the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar

Fred Moten

The External World (When a Stranger Appears)

This lecture took place on September 22nd, 2009 at 7:00 pm in the Great Hall at the Cooper Union

Lecture introduction

In “The External World (When a Stranger Appears),” Fred Moten considers what happens in and after the exhaustion of political philosophy. This question, he argues, is a matter of aesthetics and, moreover, of aesthetic sociality that the work of philosophers Hannah Arendt and Adrian Piper helps to foreground though, ultimately, it is in the more than political performance of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957, that another set of possibilities for thinking, acting and judging in the world comes into relief.

About Fred Moten

Fred Moten teaches at Duke University. He is author of Arkansas (Pressed Wafer Press, 2000), In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), I ran from it but was still in it. (Cusp Press, 2007) and Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works, 2008).

Relevant Links

• Readings for this lecture are available on the student login page.