Is the University Still a Site of Critical Thinking: Critical Thinking in the Ruins is Panel Two of a 4-panel series which is part of Working in the Traces of Area Studies hosted by faculty emeriti Brett DeBary (Asian Studies, Cornell) and Naoki Sakai (Asian Studies, Cornell).

One legacy of the discourse of the West and the Rest can be found in the fetishized idiom “Western theory,” as if theory were a capacity exclusive only to European or Western humanity. Above all else, we have to acknowledge that at present we do not know who and what is indexed by the West; we are not certain of who the Westerners are or where the West and its polar opposite being the Rest can be mapped. What is at stake is what kind of critical and transformative capacity we designate by “theory.” What should we pursue? What do we mean by “theory,” seeking the general patterns in empirical and positive knowledge, attending to the operations of power in knowledge production, or a critical assessment of the disciplinary formation in knowledge production?

The panelists are:

Jon Solomon, Department of Languages, Lyon III University, Jean Moulin, France Junyoung Verónica Kim, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of PittsburghAndrea Bachner, Comparative Literature, Cornell University is stepping in for Peter Osborne, School of Creative and Cultural Industries, Kingston School of Art, London; Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy due to a sudden inability to attend.Discussant will be: Gavin Walker, Departments of History and East Asian Studies, McGill University, MontrealThis symposium is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies.