a project in which I end up with a position of of nomadic subjectivity the dialectic as a result between my knowing and my not unknowing subject is precisely where this location is is located I also talked to Andrew about the link or the dialectic between Eurocentrism and Europhobia. Europhobia I've always believed is the worst kind of Eurocentrism it's like a bad divorce you see the former spouse and you start agitating in the world directions what is is philosophy exclusively European or can there be non-european philosophy too the question is already loaded by virtue of the none placed in front of Europe for there is that negation that the world must posit itself as a negational and not as an affirmation of something else or the affirmation of something else must be predicated on the negation of something else I am a non-european you are a European I'm a non-european the problem with the binary that Modimbe in that video in that conversation and also in the introduction to his invention of Africa is the fact that we in philosophy when we come to philosophy is the term falsafa in Arabic is a close cognate of philosophy and without even going to Hikmah which is another word that we use in Islamic in Islamic philosophy and has a different set of connotations now that brings me to a subject again that was of interest to to Andrew namely my work on hermeneutics of misunderstanding and as you all know it goes back to you know Gothammer and Umberto Eco all understanding is misunderstanding and no understanding is misunderstanding and in fact there is a wonderful film about Bostioros Nami certified copy I don't know if you have seen it and again there is a video in which he talks about that film and in which he says love is a misunderstanding love begins and continues with misunderstanding people don't understand each other and they fall in love and the minute he says it with a with a sharp sense of twisted pleasure the minute there is understanding between two people love ceases to exist love continues until there is a terra incognita we don't know where we are we're trying to figure it out as soon as we figure it out finish there is there is no more love that also connects to the process of canonization that again in my recent work I have been thinking when and how did it happen that Plato became more canonical than Xenophon in what context when was it why is it that Xenophon's syrupedia which both in its own time and in subsequent generations was and he was a contemporary of Plato and they were both the students of Socrates Xenophon's syrupedia is politically far more important than Plato's Republic not not in a sort of a abstract comparison but in terms of its presence in European and non-European historical context this does not mean that contrary or perhaps not in contrary but perhaps in a conversation with Habermas the necessity of talking about how canonization of texts happens in a public sphere in a bourgeois public sphere we have to begin 18th and 19th century formation of a bourgeois public sphere public education public sphere public intellectuals all of those factors in which canonization takes place but that public sphere Ipso facto already is a global phenomenon if we go back and read the structure of structural transformation of the bourgeois public sphere we are in the presence of of a transnational public sphere in in in a recent book the on Persephilia I talk about the rise of Persephilia in 18th and 19th century European bourgeois culture in which both biblical and classical antiquity take on Persian culture are resuscitated and then attention what Said kind of formulates theorizes and dismisses us Orientalism if we go at it not through Foucault but through Habermas there's a whole different contextualizations namely the manner in which canonization of both European and in this case Persian it could be Chinese it could be any number of other cultural references are canonized when we do when we place the articulation on the location of the bourgeois public sphere if you don't know when I'm sure you know this text of Tomoku Masazowa the invention of world religion how this this idea of world religion that she is the book was published 2005 is a still a very valid argument about the idea of world religions as she put said expresses a vague commitment to multiculturalism I'm quoting her is not merely a descriptive concept world religion is actually a particular ethos a pluralist ideology and logic of classification at any rate I draw your attention to it because she goes after the idea of religion the way in my recent work I have gone after the idea of world literature in order to complicate the idea of world in my work on on Chauhanameh in which I take issue with the way we have received since Goethe idea of world literature is introducing three worlds in which an epic like the Chauhanameh is produced but you can extend it to any other epic one is the world in which the epic is created that's the Ghaznavi context of the 10th and 11th century that's the world in which the author the poet creates the the epic second is the world that the epic creates the epic creates its own world in this context in the context of Chauhanameh this world is divided into three uh crucial uh segments one is the mythic period one is the heroic period and it's very much similar to Viko one is mythic one is heroic and one is historical so that's the second world the world that the epic creates the third world is the world in which we receive the epic so the world in which it is created the world it creates and the world that in which we receive it which is historical and falls keeps going this dialectic among three worlds totally complicates and disrupts the idea of somebody whether it's Goethe or David Dambrush or Emily Aptor I mean or friends and colleagues and extraordinary work on the idea of world literature that whether they are for world literature as David Dambrush is or against world literature as Emily Aptor is the thing is there is something called world literature that is with capital W capital L whereas the task is to uh to complicate that world uh now the uh the let me let me see how is the time doing Andrew how I'm doing time wise you're absolutely fine I think we have another um 20 minutes if you're good here I want to take you for the remaining time that I have the way I'm thinking about the space because as I said far more than the ipsaity or the quintessence of what it is world philosophy is is the location of world philosophy and the location takes me to the question of space and in my recent work I have started reconsidering the french marxist urban sociologies on uh Henri Lefebvre and his idea of the production of space this is how Lefebvre proposes the idea of the third space first is the physical space second is the mental space and third is the social space example of the first is the fact that I'm not sitting here in my apartment you're sitting in your apartment or office that's the physical space mental space is that now we're having this conversation in the context of a lecture series uh and third is the social space that this is predicated on it and and requires now more importantly than even Lefebvre we move to Edward Soya I don't know if his his work has come across to you his notion of third space what he calls spatial trilectic Soya's third space is both real and imagined what he considers spatial justice here in this context when I was talking about art the space of art I have proposed the idea of a third space is open-ended miasmatic and we must think of it as a cumulative or evolving trilectic while Soya points to hybridity and the duality becoming trilectical and thus the third space opens up I propose an interstitial space which I borrowed from from architecture interstitial space which is hidden to both the first and the second spaces Lefebvre and Soya seem to me two Christian in their preference for trilogies and trinities for the world at large especially if they might be more inclined towards a Manichaean Hegelian dialectic on this trinity we become all not just Christians but far more importantly implicated in a post-national trilectic where art which is the subject of this particular reflection loses its power of subversion about which I'm interested I opt to sustain the subversive power of art or you may say philosophy or literature or poetry in and of itself and deterred for it is precisely in the subversive power of art on that interstitial space which is not a museum is not an art exhibition it is on the internet but it is not just on the internet where this interstitial space of a post-colonial and post-national estate loses all its relevance now as I said I borrowed the concept of interstitial space from art and architecture contemporary art historians have already noted the fact that there are many forms of art that defy the accepted boundaries of genres and media here work of art is art or fiction becomes its own interspace internally as I said the space that the work of art creates then succumbing to establish boundaries the idea has its resonances in architecture where an interstitial space is where a building is made more pliable or multiple and varied uses the way I use interstitial space is to think of it as a location for the urban gorilla art fair I just made it up where we perform a revolutionary confiscation of the work of art from the bourgeois public spaces and in which context I've called it para public space because it's hidden from the public camera in which it is a staged and without depositing it into any other bank or museum or biennale we cash it in for our own revolutionary subversive transgressive purposes before I put it provocatively Christie's and other auctioneers take it over now to conclude let me say the following to talk about philosophy today requires two radical axle differentials location and gender and here by gender I'm totally on the same page we do this butler namely non-binary what is word philosophy is now a moot and outdated question in my humble opinion philosophy has left Europe as a metaphor as a metaphor but has not landed anywhere else for from cyberspace to outer space we have come to frame the fragility of a planet that can no longer sustain itself let alone its European hang ups we begin with adorno to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric okay and continue with Aaron's essay magnificent essay on refugees and come to Agamben's theorization of camp and from there I take my readers to the leaking boat one leaking boat of the Mediterranean sea carrying homeless refugees that is where the philosophy starts today or with a mother whose child has just been abducted by US custom officials on the US Mexican border that is where philosophy starts where philosophy is located uncertainty of epistemological foregrounding suspension of the weight of history defiance of binaries of European and non-European and fresh start for critical thinking whether we call it philosophy or dance is for the next generation to decide thank you for your patience thank you so much professor for a lecture that I felt had breadth depth and poignancy altogether in one which is a difficult thing to do so thank you we're going to move to questions now I'll ask one to get things going before we do I just want to quickly remind everyone you're welcome to post questions in the chat only if you don't want to ask them verbally but please do use the raised hand function and you can start doing that now and we'll go through the queuing system I just want to ask you by way of getting things started I was really gripped by your reminder of the contrast between a knowing subject versus a knowable world and and then you hinted at the transnational public space which is where you posited what we need to rethink location and so I just wanted to actually ask you does this dichotomy of a knowing subject and knowable world still stand in a transnational public space what does that look like today we're no longer in the age of Kant but what does that look like today excellent point when I was positing knowing subject and knowable world I was reading giving you my reading of the three of the three Kantian critiques but the point that you're raising is absolutely correct namely we are integral to an evolving public and what I call parapublic the spaces parapublic is a concept that became useful to me when I was doing my work on the on Persephilia namely when you have refractions of European ideas that go into Asia Africa Latin America and find camouflage presences or subversive presences and I call it parapublic it goes into prisons it comes into internet you know it has the the the public space public sphere has become amorphous in that amorphous disposition of the public sphere you're absolutely correct namely this binary between the knowing subject and the knowable world collapses not only this binary but the consciousness of the knowing subject I mean this is since Freud and Lacan is in is in contestation with the unknowing subject of within the knowing subject that makes things more complicated so what we have is a condition in which from the epistemological foregrounding who and what is a knowing subject in what particular way raised gender class all of those factors to what is the space in which we are doing our philosophizing our critical thinking I mean again look at the very prospect of zoom without the zoom I couldn't be here and having a you know a melochrome of a conversation with my colleagues as you know required by physically my being at so as in Europe so these are all realities so by going to a leaking boat in the Mediterranean or a border between US and Mexico I am trying to anchor my understanding of the knowing subject and knowing subject knowable world etc in a location that will enable me to think but at the same time sort of holds my reason and sanity together in order not to succumb to a condition of amorphous and knowing that is the end of philosophy thank you very much I believe Steven had the next question you muted Steven do you mind unmuted and starting again we'll try to unmute you here apologize yeah I apologize I've forgotten about that yes and firstly firstly where would you say shop and how is because if he's deep interested in a non-european thought and in fact that part probably departed from current and also when you say about the leaking boat in the Mediterranean or the border with Mexico is that where philosophy well perhaps is where is it where we think philosophy should be but where politics is at the moment rather than philosophy maybe I'm just asking you both yeah in regarding Schopenhauer and any number of other takes on cons their interest in non-european is not just Schopenhauer it just goes across the board they've always been interested in the starting with Plato was interested in non-greek philosophy yeah and the appropriation of Greek for the quote-unquote European philosophy it's itself as a trajectory that I developed in a recent chapter on in a conversation with the Rudolf Gâché so you know it is part of the conversation but my issue with that is none the preposition none put in front of anything non-european none okay you know you don't want to be you want to be known as a Stephen who came not as none Hamid Davoshi yeah I mean you know when I just come here we had a friend his name was Javad and our professor said what is your name so my name is Javad so do you mind if I call you John you said no you can call me John I wouldn't answer so it's the question of non a tea non entity that is generates a thing now you're absolutely correct that right now leaking boats border with the US Mexico is a political proposition but it is a political subject it has been a political subject but I deliberately because I at the beginning of the talk I suggested location is the issue where is the issue not the what the what follows the where after we decide where the where is it is the vulnerability vulnerability of the of the of the globe vulnerability of the planet environmental vulnerability the fact that there are 850 million human beings according to UN go to bed hungry every night that there are 320 million people roaming around the globe in search of job this is long before the pandemic is started and showed how you know entirely interdependent we are going for the most vulnerable where the most vulnerable is is where philosophy has to start otherwise we become all accommodated by you know the location whatever location whether it's a university or a or a college or a any other institution is to plant the camera of observation into them in the most vulnerable in order to for philosophy once again to become relevant and ask a philosophical question from political position you're absolutely correct thank you for that I believe Dr. Mathedon and then Dr. Hawthorne thank you so much professor the version for eloquent delivery it's sort of related to the problematizing of the known that you just talked about and I was thinking about how you also talk about how problematic the whole idea about using word would be world literature world philosophies world religions my question is how do we because if I want to do philosophy I want to do philosophy I don't really like to always show clearly that I'm talking about African philosophy or Eastern philosophy but within the politics of knowledge and the politics of higher education in general and how it's been so deeply entrenched into system what philosophy is thought to be in many universities as a Western experience rather than a human experience how then do I for instance within source show that what I'm doing is different if I then just say philosophy at source I'm not saying what philosophy is at source just to give it a sense of difference from what is usually telling yeah so any ideas of how on how this issue of terminology compares to what philosophies might be that way excellent excellent I always put it provocatively Elvis to my my students I tell them only in New York you have Mexican food in Mexico people don't have Mexican food they just have food only in New York or London you have Chinese food in China people don't have Chinese food they just have food so this ethnicized ethnicization of the universe is something that happens here this second coming back to your point about the institution when I just got joined Columbia 30 years ago we have something called core curriculum and I went to teach core curriculum I entered the office of Eileen Glouli my dear friend and colleague now and as soon as she saw me entering her office she said we're teaching the Iran I said good for you but what has to do with me I'm not going to teach the Iran Iran is a wonderful book but I want to teach core curriculum at the time again non-European ideas and thoughts were under the rubric of major cultures major cultures so I told them you mean minor cultures now they call them global core and I tell them you mean local cool so there are all of these euphemisms that are that are used but on the positive side the fact is that today you and Andrew and the rest of your colleagues Professor Hawthorne are in one space and we're being paid a salary I mean plumbers make more than we do but you know we pay we pay our bills and we're tasked with the noble task of philosophy asking serious questions of where we are what what the hell we are doing from whatever location so the question of whether what I'm doing is philosophy or not philosophy is entirely irrelevant I mean I don't have any hang up on that thing or no yes I'm doing philosophy no I'm not doing philosophy this is a the reason I wanted to share that video with with Hannah Arendt that she philosophizes about not doing being a philosopher so that is not the question the question again if you look at the rest of Modimba's conversation but more importantly Modimba's own the invention of Africa is raising quintessential issues existential issues ontological issues and not having hang ups the way that Heidegger had in that famous exchange with the Japanese interlocutor that I hear aesthetics I hear Greek okay here Greek so what I hear Greek I hear Arabic why is it that you don't hear Arabic that is the selective I call a choo-choo train theory of history the train it starts in in Parthenon and comes all the way to Brandenburg gates that's the is a pizza pie theory of history it dropped Plato in the pond it goes all over the place it's not just coming this direction so what we call it word the religions word philosophies histories you know you start that very definition and constant institutionalization is the location for you to start philosophizing the subject of your matter for example the question of white skin black race that you raise it's a universal I took the question of black skin white mask of of Fanon and turn it into brown skin white mask because the insight that Fanon was addressing some 70 80 years ago was still relevant in a different codification of color the relation of power was important not the color codification sometimes we take the color codification for the real thing the real thing is the relation of power gender codification color codification racial codification these are manifestations of the actual relations of power thank you very much I believe it's Sean next thank you this is such a nourishing and interesting and provocative conversation um and I really just kind of want to pick up on what you've just said and this is the question of power with regard to this prefix world not all worlds signify in the same way and I'm thinking particularly of the way in which the concept of world religions emerges as you mentioned must is always work follows a very different logic to the way in which world philosophies gets frank right they're addressing two distinctive problems on the one hand with world religions you effectively have a colonial attempt to create species of Christianity and then to impose them on various populations right so the assumption is the logic there is one of sameness but it's obviously a very specious sameness with world philosophies what you're confronting is the total colonial denial um of uh the capacity of other cultures to have sophisticated or not sophisticated but nonetheless philosophical systems such that the work that the term world is doing there is to say uh no to that other colonial dynamic no to this imposition of sameness a recognition of that difference and I'd just be really interested to hear um whether you think that's the case so whether there's still a kind of colonial logic smuggled in by that attempt to challenge that logic of differentiation which is always a logic of of denigration the very conversation that today we're having this very exchange between you and me across the pond about what does the world mean when we say world philosophies what do you mean what is it doing there because when uh when Goethe was using world Weltliteratur he meant something other than German so I reverse it and say excuse me is German also Weltliteratur or is only Persian and and you know Bengali that is world literature if there are world literature then German is also world literature too so this constitution of this binary I mean this is the issue to this day David Dan brush is trying to is struggling with and is trying to salvage the idea of world religion uh but with with world philosophies I see the significance of when you put it in plural because then you're also changing the idea of world because now you're you're rethinking the world you're re-worlding the world this is what in my work I have paid close attention to a number of important thinkers both European and other uh thinkers who are thinking about world one of them is this extraordinary Spaniard Spanish historian americano Castro who wrote a book called Spaniards and their and their work and their history in which he says deliberately that I am going to decouple Spain from nith of Europe I'm quoting him almost verbatim and reconnect the iberian peninsula to its north african context he was a linguist he ran away from Franco in the 50s and came to Princeton and wrote this magnificent book that I strongly recommend so he what he does he by by decoupling Spain from the myth of Europe and constituting a word linguistically was primarily a linguist around uh the iberian peninsula that goes all the way to southern France come comes into the iberian peninsula goes into north africa creates a whole different world that's the one example Ferdinand Baudel in his the military his work on the Mediterranean abandons the idea of land as uh as a defining category of civilization and goes to sea to me it's an is a liberating moment when Mediterranean sea which means uh you know Spain Turkey uh North Africa Southern Europe they all become part of a unique phenomenon something that Titus Burkhardt when he was writing on the rights uh the rise of Renaissance he had to violate in order to push the rise of Renaissance to northern european context abandoning is is Mediterranean context whereas the rise of Renaissance makes far more sense within its Mediterranean context so that's a second example historically ibn Khaldun in when he's theorizing there's a geography to his historiography when we read uh al muqaddama you see him also operating in a different geographical imagination but my utmost my my most favorite example is al biruni when he goes to india and he writes his famous book the book on india early in the book he says this is 11th century biruni has gone with aghas navheets to india and is writing a book on india he says you may wonder what am i doing to write about india and my answer would be i'm writing about india because we don't know anything about india we so much don't know anything about india that when we want to scare our children we show them a picture of an indian now follow this to come to think of it indians don't know anything about us muslims either when they want to scare their children they show them a picture of a muslim now what does he do they say he's a found he's a founding figure of anthropology god forbid him from his admirers he's anything but an anthropology he is he has his mind is very epistemological he abandons the binary we muslims do it this way these indians do it that way he introduces a tertiary factor which is the greeks this is what heidegger will and living us they don't know what to do with he introduces the greeks creates a triumvirate the greeks do it this way the indians do it this way and the muslim do it does it that way completely abandons creation of any binary that is a world that he creates in the 11th century by virtue of this seminal text so when you put i mean example can abound you can go to hoz mrt when he wrote his magnificent essay our america he creates another america as opposed to the north american america when you put these various articulations of that constitution of worlds uh hoz mrt uh americano castro etc etc you see that the theoretical postulation of world is an ongoing organic proposition that in my work i have tried to retrieve for us to re articulate what world is it that now you and me and steven and andrew what world and this world has its exigencies and contingencies this world is fragile this world is coming to an end this world is environmentally in danger this world is uh uh uh population wise in terms of any number of urgent material the fact that right you and i have to stare at each other through this mechanism of zoom because we're afraid we may catch a virus etc a new variant has appeared and and boris johnson is in trouble that world that world is a reality but that world requires theorization and that theorization is a philosophical proposition so i'm not wedded to anything east west north south where is my pillow one of the issues that i have with with the santos is this idea of the epistemologies of the south the epistemologies of the south are can be as flawed as epistemologies of the north there was a bit of north in the south and there's something of a south in the north we are run out of those options we don't have those options anymore so philosophizing the location of the world what world is it where we are right now that's the that's where the wisdom starts that's that's super really appreciate that so thank you thank you so much i believe jared and then so horn thank you doctor for me this has been a really magnificent talk and it's it's i've got so many notes and so many different directions but something that struck me and i wanted to ask about um and your your discussion of art and using art objects as a way of of of contextualizing this is really beautiful and something that struck me was i come from an arts background i studied performance and and this dialogue is very interesting in that sense because performance today and and i think many forms of of modern art the audience inherits the artwork and this goes against the kind of classical narrative because it removes the authorship or what the composer might have intended or the author intends it takes on the meaning within the world of the audience within the mind and that can be individual or can be group so when we're taking that away when we're taking that authorship away how does that not then you know become an act of appropriation because what tends to follow on that that inheritance of the artwork is then an imitation or a simulation um i'm studying yoga at the moment and we look at the how these traditions are inherited or pulled by other contexts and they take on a new identity so maybe i could if i could humbly ask if you could speak a few words on that please absolutely uh that's a very very important question namely created a dynamic in terms of how the author of work of art a painter a composer an artist a performer has a certain degree of authorial autonomy until and unless a work of art becomes part and parcel of a public domain the best example right now as i said to some of the colleagues i'm getting ready to teach a course on epic an empire using the example of game of thrones is the last episode episode eight or was it six of the last season became hugely controversial because people didn't like that ending now my position was there was no way on planet earth that these two poor show runners would have ended this show to any everybody's satisfaction because by then the audience had become the omniscient narrator even when they were surprised they thought they had willed it you know is a peekaboo game when the children play peekaboo with their parents because they are in control of disappearing the the parent and then reappearing the parent so the authorial voice and the authorial intention a intense your octopus as as umber to echo calls it does not disappear is the machinery that generates the the whole production but the more public the domain of reception the more out of control that dialectic or trilectic emerges to me at this stage i cannot go to an artist and say you no longer matter of course she is the author of course that that matters and but one has to equally be conscious of the fact that the text has its own intention intense your lecturers umber to echo called it the text namely right now this very word these very words that come out of my my mouth i have an intention i'm not hopefully not yet an insane person but i'm not in control of the text itself especially three days from now when the recording is watched by a colleague or friend a student how that text resonates has a reality onto itself but that person itself the student the colleague who sits down and and listens to this conversation that also has an intention these three intentionalities the dialectic that they create the dynamic that they create to me is far more compelling and allows for the intention of the author to remain relevant but at the same time be cognizant of the larger frame of references thank you very much for that i believe we have sohan next hi there um thank you so much for the talk it was really interesting um i have a question and i'm thinking about this idea of the leaky boat in the Mediterranean and how that boat is probably hyper mobile because of the movement of the sea and so i'm wondering if when we ask the question of where is world philosophy or world philosophies we're not receiving as an answer a non-location and i'm wondering if if that's the case then is it even possible for that non-location to exist within the confines of a location and so can we as philosophers exist in that non-location even though you know we're here in london or in new york where you know is considered the center as well centers of philosophical thought yeah excellent excellent point this notion of mobility remember that uh you know we were just talking with nature this is andrew's book the truth is a is a mobile army of metaphors right a mobile army of metaphors so the mobility of that leaking boat or the immobility we may see it may sink destabilizes any assumption of center and periphery okay that new york is not the center is this the phrase in that part of the world you know how the journalists say that you know such and such happened and in that part of the world that part of the world is this part of the world and this part of the world is that part of the world namely you you de-centered de-centering which means by starting by de-centering going back to the to the uh issue that uh andrew raised namely our knowing subject is de-centered and is mobile and his uh brad yoti's work wonderful work on on a nomadic subject is so crucial that nomadic subject is no longer just nomads uh is the fact of homelessness is the uncanny disposition let me put it this this uh uncanny disposition of the knowing subject that even if we are located in new york in london there is an element of uncanniness about our location that makes certainly suspect but i'm not a nihilist i'm not saying oh you know let's all shake hand go home and let's get ready for the dunes day no this very conversation the fact that andrew wrote to me i mean would you come and talk to us yes andrew with pleasure then and then then an announcement goes goes around and now there are 29 people sitting and joining our conversation that act itself is an occasion for the uncanny and unknowing subject to be in the company of other and uncanny and and then that takes us to bhaktin to the to this polyphony that is generated but within the polyphony then there is a possibility of a of a collective knowing subject of a public reason i mean goes back all the way to to cons versus of clearum what is uh what is enlightenment we're public reason okay we have generated a new public within that public a new public reason emerges and that public reason cannot be entirely you know uh divorced from the realities in which the realities which constitute our publicness very good point can i quickly ask you to follow up on that actually because i think um maybe this is me trying to wrap my head around it but you just talked about the knowing subject is de-centered and mobile kind of the metaphor of the nomad the homelessness and then you've talked about public reason you know the the reality of that publicness being constituted and i so i'm kind of wondering your claim about the knowing subject being de-centered is that a cognitive claim about human thought in general is it a sociological claim i guess i'm just trying to wrap my head around what appears at first glance to be contradictory points you raised it is an epistemological proposition uh of a knowing and knowing subject to be in a position of the uncanny unheimlich the going to the german original is is more effective unheimlich uncanny but at the same time is not wayward it is not in futile it is not uh it is not ad absurdum it is located again going back to sohan's excellent point it is located however uh and locatable it might be it is located right now we are located despite the fact that it took this span of i don't know an hour an hour 15 minutes of conversation for all of us to be on the same page but we are more or less on the same page we are having a conversation and that conversation is taking place within a space yes there are foregroundings to that conversation we come from either identical or similar intellectual moral imaginative uh frames of references but at the same time we are parts of different world and yet this space created the subject at the conclusion of which we can each write an email to a friend to a colleague we just had a conversation about the title of which was and we talked about x y and z so that space that proposition constitutes a knowing subject as epistemological proposition without being wedded we're not married to any you know epistemology europe non- europe south east south north beyond wet the only commitment is the the dignity of conversation taking the conversation seriously getting up in the morning taking our shower despite the fact that we don't we are not in each other's physical presence making sure we smell good making sure that our background is kind of decent and presentable and beginning to put coherent sentences hopefully coherent sentences together that to me is the beginning of wisdom anything else that follows after that without asking you that you andrew you have to convert to my philosophy convert to my religion convert to my geography none of that all of that is free the only thing that matters is decency of intelligent and honest conversation you follow then whatever follow it is also uh it is contingent it is not definitive okay is is a rorty i borrowed that from rorty's uh richard rorty's notion of contingency for the time being until further notice within this particular space i as a knowing subject you as a knowing subject this gathering in a particular configuration of its sentiments and understandings we come to the following understanding conclusion at least we speak the same language for and this language has nothing to do with the english persian arabic or chinese because you can as rumi says in that magnificent poem there are there are indians who don't understand each other's language but there are indians and and chinese who understand each other perfectly well so it's a different uh a language a language that is mutually cultivated that's all there is there's no mystery mutually uh cultivated until further notice um thank you very much for that reply um i just want to open it up to the floor again for any any last questions um like you've given us so many things to think about and everything's for me to think about was there any last questions perhaps people want to type if they don't feel comfortable um asking or any other hands that want to go up 10 21 we have entertained each other for an hour and a half and i'm not mad i see so haun is that a last question another question yeah it's just um a little comment something that um i thought about when uh professor debauchy was answering your question andrew um i was thinking about this idea of others and how we're here and we're plural peoples and yet we're talking about a similar thing and we know each other enough to understand that we will understand one another and it made me think of uh this notion of the difference between black and white and gray and gray in kerney's text um monsters monsters and gods and i was wondering if there is anything more we could say maybe about that plurality whilst also having a sense of commonality i don't know about andrew to me uh you can bring into the conversation a black or a white or a gray uh but what the particularity of that position of either of those colors or any number of other colors might be is a matter of historical or genealogical or biographical memory but once it enters the public domain it creates what dork i'm called a conscience collective you know it's hovering over over that that's that's uh the collective consciousness that is not reducible to anything particular that i said or you said or professor hoffern said but all of us said and has generated this cloud rich and enriching and fulfilling cloud that can start raining after we have all adjourned and left that collective consciousness that public reason which is not reducible to any particular particular component is what remains and what is what is at issue whether or not we as humans are still capable of that i i am i'm not pessimist i think we are thank you professor debashi um do we have time for one more question is that okay of course um i've just seen um professor sebers has raised his hand just for context i was joined by professor sebers earlier today at the workshop um that we had on the as you put at the very confusing connection between errant's block and even seen it so uh professor sebers go ahead i believe you're muted actually yeah yeah no and that was it was a very interesting workshop and block is one of the first people i think who had a conception of world philosophy at least in in that tradition of of german thought um thank you very much for your for your fascinating lecture it was wonderful to listen to this um my so my my i would like to maybe mention two points one is that um i very much appreciate and like the idea that um philosophy has gone out of europe but it hasn't found a place to land yet and maybe that word philosophy itself is becoming problematic and not what what the greeks used to think about because we all think about these things but to call it philosophy and i was wondering how how you um if you think that there is another word that that is that is more suitable for the world as it is developing today um what will we call it or is there a need for a name or not and my second my second question would would be um it seems to me that as long as we keep talking about um understanding each other we need to understand each other or it's good if we understand each other or if we speak the same language or we can speak the same language even if we have different tongues i think we're still tied to some of the conceptions the deep sea to the assumptions of greek thought um where we have to uh we can understand each other only if we speak the same language because otherwise what is in my mind cannot can never be what is in your mind um there is a self and there is another or there is what is what is me my identity and what is foreign and these kinds of deep-seated distinction seem to me to be given with the ideal philosophy as the greeks conceived of it so would it would it not be helpful to to depart from these notions of understanding of a shared language shared meaning and find different ways of talking about what it means to be in communication with each other absolutely uh dr severs i but the only my only concern is to de-europeanize greeks greeks were greeks plato greek plato did not think of himself as the father of european philosophy uh nor did socrates nor did aerostat i mean this is our truism is not the earth-shattering thing once we do that we have liberated the greeks who are various i i put it provocatively recently when i reviewed something i said uh if i were at the time of the marathon of course i will fight on the part of the greeks what would i leave the the company of plato and aristotle and goes cyrus the great well what what i would have to say cyrus the great was at the time when i wrote this was george w bush of his time what do you what do i have to say to him uh so yes absolutely we do need the common language but we are not parrots we cultivate we we criticize we re-conceptualize we re-appropriate we re-atomologize words concepts in a fair and and open-ended and uh democratic leveling ground in which we can have eyeball to eyeball conversations and a specific example yes uh plato and aristotle were all lovely people but when you move into the text of somebody like sohravardi in the 11th century you see the presence of pre-islamic iranian philosophical traditions that were not are not evident to to play to you see islamic but meaning quranic concepts enter into his philosophy you see indian the that vedic ideas entering into his philosophy this has to do with his location he was killed very young at the age of 33 i don't know why all of these great people die at the age of 33 but in the space of his philosophy which he oscillates writing in arabic and persian there is something is happening that worth knowing without fighting whether this is all platonic tradition or no it's iranic tradition no is with no i mean these are in at some brilliant point i would forget i think is in genealogy of morals Nietzsche says if they have given you a catalog or the genealogy of an idea they think they have resolved that doesn't resolve it a positing sohravardi oh the ishragi philosophy illumination is philosophy was god's gift to humanity no i mean they are all great philosophers they're all wonderful thinkers and it's beautiful to spend time with them but i don't have to choose right now behind me this is where the the the english and the german and the french and the plato etc right in front of me where you don't see is all my arabic and persian and world do etc and i'm not professor siebers a schizophrenic person i hope by now i have convinced you i'm capable of you know half an hour for 45 minutes of consistent conversation there's nothing i mean we can go to uh that even schizo is good to have a little bit schizo in other words this is the reason going back to the conversation with with sohan that if we agree on this uh ground on which we're only course and we're talking in in honest and and conversant ways in a respectful ways i don't think i'm i have uh you know i god has whispered into my ears some sort of a truth that is only a muslim can understand or an iranian can understand you have to be a muslim we are all part and the same is with the idea of europe europe has to be brought into the bosom of the world at large this is the issue the critique of orientalism the critique of colonialism are at the bottom epistemological critiques not racial critiques there was nothing there was there is nothing fundamentally flawed with levinas i mean in many ways i'm a levinician i between totality and infinity and in number of books i choose totality and infinity but demand you know had a blind spot we all have blind spots so what moving on is not you know the expression the baby and the bathwater we don't throw the baby and the bathwater uh together we have to see in what particular ways so in in response to many of my american friends colleagues critique hold you know catching me right handed oh he uses european philosophy of course i use i'm a product of european philosophy i'm not i'm not europhobic i'm not scared if i touch a european philosopher there because the audience search of exotic your name is hamid so tell us something exotic about your culture and they get frustrated when i maneuver maneuver not intentionally not by virtue of any design this is the way my mind works and i am you know the half decent human being product of a certain period of time and i am honest with the way if i come across beniam in then i cite beniam in i don't censor myself that i have to find a muslim but if i come across a muslim i cite the muslim this is what i mean by taking the location the space this very space in which we're talking and we have been talking for an hour and a half perhaps now consistently and understanding each other and communicating and asking for explanation what about that how do you mean this the other thing and moving on that to me is you know uh i call it the day and i think i think this wonderful thank you so much for your response and i think i you made it very clear now to me that this emphasis on compensation is not so you know there would be a facile critique would be to say yeah but that is precisely what the greeks call philosophy you know to sit around talk and that's what socrates did that's what that's what they all did this culture of conversation is that is the greek ideal philosophy because there you you go from the south to the other and back again and you find a common language in which to understand each other and basically what you are what you are saying is well i don't want to be hijacked by the fact that the greeks did that we can do it too and we can learn from each other yeah but also the fact that the greeks did it this was the point that if i were to walk to play to and say mr play to you know i come from persia he may not like me he may consider me an enemy but he knows where i come from yeah so this is what i mean by the europeanizing the greeks the greeks are part of a larger frame of reference that have echoes in other contexts so i have nothing wrong there's nothing wrong with saying well this is what greeks meant by philosophy wonderful good for them and good for us that are inheritors of that greek philosophy but that doesn't turn me into eurocentric doesn't turn me into european and not that there is anything wrong with the european is the historicization of how the idea of europe emerged and in the specific circumstances and is a particularly post renaissance post enlightenment proposition of how the idea of europe as a commodity emerged this is the critique of europe as a commodity not a particular philosopher and so when i provocatively say you know the most significant european philosopher is an algerian jew who speaks uh speaks french i mean this is a biological fact a biographical fact i'm not making it up as he says in the magnificent text that i love and i've taught it for many years among monolingualism of the alger when he claims french thank you very much my pleasure yeah thank you very much professor debasche and um on that note i think i will um turn it back over to elvis and draw things to close but just to say one last time thank you for all the false questions you've left us with my pleasure thank you for having me and i area call what andrew said thank you so much it's been um a very interesting conversation um this last uh an hour and a half uh just to say the fourth lecture will take place on the last friday of august that should be august 27th and we'll be having um i'll just share this on my screen yeah we'll be having pizza kj park the author of um africa asia and the history of philosophy racism and the formation of the philosophy of canon i will be having him speak to us on that day the last friday of august um so if you can get a copy of this book and read through before that um that could inform a lot of discussions when we have him he's uh at the university of texas in balas um yeah so uh that being said uh this brings us brings us to an end of this third lecture i will stop recording now and