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class=966332810-06042010><STRONG>Seminar Series 2010</STRONG></SPAN></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><SPAN
class=966332810-06042010><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; COLOR: rgb(31,73,125); FONT-SIZE: 11pt"
lang=EN-US><FONT color=#000000>Michael E. Gardiner
</FONT></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><SPAN
class=966332810-06042010><STRONG>Friday, 1-2pm (Venue to be confirmed: will be
advertised on events before Friday)</STRONG></SPAN></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><STRONG>“The ‘Trojan
Horse’ of Boredom: Henri Lefebvre and Walter Benjamin”<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O
/><O:P></O:P></STRONG></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Although very
different in temperament, writing style and personality, the French thinker
Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) and German Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) developed a
remarkably similar (and eminently dialectical) account of modernity, combining
rigorous critique, a rejection of backwards-looking nostalgia, Left pessimism,
or transcendental appeals of any kind, and the search for utopian potentialities
in the hidden folds and recesses of everyday life. This talk will focus on a
particular phenomenon of considerable interest to both thinkers, one that is
arguably intrinsic to modernity: that of <I>boredom</I>, a peculiar mode of
temporal experience through which we can grasp a much wider spectrum of
contemporary anxieties, socio-cultural shifts, and subjective crises. Curiously,
although each refer to it fairly often, neither analyzed the concept in a
systematic fashion, and they used the term “boredom” in loose, elliptical and
even apparently contradictory ways. Yet, such a lack of clarity reveals not only
a certain shared ambivalence about this phenomenon; it can highlight a subtle
pattern of differentiation between <I>particular modalities</I> of boredom that,
if carefully attended to, can be highly illuminating. Although Benjamin’s
reflections on boredom have received a fair amount of attention to date,
critical commentary on Lefebvre’s treatment of the same topic is notable only in
its complete absence. Accordingly, this presentation will focus mostly on
Lefebvre’s contribution, reading the latter’s comments on boredom through
something of a “Benjaminian lens.” Such a reading reveals that Lefebvre
discriminates in subtle and nuanced ways between different experiences and
expressions of boredom, some of which are unambiguously negative, whereas others
are judged more positively, insofar as they are, as he says in the 1962 work
<I>Introduction to Modernity</I>, “pregnant with desires, frustrated frenzies,
[and] unrealized possibilities.” In meditating on this and similar passages, we
can begin to glimpse latent connections between boredom and utopian propensities
that caught the attention, not only of Benjamin, but also other critical
thinkers like Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer. Accordingly, this talk will
explore Lefebvre’s embryonic “sociology of boredom” as a significant yet
underexamined component of what Situationist Raoul Vaneigem called the
“revolution in everyday life.”<O:P></O:P></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; COLOR: rgb(31,73,125); FONT-SIZE: 11pt"
lang=EN-US><FONT color=#000000>Michael E. Gardiner is a Professor in Sociology
at The University of Western Ontario, Canada. His books include the edited
four-volume collection <SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Mikhail Bakhtin: Masters
of Modern Social Thought</SPAN> (Sage, 2003), <SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Critiques of Everyday Life</SPAN> (Routledge, 2000),
<SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last
Words</SPAN> (Sage, 1998, co-edited with Michael M. Bell), and <SPAN
style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Dialogics of Critique: M. M. Bakhtin and the
Theory of Ideology</SPAN> (Routledge, 1992). He has also authored numerous
articles and book chapters dedicated to Bakhtin in particular and dialogical
social theory in general, as well as ethics, critical theories of everyday life,
and utopianism. His current research is dedicated to French thinker Henri
Lefebvre, in relation to issues of embodiment, perception and theories of
affect.</FONT><BR></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'; COLOR: rgb(31,73,125); FONT-SIZE: 11pt"
lang=EN-US><SPAN class=966332810-06042010>Seminar
convenor</SPAN></SPAN></P></FONT></DIV>
<P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Dr. Lee F. Monaghan</FONT> <BR><FONT size=2
face=Arial>Senior Lecturer</FONT> <BR><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Department of
Sociology</FONT> <BR><FONT size=2 face=Arial>University of Limerick</FONT>
<BR><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Ireland</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>tel: 00353(0)61-213346</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>e-mail: <A
href="mailto:lee.monaghan@ul.ie">lee.monaghan@ul.ie</A></FONT></P><FONT
size=2><FONT size=2><FONT size=2>
<P>http://www.ul.ie/sociology/lee.monaghan.html </P></FONT></FONT></FONT>
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