'At the systematic edge: Where our conceptual categories no longer work': Saskia Sassen

Saskia Sassen is Professor, Columbia University and co-chairs its Committee on Global Thought. Her new book is Expulsions- When complexity produces elementary brutalities. (Harvard University Press 2014) The language of more --more inequality, more poverty, more imprisonment, more dead land and dead water, and so on—is insufficient to mark the proliferation of extreme versions of familiar conditions. In the talk Sassen will argue that we are seeing a prolifration of systemic edges which, once crossed, render these extreme conditions invisible. She will focus on this interplay between extreme moment and the shift from visible to invisible --the capacity of a complex system to generate invisibilities no matter how material the condition. The talk is based on her Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity (Harvard University Press 2014). The new SOAS Cambridge Speaker Series brings together film-makers, writers, journalists and academics to tell stories about law, politics, gender and development in the global south, and the 'south in the north'. Confirmed speakers include: Jose Antonio Ocampo (economics); Rajeev Bhargava (political theory); Akeel Bilgrami (philosophy); Partha Chatterjee (political theory/history); Ken Loach (filmmaker), Saskia Sassen (sociology), and Richard Sennett (sociology). After an extremely successful inaugural season, the series continues this term with a focus on land, labour and cities. Co-organisers: Antara Haldar (Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, ah447@cam.ac.uk, via Twitter @antarahaldar) and Diamond Ashiagbor (School of Law, SOAS, da40@soas.ac.uk).