Fuge of Melancholy

Melancholy, with its very long history and changing contexts and senses, has gained many, not always harmonizable, meanings. Its polysemicity, however, seems to attest not so much to a conceptual defect, but rather as a reflection of the diversity of the phenomenon. We invite you to join us in an interdisciplinary project to outline this diversity.
We would like to create a fugue of melancholy, to let the various variations on this theme resound.

We are interested in the history of melancholy, especially its as-yet-unknown nooks and crannies. We are familiar with the basic works describing its history, but we would like to enrich the studies that have been produced so far on the subject.

We should recall its various interpretations: melancholy as a disease of the body and its image in various medical discourses; as a disorder of the soul and a mental health pathology with all its psychological theories; as a type of character with its various typologies; as a certain mood—whether long-lasting or fleeting—with all its implications for the arrangement of space that evokes the mood or dissipates it.

We are also interested in melancholy as a mode of existence—desirable or demanding its avoidance; its connections with similar modes of existence, such as despair or boredom. In addition, what is the relationship between melancholy and time? Melancholy and ethics, if understood as man's inhabitation of the world? However, we are not only concerned with philosophical insights, but also with biographical, individual and case studies.

Moreover, we are interested in melancholy as a condition: necessary, sufficient or one of the possible—for creativity in many possible fields (art, science—also in the pre-modern sense of the word: alchemy, astrology, etc.). And what follows is melancholy in various fields of art—not only in literature, music and painting, but wherever a person in a melancholic state creates something.

We are passionate about the theory of melancholy and the melancholy of (any?) theory. And along with these, the traces of melancholy in philosophy (both in the biographies of philosophers and
in their thinking).

We would not want to exclude popular culture and how the theme of melancholy is developed here from our area of reflection.

We are concerned as well with those aspects of melancholy that connect to social theory (for example, feminist perspective) and politics (for instance 'left-wing melancholy').

However, we especially ask for such insights into melancholy that are as yet unknown to us. We invite you to discuss these issues.

Deadline for submission of abstracts

30 September 2022

Abstracts should contain

1. maximum of 300 words (abstract content)
2. title in English
3. keywords
4. a note about the author (including degree, affiliation, contact details)

Conference fee

(payment upon confirmation of eligibility, after 15 October 2022)

active participation: PLN 160
active participation + lunches: PLN 280
active participation + lunches and dinners: PLN 440