Lecture
LCCP Colloquium "Philosophy as theatre: the cases of Fanon and Hamlet"
- Date
- Thursday 12 February 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.17
The Leiden Centre of Continental Philosophy is pleased to announce a lecture by Dr. Lucie Mercier, Associated Researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the Université Paris 8-Saint-Denis and Dr. Johan de Jong, University Lecturer Continental Philosophy at the Leiden Institute for Philosophy.
Rather than ask what philosophy can say about theatre or how theatre can dramatize philosophy, this workshop investigates how the theatricality of philosophy can be conceived: how does it help to view philosophy in its theatricality, and what does it mean to take theatre seriously as a philosophical contribution? In this workshop, two vastly different perspectives on this topic are compared: Lucie Mercier will approach these questions from the perspective of her work on Franz Fanon's engagements with theatre, not just as a topic but as an aspect of his 'philosophical dramaturgy'. Johan de Jong will approach the question from the perspective of his research on philosopher's interpretations of Shakespeare's Hamlet. What can these contrasting cases - arguably of one of the most canonical plays and one of the most anti-canonical thinkers - tell us about the intrinsic relations between philosophy and theatre?
About Lucie K. Mercier
Lucie K. Mercier is currently Associated Researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the Université Paris 8-Saint-Denis. Over the past years she held teaching and research positions at Kingston University, UC Berkeley and the University of Fribourg. Her research addresses the ways in which questions of race and coloniality interfere with the concepts, models and practices of philosophy and philosophical historiography. As part of her ongoing project around Frantz Fanon, she has published: ’The Translatability of Experience: On Fanon’s Language Puzzle’ (2023), ‘Frantz Fanon: Philosophizing (in) the Colonial Situation’ (2024) and ’Saint-Alban’s Contested Legacy: Fanon, Tosquelles and the Politics of Psychiatry in Postwar France’ (forthcoming, 2026). Lucie K. Mercier is a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective.
About Johan de Jong
Johan de Jong is assistant professor of continental philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is author of The Movement of Showing: Indirect Method, Critique, and Responsibility in Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger (SUNY, 2020) and he co-edited and co-authored, with Paul van Tongeren, a guide to the reading of Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathoestra (Een boek voor iedereen en niemand, Boom, 2024). He has published several articles on the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Derrida. His research focuses on the relation between philosophical thought and its many forms and genres; the (ir)responsibility of philosophical thought; and broadly on the value of what might not seem to be useful or productive. His current research project is a book on the philosophical significance of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
All are welcome!