Humanities at the Crossroads: Re-Configuring (Post)human Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics

Humanities at the Crossroads: Reconfiguring (Post)human Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics

A Two-Day International & Transdisciplinary Conference-cum-Workshop

The Centre for Research in Posthumanities (Bankura University, India) invites abstracts for a two-day international and transdisciplinary conference-cum-workshop on contemporary research in the posthumanities. Invited speakers include Prof. Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (Aarhus University, Denmark), Prof. Travis Holloway (SUNY Farmingdale/Pratt Institute, US), Prof. Christopher Norris (Cardiff University, UK), and Prof. Francesca Ferrando (New York University, US).

The conference will take place on February 11-12, 2023 at Bankura University in India. While participants are encouraged to attend the conference in person, limited virtual presentation slots are available. Potential participants are asked to send an abstract of 200 words and a short biography, in a Word file, to [email protected] on or before January 25, 2023. Select papers will be considered for an international publication after double-blind peer review process. All queries relating to conference may be directed to the email mentioned above.

Call for Papers

Humanistic thinking appears inadequate when it comes to engaging with contemporary climate catastrophes, a damaged ecosystem, mass species extinction, socio-political changes, the exceptional growth of technology, AI and prosthesis. These unprecedented crises require a radical restructuring/re-aligning of our established mode of knowledge production – theoretically, ethically, and methodologically.

Indeed, a profound incredulity towards Western modernity has swept across academia over the last few decades. We are forced to envision and usher in a post-dualistic mode of existence and an ontologically interdependent or entangled existence between the human and the non-human, as Bruno Latour advocated.

Once the very idea of the human is challenged, the rich legacy and edifice of humanist thoughts crafted over the past centuries crumble down. As a result, existing socio-political thoughts no longer remain purely intra-human conflicts and contracts. Non-human elements (such as green elements, geological and nanographic time, microbes, material agencies, technology, AI and many other planetary elements) make their presence inevitable in the existing intra-human drama of existence. Human agency loses its exclusivity and the non-human others reclaim their ‘agentic capacities’.

This conference-cum-workshop aims to address what posthumanism is and what consequences it might have for the Humanities and Social Sciences in general. Topics may include (but are not solely restricted to):

• Genealogy of the Posthuman: Were We Already Posthuman?

• Anti/Trans/Meta/Post-Humanism

• Critical Posthumanism

• Philosophical Posthumanism

• Posthuman (Bio)ethics, (Bio)politics and Rights

• Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Prosthesis, Human Enhancements and

Robophilosophy

• Posthuman Citizenship and Digital Surveillance

• The Anthropocene, Posthuman Ecology, Speciesism and Animal Ethics

• New Materialisms

• Art, Media, and Aesthetics in Posthuman Era

• Material Feminism

Key Facts and Necessary Information

• Abstract may be sent to [email protected] on or before January 25, 2023

• Participants are advised to send an abstract of 200 words and a short biographical note in Word files. ‘CRP Conference Submission 2023’ should be mentioned in the subject line of the email.

• Dates of the conference: 11-12 February 2023

• Registration Fees: 1500 INR & 30 USD (for participants outside India). The registration fee includes a conference kit, tea, snacks, and a working lunch on both days.

• Select papers will be considered for an international publication after a double-blind peer review process. However, the discretion and recommendation of the peer-review board will be considered final in this case.

• Participants are advised to attend the conference in person. Virtual presentation slots are limited.

• All queries relating to conference might be directed to the email id mentioned above.

• Participants seeking accommodation are requested to contact the following address: Hotel Debarshi, Laal Bazar, Bankura, Contact: 9609501791 & 8170027308