Event Recordings

Tony Thwaites

Philosophy would seem to belong to the university in a way its neighbours in the arts and social sciences don’t. Where it occurs outside the university—the Melbourne and Queensland Schools of Continental Philosophy, U3A—it largely takes the familiar university form of lectures (such as this one) and courses. How is philosophy bound up with the needs and routines of the institutions that are its support? It would be naïve to see this relation as little more than a matter of repressions to be removed: for many of us, after all, the university been central to our awakening to, passions for and engagements with philosophy. But as the university struggles with chronic underfunding, exploitative work practices and unsympathetic governments, that swathe of activities and passions it bundles together as “Arts” may be dying within it. What might it be to do philosophy outside the university?

Tony Thwaites taught English literature and literary theory at the University of Queensland for many years. He has written books on Joyce and Freud, co-edited a collaborative book on Derrida, published on Lacan and Žižek among others, and is involved in reading groups on Joyce, Lacan and Badiou.