BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260626T102142Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20120920T100000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20120921T180000 SUMMARY:Unstable Narratives of the Sovereign Body from the Age of the Enlightenment to World War I UID:20260703T004532Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-bd7db559-gt5qm TZID:Europe/London LOCATION:Cambridge\, United Kingdom DESCRIPTION:The mid- to late eighteenth century saw transformations in our \nconception of history\, social and political systems\, economic modes and \ncultural forms. In the West as well as in the wider world\, developments \nin civil and commercial society were accompanied by - and propelled &ndash\; \nintellectual conceptualisations of the self amongst familiar groups\, of \nthe individual within the state\, of humans within nature\, and of states \nin relation to one another. At the centre of these multi-fold \ntransformations was the desire to control this change by creating a \nnarrative which explained the past and the present and helped forecast \nthe future. Nascent political and economic theories\, budding \nphilosophies of history\, new religious forms and fresh social and legal \nsystems were devised with the purpose of narrating progress and change \nand accounting for continuity in geographical and chronological spaces.\nThe French Revolution and\, perhaps more importantly\, its aftermath\,\n challenged the optimism of eighteenth-century systems by pointing to \ntheir flaws and instabilities. Major social\, political and economic \nsystems were created in the nineteenth century\, all accompanied by \nstrict philosophical &ndash\; and often religious - understandings of human \nhistory. Attempting to counteract the instability of what became \ndescribed as a &ldquo\;metaphysical Enlightenment project"\, nineteenth-century \nsystems attempted to tie all the loose ends left by the previous century\n thinkers by creating grand narratives which could compellingly direct \nindividual\, group and state action. The new projects offered solutions \nfor revolution and violence\, political representation and liberty\, \nsocial equality and harmony\, as they promised peace as the end-result of\n their systematic endeavours. With the outbreak of World War I\, the \nflaws of nineteenth-century projects became only too clear\,\n and they too became historically dated and their contribution to the \nsovereign bodies came into question.\n\n

This colloquium aims to investigate the creation and development of\n unstable narratives of social\, political\, economic and intellectual \nhistory from 1740 to 1914. The objective is to examine how individual \nthinkers or groups of thinkers which can be aligned together conceived \nof their systems and tried to cater for variations in the course of \nhuman history through the creation of stable narratives.

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Informal enquiries can be sent to Dr Isabel DiVanna (id239@cam.ac.uk).

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