Thursday, 14th December. 7 pm, Virreina LAB
Free entrance. Limited places

By screening clips from film adaptions of Hamlet (including versions by Edgar G. Ulmer, Laurence Olivier, Grigori Kozintsev, Tom Stoppard and The Simpsons), we will put forward a series of reflections on the function of the spectre and spectrality in the works of Jacques Derrida and Jacques Rancière. We will begin with the two thinkers’ fundamental notions and move on from there to analyse writings in which Derrida and Rancière use the figure of the spectre and spectrality to express political thinking. There is a politics of the spectre that leads us to at least two proposals: a democracy to come and an aesthetic democracy.

Xavier Bassas (Barcelona, 1978) is a philosopher, editor and translator. He holds a PhD in French Language and Philosophy, awarded by the Paris-Sorbonne University and the University of Barcelona, where he currently teaches in the French Studies section. His special area of interest is the thinking and writing of Jean-Luc Marion, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Rancière. He has written a number of works on these authors and has translated many of their books. His forthcoming publications include the book Jacques Rancière. L’assaig de la igualtat, to be published by Gedisa, and his translation of Mémoires d’aveugle, by Derrida.