Ivan Illich Continuing the Conversation

1. Illich, Ivan. (2002). “The Cultivation of Conspiracy,” in The Challenges of Ivan Illich, (Eds) Lee Hoinacki and Carl Mitcham, (New York: SUNY Press), p.235.

SPEAKERS

I.     Seminar: Science and the destruction of common sense
 

Jose-Maria Sbert
The descent into abstractions
I will discuss science as a modern singularity in the light of Illich's remarks about the historicity of the alphabet, the text and the university.

Semih Eser
Science of Energy and the Need for Power
Energy is described as “the single most important problem facing humanity today.”  A proposed solution to this problem requires a “revolutionary breakthrough at the frontiers of Physical Sciences and Engineering.”   Before investing on “the next great economic revolution,” should not we ask first: Who needs energy (power), for what, and how much?

Andoni Alonso
Technoscience: Apocalypse, Salvation, or Simply False Religion?
Two predictions deserve to be contrasted: technological apocalypsis associated with biotechnology or nanotechnology vs singularity transcendence and the creation of post-humanity.  In opposition to both views, which are but the tail and trunk of the same beast, my colleague Iñaki Arzoz and I argue for interpreting technoscience as techno-hermeticism, that is, as a false techno-faith.

II.     Seminar: Vernacular Values & the War against Subsistence

Gene Bazan
In the Shadow of Subsistence: Microhomesteading in Suburbia
While the war against subsistence has been won, those of us who practice remnants of it enjoy the fruits of nature's bounty, independence from the market's destructive institutions, and the grudging respect if not admiration of our neighbors and friends. Here we hide out with our plant, animal and insect comrades, keeping alive the principles and practices of keeping alive.

Laksmann Yapa
Illich on the Social Construction of Scarcity
Although Illich never used the language of postmodernism or poststructuralism I am quite impressed by how much he anticipated what goes under those names. I have worked on themes of poverty for a long time using a postmodern framework. As I was developing these thoughts I found Illich's notion of radical monopoly and a bunch of others very useful in making a critique of how mainstream economists talk about scarcity.

Robert Kugelmann
Vernacular Pain and Its Economic Transformation
As late as 1920, Henry Rutgers Marshall, architect and psychologist, could write:  “Certain psychologists in our day would . . . ask us to apply the term pain to ‘physical pains’ only.  This the common man does not do” (p. 136). The situation changes rapidly, however, once economic factors enter the picture:  if one cannot work because of pain, if one seeks out health care for pain relief.  Then pain changes, becoming both a liability and an asset.  I propose to discuss this transformation of pain into an economic thing in light of Illich’s insights into subsistence and vernacular activities.

III. Seminar: From services to self-management

Dan Grego
Gandhi’s Goat, Berry’s Farm, Illich’s Table: Politics, Community, and Friendship in the Age of Systems and Services
Since the industrial revolution, a way of living has been spreading across the earth like a plague.  Three men, born on three different continents, raised in three different traditions, have said, in their different ways, a decisive “No, thank you!” to this pestilence.  What can we learn from bringing these three voices together?  Let’s talk.

Madhu Prakash
Myth maker, story weaver: Ivan illich
The power of story and myth, exemplified by Ivan Illich's life and work, constitute the core of my meditations on services and self-management.

David Schwartz
Is Professional Service Without Self-Management Possible in the Modern Age?
One of the pleasing surprises arising from Illich's thinking remains the discovery of its relevance in completely unexpected areas. Can such a management-contaminated "liberal profession" as psychotherapy contain certain "rests" of medical practice - or even friendship?

IV.  Seminar: The loss of the sense for Proportionality

Jean Robert
The rise and fall of the instrumental paradigm
I reflect on the emergence of a key idea of technological society: the idea of an instrument. I argue that while the instrument and therefore technological society emerges on the ruins of proportionality, its contemporary dissolution marks the onset of the age of systems.

Samar Farage
The musical proportions of the pulse
By touching the pulse, the Galenic physician, from antiquity to Medieval Islam, listened to the voice of nature. Nature expressed herself in the musical harmonies proper to the body and the soul. In the 17^th century, the mechanized and quantified beat of the pulse silenced its music and severed its connections to the soul, the macrocosm and the Good.

Matthias Rieger
The disembodiment of the utterance: Speech, Music and the loss of the sense for proportionality
Using Hermann von Helmholtz’ On the sensations of tone (1863) I demonstrate the disembodiment of utterance. Helmholtz sounded the death knell of the understanding of speaking, music-making, and hearing as activities rooted in the constitutive relationship between listener and speaker, or between a musician and his audience. It was during the nineteenth century, that Helmholtz, in his acoustical laboratories, transmogrified tone, speech and hearing into scientific constructs.

V. Seminar: Modernity as the corruption of the best

 

David Cayley
On the Apocalyptic as a Mode of Historical Understanding"
I do not believe with some that this is a post-Christian world...I believe, though I'm hesitant about the term that it's an apocalyptic world" (Illich in Conversation).

Modernity has been related to Christianity in many ways, but I believe Illich is unique among its theorists in supposing it to be a revelation of the mystery of evil.  My talk will explore the implications of this apocalyptic mode of understanding.

Lee Hoinacki
Inserting Oneself in History
I will attempt to trace the route Illich followed to arrive at the "corruptio optimi ... "

Wes Avram
From god to goad to grammar check: the voice of conscience at the end of instrumentality
In ABC, Illich and Sanders rather cryptically asserted that with the rise of a cybernetic screen culture the instrumentality of conscience as it was re-formed under the regime of literacy gives way to the point of near, if not total, disappearance. What conscience is left is a faded shadow of its rich, dialogic, ancestor.  While urging an examination of the loss (or transformation) of conscience in an age of systems from multiple perspectives, I will take particular interest in its theological implications--especially as those can be seen in Reformed thought.

VI. Seminar: Renunciation as the foundation for philia

Joey & Becky Mokos
The Room to Which Christ May Come: "Faith-Based Initiatives" and the perversion of Christian hospitality.
We will begin a discussion of the institutionalization of hospitality, using Constantine's creation of Xenodochia as the springboard for the modern development of social services. We will compare this to the Clinton and Bush proposals for granting funds to religious organizations for human services in the US.

Jerry Brown
TO BE ANNOUNCED

Chatzikyriakou (Kostas) Konstantinos
Life as Blasphemy and Bare Life.
In my talk I will try to offer a parallel reading of Ivan Illich’s and Giorgio Agamben’s writings on the concept of life to suggest that friendship and epistemological askesis (in Illich’s sense) may be the post-political response to the bio-politics of high modernity which, in attempting to found a “form of life” that abolishes the classical distinction between bios and life, “necessarily turns into thanatopolitics.”

Find out more about this Ivan Illich on Convivial's website