Monday Seminar:
Costica Bradatan
Solmsen Fellow (2009-2010)
Philosophy, Texas Tech University
This paper explores the “conditions of possibility” of philosophical martyrdom. Becoming a martyr can be an extremely difficult process as dying is only half of the job. It is only through a complex social, political and cultural process that a dead body becomes a “martyred body,” and an executed criminal becomes someone worthy of others’ admiration. Right after Socrates’ execution, what his close disciples could see in his prison cell was not Socrates (Socrates as we know him, that is), but just another dead body. It took, among other things, Plato’s unique genius, many centuries of intellectual labor and a particularly perceptive audience to turn that cold thing into Socrates as we know him: the “philosopher-martyr.” As I will show in my paper, the various conditions of possibility of martyrdom could be grouped under three large categories: 1) The performance of the martyrdom (the actual historical event that triggers the process). 2) The story-telling. Martyrdom is as much the deed of the one who performs it as it is the product of those who put the deed into a story. 3) The audience. Martyrdom is relational: a martyr is a martyr for someone. Both as an actual performance and as a story, martyrdom always presupposes the existence of an engaging public.
Costica Bradatan is Assistant Professor of Honors at Texas Tech University. He has also taught at Cornell University, Miami University, as well as at several universities in Europe (England, Germany, Hungary, and Romania). In June 2010 he will teach a graduate seminar on the political uses of the body at the University of Pune (India). Bradatan has held research fellowships at, among others, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of California Los Angeles, and the Newberry Library in Chicago. His research interests include Continental philosophy, history of philosophy, East-European philosophy, and philosophy of literature. Bradatan’s most recent book The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment was published with Fordham University Press in 2006. He is also the author of two other books (in Romanian): An Introduction to the History of Romanian Philosophy in the 20th Century (Bucharest, 2000) and Isaac Bernstein’s Diary (Bucharest, 2001). He has co-edited (with Serguei Alex. Oushakine) In Marx’s Shadow: Knowledge, Power and Intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Russia (Lexington Books, 2010) and guest-edited two special journal issues: one on “Philosophy as Literature” for The European Legacy (Summer 2009) and another on “Philosophy in Eastern Europe” for Angelaki (forthcoming).