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Call for Papers Theme: Human Rights and the Mobilization of Testimony Type: Interdisciplinary PhD Symposium Institution: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University Location: Ghent (Belgium) Date: 15.–17.6.2015 Deadline: 24.4.2015 __________________________________________________ One of the major interests that unites the diverging interdisciplinary perspectives on human rights is the centrality of witnessing and testimony. As James Dawes puts it, “Atrocity both requires and resists representation. The argument that we must bear witness to atrocity, that we must tell the stories, is the core of the catechism of the human rights movement” (Evil Men 8). Testimonial narratives, in their various cultural and legal incarnations, have become pervasive as the main tool for making people aware of rights abuses in the era of human rights. Testimonies activate rights discourses; they make them real. Culturally, this dovetails with the philosopher Richard Rorty’s famous assertion that “sad and sentimental stories” have the power to wake us up and make us take note of humanitarian crises. Of course, testimony is also an intricate part of legal rights discourses, as a witness’s or survivor’s account in court, as a narrative constructed by victims to acquire certain legal statuses (think refugee status), or more broadly as a means to claim the subjectivity to which human rights entitle us by reaffirming the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the speaker (Derrida, Demeure). We invite paper proposals from PhD students from any field or discipline that address the place of witnessing, testifying, or testimonial narratives in human rights. Possible questions for discussion include, but are not limited to: - How has the use of testimony for humanitarian or human rights purposes changed over time? - What is the relationship between witnessing and testifying? - What is the role of testimony within the modern human rights movement? - What does the act of testifying accomplish at a social, political, or legal level? - How does the interaction between lived experience and collective memory affect human rights work? - What is or can be the place of rights holders’ narratives in human rights law or policy? Submission Send a 300-word abstract for a 15-minute paper (including title, presenter’s name, institutional affiliation, and any technology requests), a description of your PhD research project (one paragraph), and a short CV (max. one page) as a single Word document to Sean Bex ([email protected]), Prof. Dr. Stef Craps ([email protected]), and Prof. Dr. Eva Brems ([email protected]). Deadline for submission of applications: 24 April 2015 Notification of acceptance: 1 May 2015 Deadline for submission of paper drafts: 1 June 2015 Confirmed Keynote Speakers Lyndsey Stonebridge Professor of Literature and Critical Theory at the University of East Anglia Rosanne Kennedy Associate Professor of Literature and Gender, Sexuality, and Culture at the Australian National University’s College of Arts and Social Sciences Conference website: http://www.cmsi.ugent.be/cfp-phd-symposium-human-rights-and-the-mobilization-of-testimony/ __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
