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Call for Papers Theme: Conceptualizing 'Difference' Type: Conference and PhD Summer School Institution: Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL), University of Aberdeen Location: Aberdeen, Scotland (United Kingdom) Date: 8.–9.6.2020 / 10.–11.6.2020 Deadline: 7.2.2020 __________________________________________________ The idea of ‘difference’ governs today’s political thinking. Struggles for equality and justice are generally concerned with recognizing and protecting differences, not least because varieties of difference, including gender, sexuality, race, religion and language are used to justify political oppression, discrimination and exclusion. Difference has become axiomatic to political debate and therefore requires further reflection and analysis. This conference aims to explore and interrogate ‘difference’ as a political category. First, we aim to map categories of difference structuring political life, in past and present, and across and beyond the global North. How and to what effect have categories of ‘difference’ been fostered historically, debated philosophically and in politics, fought over by social movements, codified in law, transmitted through education and the media, and lived out in everyday life? Second, we aim to explore more meta-level questions about what ‘difference’ means in the first place. How did our modern thinking about ‘difference’ come about? What roads of political thinking does it facilitate, and which does it close off? And can we think beyond ‘difference’? In seeking answers to these questions, we intend to facilitate dialogue between a range of approaches, including but not limited to liberalism, republicanism, Marxism, de- and postcolonial, feminist and queer theories. We invite papers on a wide variety of topics, approaches and disciplines. Indicative topics include: - Is it possible to identify a common concept of ‘difference’ across contemporary debates about recognizing and accommodating difference (e.g. identity politics, multiculturalism, tolerance, diversity, post-secularism)? - How and when did modern understandings of ‘difference’ come into existence? How have categories of racial, religious, human and other ‘differences’ related to projects of colonialism, state formation, Enlightenment thinking, nationalism, capitalism etc.? - How are contemporary accounts of ‘difference’ influenced by religious traditions? - How have implicit assumptions about the Orient/Occident, religious/secular, irrational/rational, conservative/progressive, and other binaries shaped the conceptualisation and practice of civil society, democracy and human rights? - What role does ‘difference’ play in the constitution of identities and (political) communities? - How has the recent surge in populism changed the role that ‘difference’ plays in democratic politics? - What ‘difference’ are salient in law and constitutions, and to what effect? - What varieties of ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ are promoted in educational contexts, including universities? - How have existing categories of ‘difference’ been problematized and deconstructed, e.g. in debates about transgender or posthumanism? - How do concepts like creolization, in-commonness, alterity, queerness, intersectionality or plurality approach ‘difference’ and do they offer ways to go beyond it? Can ‘difference’ be theorised in a way which preserves its alterity or are all such attempts ultimately limited to the vocabulary of the familiar? - How do various disciplines presuppose different understandings of ‘difference’ (e.g. theology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, critical race studies, literature, gender studies)? Keynotes will include: - Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut) - Sabine Hark (TU Berlin) - Gupreet Mahajan (Jawaharlal Nehru University) - Anya Topolski (Radboud University Nijmegen) The conference at the University of Aberdeen will be followed by a PhD Summer School at a country house in Aberdeenshire. We will discuss PhD work in progress as well as foundational texts on difference. Participants are encouraged to attend both events. - Prospective conference speakers will normally have a PhD in hand, and are invited to register here with an abstract of around 200-400 words. - Applicants for the PhD Summer School should submit their motivation and a short thesis outline via the registration form here. Accommodation, lunch and dinners are included for all participants. Travel funding up to 200£ is included for PhDs participating in the summer school. Speakers can apply for travel funding up to 250£. Deadline for submission: 7th February 2020 More information can be found on the CISRUL website. https://cisrul.blog/seminarsandevents/conceptualizing-difference/ If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact the organisers, Anna Sophie Lauwers ([email protected]) and Fredericke Weiner ([email protected]). __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: https://interphil.polylog.org InterPhil List Archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ __________________________________________________
