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.