New: Call for participation in two one-year circles
This summer during the NSU Summer Session in Palanga, Lithuania, there will be two new circles hosting a full-week seminar:
- Political Myths and Critique in the Age of Post-Truth (CFP)
- Experiencing Liminal Space: An Endeavour within Feminist Philosophy (CFP)
Applications will be considered until May 15th, and afterwards on a rolling basis. Please contact the coorindators of the study circle you would like to attend for more information.
Political Myths and Critique in the Age of Post-Truth (CFP)
Recent events have once again made visible the extensive influence of non-rational and
affective elements within the sphere of politics. To theorize this experience, numerous scholars
have turned to the concept of political myth. Yet, there is no consensus on what political myths
are or what function they fulfil. While some commentators argue that the power of myth over
politics has come to increase at the expense of truth, others hold that our current predicament
follows in part from an absence of productive, political myths. By contrast, a third camp claims
that myth constitutes a political constant (the continued importance of which has, however,
been severely overlooked). This summer we look forward to discussing this and related issues,
with a particular focus on the relationship between political myth and critique.
Historically, it has often been argued that myth constitutes a particularly dangerous (but also
particularly effective) political tool, precisely because it tends to resist critical scrutiny. Yet, in
her seminal A Philosophy of Political Myth, philosopher Chiara Bottici states that political
myths “can and should be a means for critique and thus for autonomy.” We invite paper
presentations that address this tension, broadly conceived.
Experiencing Liminal Space: An Endeavour within Feminist Philosophy (CFP)
How to act from a place of not-knowing? Can we take ourselves seriously while not relying on the categories of thought that have repressed and excluded ‘others’? How can we learn to listen to what we don’t already know? These are questions that need to be addressed by feminist philosophy, in order to open up space within an otherwise fixed reality. We question the rigidity of language, of subject-object relations. Instead, we want to ask what is needed to think ‘thinking’ again? What happens when I relate to a(n) (m)Other? What does this othering accomplish, besides reaffirming the concepts of subject and object? Is there a way to be with what is not-me? Can we build bridges to relate to others that will enable us to be in liminal spaces? If we can, would that mean inventing impossible ways to relate that put in question what is knowledge, language, empathy, compassion? How to be present in a place that cannot be named? How to understand, and stay with what Derrida called the impossibility of witnessing what we ourselves survive?
At the core of this seminar is an invitation to experience the liminal space of the in-between. “Liminal space is a place of ambiguity and anxiety, of no-longer and not-yet”, according to Ronald Carson. It is also a matrixial borderspace, and a witnessing of what cannot be witnessed. A liminal space is something that can emerge between me and you, between me and the world, and between me and myself. How to witness it? How to think it? How to write it? And how to investigate this together?
We especially invite workshops and shared practices to experience these liminal spaces, through listening, writing, being, investigating, thinking together. We look forward to taking the time together to stay with the anxiety of the ambiguity of a liminal space, a threshold that is not taking a position – yet.