"...the point is to change it" 40th Anniversary of the RPA

Conference Theme

The past several years have been characterized by an onslaught of crises and catastrophes: a global pandemic, a continual lethal battle against racism, dramatic weather patterns and forest fires, and the culmination of an imperial tug-of-war between NATO and Russia. We have a lot to critique, from neglectful and exclusionary healthcare policies to inequitable and gendered care burdens to systemic racism to industrial perpetrators of climate change and the entanglement of all this with the profit motive of capitalism and colonial logics. But along with our critiques, we are inspired to build anew as we divest from systems and structures that enforce injustice.

Fredric Jameson said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Imagining a new world requires a bold and courageous imagination, one that is capable of conceiving radical new realities. Do we truly believe that "another world is possible"? Can we speculate about the concrete details of that world (and/or look to the past for inspiration for the future)? As the title of this year's conference is a nod to Karl Marx's famous adage, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it," we hope to share ideas about this process of social transformation, so that theory can transform into practice and the future we hope to see.

Keynotes

• Dr. Alfred Frankowski, author of The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Toward a Political Sense of Mourning
• Peter Frase, of Jacobin magazine editorial board and author of Four Futures: Life After Capitalism 

Featured Book Panels

• Dr. Tru Leverette, author of With Fists Raised: Radical Art, Contemporary Activism, and the Iconoclasm of the Black Arts Movement
• Dr. George Forlas, author of Anti-Colonial Solidarity: Race, Reconciliation, and MENA Liberation
• Dr. Travis Holloway, author of How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene

Contact

For further information, contact the conference Program Committee:  

Tiffany Montoya, Program Committee Chair: [email protected]      

Jess Dillard-Wright, Program Committee: [email protected]       

Pedro Lebron Ortiz, Program Committee: [email protected]        

Brandon Absher, Program Committee and RPA Co-Coordinator: [email protected] 

Sarah Vitale, Program Committee and RPA Co-Coordinator: [email protected]

Sarah LaChance Adams, Program Committee & Onsite Conference Organizer: [email protected]    

Conference Webpage: http://www.radicalphilosophyassociation.org/15th-biennial-conference.html