The Philosophy Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna cordially invites
you to Guest lecture.
ZOOM-Link: https://zoom.us/j/96650494706
The lecture will be held in English as part of the course "Tragedy and Psychoanalysis 2" by Dr. Amanda Holmes.
“Alas, Poor Yorick! The Being of Spirit is a Bone"
Shakespeare's Hamlet and Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit include two of the most recognizable enunciations in Western culture: "Alas, poor Yorick!" and "The
being of spirit is a bone." What is it that we recognize when we hear or read these words? This lecture takes the conjunction
of these phrases as an occasion to meditate on the mere fact of occupying space as the minimal dimension of existential drama.
Working through the relation of Hamlet's graveyard scene to other elements of the play's complex structure wherein figures
of spatial existence are at stake, we will designate these as the crux of the play's physical and metaphysical concerns, and
of the relation between spirit and matter. This will enable us to specify the peculiar modality of being of drama and to grasp
the historical and artistic stakes of Hegel's infinite judgment.
Dr. Nathan Brown is
Associate Professor of English and Canada Research Chair in Poetics at Concordia University, Montreal, where he directs the
Centre for Expanded Poetics. He is the author of Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique, and The Limits
of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics.
