Boris Groys: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer
Wednesday 10 April, 2013
6pm, $0
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, James Gallery
Please join Boris Groys for a gallery talk and reception from 6-8 p.m., Wednesday April 10 for the conceptual and experimental exhibition “After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer,” which presents the photographs, collected postcards, and hand-drawn itineraries of the French-Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1902-68) to compose a visual exposition of his philosophy.
Kojève’s lectures on Hegel in Paris before World War II deeply influenced critical thinkers of the post-World War II generation, and among his students were Jacques Lacan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He expressed in his writings on posthistory that a commitment to certain aesthetic attitudes has replaced the more traditional “historic” commitment to the truth. Groys asserts that discourses of biopolitics put forward by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Gilles Deleuze are indebted to Kojève’s work. The project presents the philosopher’s world view in the tumultuous postwar era as colonial history was being played out between the West and the so-called “Third World.” Guest curated by philosopher Boris Groys, the James Gallery is the only US venue for the exhibition made in collaboration with BAK Utrecht, the Netherlands.