Tzuchien Tho
Researcher Theory
01.01.09 – 31.12.10
My work at Jan van Eyck Academie is twofold: first, I will continue with Versus Laboratory, a seminar dedicated to testing out the hypothesis that philosophy is constantly forced to reshape its activity by the intrusion of neighbouring practices. The focus of the sessions will be on the simultaneous senselessness and polysemy of the word ‘matter’ as it operates in and through contemporary philosophy. Impacted on all sides by shifting political, scientific and artistic claims to ‘materialism’, the seminar will try to make some distinctions. As Canguilhem famously remarks, insofar as “...philosophy is a reflexion for which all foreign matter is good”, then indeed “all good matter is foreign...”. This might be considered the ‘materialist’ postulate of this second year of Versus Laboratory, a particular staging of the founding idea that the production of philosophical concepts has its origin in the dissensual relation.
Secondly, I want to undertake a long-term research project on the role of mathematics in the early work of Alain Badiou, shoring up some of the theoretical sources of the claim, most forcefully made in L’être et l’evenement, of the identity between ontology and mathematics. Speaking on his early work quite recently, Badiou himself claims that the central continuity of his work can be traced in the problem of the “new form”. Instead of following him in this idea, I hope to find the discontinuities, not only of his own understanding of the role that mathematics plays in his thought, but also how, in turn, those shifts in this privileged domain imply other displacements in his approach toward politics, art and the conception of truth. Moreover, by looking at Badiou, I hope to come up with an alternative schematisation of the problems that seized the thinkers of the ’68 generation – and their consequences for the present.
Kota Kinabalu, MY
PhD in Philosophy (Forthcoming). University of Georgia, Athens, US.
BA with Honours in Philosophy. Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, US.
Instructor of the course Introduction to philosophy. University of Georgia, Athens, US.
Teaching assistant of the course Logic and critical thinking. University of Georgia, Athens, US.
Teaching assistantship. Department of Philosophy, University of Georgia, Athens, US.
Teaching assistant of the course Introduction to philosophy. University of Georgia, Athens, US.
Outstanding teaching assistant award. University of Georgia, Athens, US.
Mellon essay contest. Department of Philosophy, Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, US.
Versus laboratory Maastricht 2009. (6 February, 11 March, 9 April, 21 May, 14 June, 8 October, 2 November, 5 November, 1 December). With Pietro Bianchi & Giuseppe Bianco. Nine seminar sessions. Maastricht, NL: Jan van Eyck Academie.
Form and formalism. In: Versus laboratory. (7 – 8 November). Two-day conceptual workshop. With Pietro Bianchi & Giuseppe Bianco. Maastricht, NL: Jan van Eyck Academie.
Legacies of the enlightenment. Two-day symposium and workshop. Athens, US: University of Georgia.
The consistency of inconsistency. Alain Badiou and the limits of mathematical ontology. In: Symposium. Canadian journal for continental philosophy, 12.
A discipline of thought. Review of Alain Badiou’s Being and event. In: Philosophia, 3 (Summer 2007).
New horizons in mathematics as philosophical condition. An interview with Alain Badiou. In: Parrhesia journal, 3.
Politics and the void. In: Radical philosophy review.
Alain Badiou. The lessons of Jacques Rancière. Knowledge and power after the storm. In: Jacques Rancière: History, politics, aesthetics. Durham, US: Duke University Press.
Alain Badiou. The concept of model. With Zachary Luke Fraser. Melbourne, AU: Re.press.
Negation and contingency: Materialism in practice. (24 November). In: Materialism(s). Ljubljana, SI: Institute of Philosophy of Ljubljana.
Materialism of excess. (27 March). In: Versus laboratory Berlin. Berlin, DE: ICI Kulturlabor.
Substraction of matter. In: Opening week 2009. (12 – 16 January). Maastricht, NL: Jan van Eyck Academie.
Scope and difference. The event as a problem of formalism. (16 October). In: Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy conference. Pittsburgh, US: Duquesne University.
Ontologie et représentation. (12 March). In: Centre internationale d’étude de la philosophie française contemporaine. Paris, FR: École Normale Supérieure.
Leibniz’s infinitesimal and Deleuze’s singular. (5 February). In: Versus laboratory. Maastricht, NL: Jan van Eyck Academie.
Philosophy and the future. The problem of the infinite in Edmund Husserl and Alain Badiou. In: Fordham philosophical society conference. New York, US: Fordham University.
On subtraction and friendship. Alain Badiou’s Subtractive ontology and the praxis of militancy. New York, US: New York University.
The blind spot of French ontology: Two set theoretical axioms and the universal indeterminate. In: FEP-SEP Joint Conference. (8 – 10 September). Dundee, GB: University of Dundee.
Against the subject of terror and the terrorism of the subject. In: FEP-SEP Joint Conference. Reading, GB: University of Reading.
When time stops... Antonio Negri and Alain Badiou on temporality and subjectivity. In: Collective for critical practices Out of time conference. Minneapolis, US: University of Minnesota.
Politics and the void. In: Radical philosophy association biennial conference. Washington DC, US: Howard University.
Between revolution and humanitarian crisis. The void in Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek. In: Society of European Philosophy. London, GB: Greenwich University.
The blind spot of contemporary ontology: the indeterminate universal. With Fabio Agostini, Bruno Besana. In: FEP-SEP Joint Conference. (8 – 10 September). Dundee, GB: University of Dundee.