Where is World Philosophy and how is she doing?
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2021-07-02

Guest Speaker: Prof Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University
Date: Friday June 25, 2021
Time: 14:00 - 16:00

“If you had a choice what philosopher would you like to be your mother?” The question was once put to Jacques Derrida, outmanoeuvring the master deconstructionist manoeuvre.  In a video of this interview available online we can see Derrida visibly discombobulated before he collects his wits and answers no philosopher could be his mother — and that is the whole point of his idea of phallogocentrism.  He does concede however that his daughter could potentially be a philosopher.  We could flip the question even higher and let it come down head or tail asking Derrida or any other European philosopher what Muslim, Chinese, Indian, African, or Latin American philosopher could be his father, mother, sister, brother, even distant cousin, or, dare I say it, perhaps illegitimate son or daughter—born and being raised out of the wedlock?  In that spirit, I wonder: Where, not what, is “World Philosophy” — and how is she doing these days? 

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Professor Dabashi has taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. Professor Dabashi has written 22 books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His books include Authority in Islam (1989); Theology of Discontent (1993); Truth and Narrative (1999); Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001); Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire (2008); Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in Time of Terror (2009); The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (2012); Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation (2016); and Iran: Rebirth of a Nation (2017.