David Bowie and Ideas

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University of Warwick

A series of three public lectures on philosophical ideas of Difference, Authenticity and Love seen through the lens of David Bowie

Warwick Arts Centre

<p><strong>Warwick Institute of Public Engagement (WIE) present three public lectures on philosophical ideas of Difference, Authenticity and Love. All will be presented by Warwick’s Professor Alex Sharpe. </strong>
</p><p>Each will draw on David Bowie, one of the most significant artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Bowie will function as a conduit, a lightening rod, serving to bring the ideas to life. The lectures promise to be an audio-visual feast, accompanied by Bowie text, images, and music from his back catalogue. 
</p><p>Each will be of 45 minutes duration and will be followed by a Q&A with Alex. For more information on Alex click here
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</p><h2>Public Lecture 1: On Difference 
</h2><h2>Scary Monsters: the hopeful undecidability of David Bowie
</h2><h2>Wednesday 9th November, 2022
</h2><p> This lecture, which forms part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2022, will take up the idea of the Monster. While the Monster has been explored across a range of academic disciplines, the lecture will provide an account based on the writings of three French philosophers (George Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida). The lecture will be about three things: monsters, hope and David Bowie. Monsters: because the monster is the legal and social outsider par excellence. Hope: because monsters are quintessentially hopeful. Bowie: because he is the monster writ large. In terms of subject matter, the lecture will pay particular attention to two distinctions the monster brings to crisis: gender and sexuality. 
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</p><p>This event is free to attend but requires registration.
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</p><h2>Public Lecture 2: On Authenticity
</h2><h2>Authenticity: what a drag! 
</h2><h2>(Wednesday 8th March 2023)
</h2><p>This lecture will consider the idea of authenticity and its assumed relationship to truth. David Bowie has often been accused of being inauthentic, false, a phoney. Yet, compared to most of his contemporaries and successors, the lecture will argue, it is Bowie’s art and music that are the more truthful. In defending this claim, the lecture will, drawing on philosopher, Simon Critchley, argue authenticity is an illusion. It is Bowie, rock’s first postmodern rock star, who, precisely because he is self-consciously inauthentic, comes closest to capturing this truth. While singer songwriters, like John Martyn, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, sought to penetrate audiences with their truths, Bowie effaced himself, preferring fragmented lyrics/music and multi-interpretation, and fans recognized themselves in the gaps that peppered his words, sounds and visions, in the spaces between melody and cacophony.  
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</p><p><strong> More details and booking to come</strong>
</p><h2>Public Lecture 3: On Love
</h2><h2>Bowie Love: beyond law 
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</h2><h2>(Date TBC)        
</h2><p>This lecture, which forms part of the Warwick Resonate Festival, will consider the idea of love as agape, a Greco-Christian term capturing the idea of a love for humanity. It will be argued it is this love that cascades through Bowie’s work. In thinking through Bowie love, the lecture will draw on philosophers Max Scheler and Alain Badiou, as well as fierce opponent of Agape, Friedrich Nietzsche. The lecture will explore three love lessons apparent in Bowie’s work: loving as letting go, love as humility, and love as posthuman. However, it will begin by explaining how Bowie subverted social norms which parade as necessity, and therefore, how Bowie love is inextricably tied up with freedom, yours and mine.
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</p><p><strong> More details and booking to come</strong>
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</p><p>Professor Sharpe has presented public lectures on ideas and David Bowie at cinemas, theatres and festivals in the UK, Australia and the USA (2016-2022). These include the Dublin David Bowie Festival (2020 and 2021). She has also participated in panel discussions on the importance of Bowie with, amongst others, Woody Woodmansey, the legendary drummer in Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. She is the author of several books, including, and most recently, David Bowie Outlaw: essays on difference, authenticity, ethics, art &amp; love (London: Routledge, 2022) https://www.routledge.com/David-Bowie-Outlaw-Essays-on-Difference-Authenticity-Ethics-Art--Love/Sharpe/p/book/9780367691066 </p>

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