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IDOCs » Closing Lecture : “Life Is No Argument!”
Closing lecture of the 6th IDOCDE Symposium "You are here!" will be given by Oğuz Erdur.
2018.06.28

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 “Life Is No Argument!” Reflections on Meaning, Art, and Experience

“Life is no argument,” Nietzsche argued. Because an argument is in language. And language, like consciousness, is only a surface. The reflections on a pond touch neither the clouds above, nor the life that thrives below. But our thirst for meaning is so unquenchable that we perpetually fail to comprehend our predicament—of being stuck in the liminal space between language and experience. Worse still, our endlessly talking heads prevent us from coming to terms with the transformative powers of the body, which lie dormant within the cultural cages in which we prison them.

The body, understood non-dualistically, is both the grounds and the instrument of knowledge, but also a hostage. The whole of western philosophy, Nietzsche suspected, has been “merely an interpretation of the body, and a misunderstanding of the body.” As a result, knowledge has flown away to conceptual abstractions and idealist dreams, if not also metaphysics and other-worldly phantasies. Our task then, as the artists of our own existence, is to “remain faithful to the earth”—and bring knowledge “back to the body” in order to explore its inexhaustible possibilities towards a life-affirming moral and political economy.

Based on anthropological observations of the symposium sessions, this closing lecture will reflect on the contemporary possibilities of an artistic orientation towards life itself, which, as Nietzsche would argue, is the only way to build “rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart.”

 

Oğuz Erdur (TR/US)

Born and raised in Turkey, Oğuz studied economics, environmental sciences and sociology at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, following which he received a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University. Since 2009, he has been teaching at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, offering courses on anthropology, archaeology, art, writing, the Middle East, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Oğuz is the author of Stone in Love: Seduction of the Orphan Past, a work of poetry and photography that seeks to recreate reality as a surreal montage. More recently, he delivered a TEDx talk titled Is Love Universal?, where he deconstructs biological and metaphysical approaches to love using a Nietzschean perspective and socio-cultural theory. 

 

See the collection below for a glips of Oğuz's photography.


Attachments:
stone in love
oldest love poem
cosmic skeleton
stairway to heaven
locked up under the clouds
holy fire-water
death by chocolate
sunrise over a pool of drool
invitation to a magical darkness
setting the stars on fire
ashes to ashes, water to words
emptyness with a why
entangled in meaning
same river still
medusa on the mirror
in search of the redeeming satyr
faces of evanescent grandeur
journey to the grave
home abandoned
climbing to a diffident dream
corpse of a language
mutiny of the mellow reeds
fuck nationalism
bleeding into words
tears of sancho panza
distance is what makes love possible
happy birthday tanathos
door to the universe--my grandma's kitchen
Downloads:
Right click on the link(s) and choose "download linked file as", to specify the target download folder on your computer
[type: pdfin a moment there are days...
[type: pdfspring is here
[type: pdfwetness
[type: pdfto flatter existence
[type: pdfvoid head
[type: pdfpawned my heart
[type: pdfweather forecast
[type: pdfheir to the moon
[type: pdfbeauty happened
[type: pdfthe allegorical plane
[type: pdfdon't be a burden
[type: pdfnothing more to say
[type: pdfsurface of a lake is fake
[type: pdfalone in the garden of eden
[type: pdfeasy chocolate
[type: pdfdistance is what makes love possible
[type: pdfvoices are breezes
[type: pdfcloudy poison
[type: pdfi want to shit flowers
[type: pdfcloudy poison
[type: pdfgrave guard
[type: pdfsurface of the pond


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