CFP: Philosophy on Trial: The Others 'of' Philosophy

Understood as a self-critical discipline, philosophy must interrogate its limits and its relationship with its outside. The topic of philosophy’s others – both the others within and those without – raises the question of the discipline’s self-conception. To ask: “What is philosophy?” is to inquire into how philosophy determines its own center and multiplies its margins. In seeking to render explicit and to interrogate the validity of its own tacit assumptions, philosophy needs to account for and criticize how it relates to other disciplines and to whom it allows access to its space – not only discursively but also materially.

At the gates of philosophy, the discipline’s others meet: those who question its rigidity from within and those who assail it from without. Thinking in, through, and around the space of this threshold we ask: how does philosophy establish its inside(s) and its outside(s)? Who and what are allowed in its space? What disciplines, methods, approaches, and bodies are considered properly philosophical? Which are disallowed as either insufficiently rigorous or overly contaminated by other disciplines and methods? What resources does philosophy’s initial promise offer us for questioning, undermining, or transgressing its limits, and what possibilities for transformation can be found beyond its self-imposed boundaries?

We invite papers concerned with, but not limited to, the following issues:

Critical engagements with the traditionally established boundaries of philosophical discourse, including, but not limited to, those raised by:

• Feminism, trans/gender studies, and queer theory
• Postcolonial theory and its critique of the European tradition
• Analyses of race and ethnicity
• Disability studies
• Critiques of political economy

Challenges to philosophical discourse traditionally understood as ‘extra-’ or ‘non-philosophical’, as well as critiques of these traditional connotations

Interdisciplinarity internal to but marginalized within traditional philosophical discourse

The history and critique of exclusionary practices within the institution of philosophy

Traditional philosophical reflections on and critiques of concepts including, but not limited to:

• Alterity/otherness
• Boundaries/limits/borders
• Transgression
• Interiority and exteriority
• Corporeality and intercorporeality
• Performativity
• Subjectivity
• Animality

All submissions should be sent to: [email protected]