Nina Power & Daniel Miller on “Performing Naughtiness”

1. Performing Naughtiness, Nina Power

Humour in the internet age is in trouble. The ‘Alt-Right’ appears to have a monopoly on laughter in the form of memes, jokes, ‘edgelordism’, disrespect for the po-faced and an ability to make rare steaks out of liberal sacred cows. The left have responded by taking up a cliched ‘humourless’ posture, often regarding words as violence (but at the same time often defending the idea that ‘punching Nazis’ as perfectly valid, where the left get to determine who the ‘Nazis’ are). In many circles, the terror of ‘saying the wrong thing’, of using words ‘harmfully’ has come to dominate political language today.

In this talk, I will defend instead the necessity for a kind of ‘naughty’ relation to language in the public and private sphere. The ‘naught’ of the naughty, the nothing that belongs to philosophy, which can consider the nothing its object, is a place where we can perform arguments and have dialogues that take place beyond prohibition and outside of censorship. The talk will argue for a naughty mode of being, and by discussing the relationship between the ‘cheeky’, ‘the mischievous’ and ‘the naughty’, the paper will also be an exercise in such modes of speaking, as well as a defense of them.

2. “My Behaviour”, DC Miller

DC Miller will perform a new epic poem, responding to recent controversies, in which he will confess to his crimes, and hysterically beg for forgiveness…

Monday April 29, 6-7.30 pm, Room 111

All welcome.