Week 2. Accidents and the state of exception

Slide presentations

• Tuesday, January 31 [PDF]
• Thursday, February 2 [PDF]

Readings for this week

• Paul Virilio, The Original Accident, excerpt, pages 1-30 [PDF pages 1-15]
• Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, excerpt, pages 5-15 [PDF pages 58-68]
• Catherine Malabou, The Ontology of the Accident, short excerpt, pages 1-6 [PDF pages 11-16]
• Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (optional)

Note: All page numbers refer to pages in the original text. In case it is confusing to anyone, I have also added page numbers in the PDF in square brackets above. But in general, please assume that page numbers provided reference those in the original text.

Screening

Ruben Östlund, “Force Majeure”, 2014

Additional materials

• Here is a kind of press release about the film including some color stills, plot summary, and commentary from Östlund about production techniques.
• And here is a critical essay about the film from a philosophical perspective. I found it to have some pretty helpful insights: Christopher Falzone, “Experiencing Force Majeure“