Keynote Speakers at this event are:
\nKaterina Ierodiakonou (University of Athens)
\nRobert Roreitner (Charles University\, Prague)
ORGANIZER: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260927T194616Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20261008T090000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20261009T170000 SUMMARY:Myth and the More-than-Human Community in the Twenty-First Century UID:20260928T195247Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@fe80:0:0:0:10f5:e0ff:fe86:30ee%3 TZID:Europe/Vienna LOCATION:Vienna\, Austria DESCRIPTION:Workshop Topic
\nCan community&mdash\;and\, more specifically\, the more-than-human community&mdash\;be conceived as anything other than a myth? The term myth itself embodies a fundamental ambivalence: it can signify a lie\, fabrication\, or ideological fiction\, yet it simultaneously refers to a primordial\, sacred\, and potentially non-hierarchical form of speech through which worlds are disclosed and relations instituted. Rather than seeking to resolve this tension\, the workshop places it at the centre of its inquiry\, examining the processes through which community is enacted\, reflected upon\, and mediated. It asks how more-than-human forms of coexistence might be conceptualised through engagement with relational and Indigenous ontologies\, without romanticising or appropriating them. Ultimately\, the workshop questions whether myth can serve not merely as an object of critique but also as a resource for rethinking community beyond identity\, hierarchy\, sovereignty\, and mastery.
\nAgainst this backdrop\, the question of belonging emerges as the political and religious articulation of community: who belongs and on what terms. Contemporary debates oscillate between nationalist and exclusionary imaginaries grounded in identity\, sovereignty\, and closure\, and emerging concepts of more-than-human communities shaped by interdependence\, exposure\, and entanglement in the face of ecological crisis. This workshop starts from the premise that what these formations share is not a stable foundation\, but a constitutive mythic dimension that determines who can speak\, act\, and share responsibility. It asks how the institutionalisation of community through myth can enact an immunitarian logic\, simultaneously protecting certain members while delimiting others\, rendering belonging both a safeguard and a justification for exclusion or even sacrifice.
\nAgainst this background\, the workshop also asks how more-than-human community can be thought politically beyond the logic of sovereignty and moral universalism. How might concepts of vulnerability\, exposure\, becoming-animal\, and ecological entanglement challenge dominant political imaginaries of protection\, mastery\, and immunisation? In this sense\, the workshop seeks to open a space for rethinking community not as a moral or juridical project of inclusion\, but as a fragile\, conflictual\, and transformative field of shared life across species.
\nContent of Submission
\nBracketing the binary between the real and the fictive\, and drawing on thinkers such as Derrida\, Nancy\, Latour\, Haraway &mdash\; as well as Nietzschean and post-Nietzschean critiques of humanism\, morality\, and political sovereignty &mdash\; the workshop explores community as poised between impossibility and inevitability\, between rupture and relational becoming. Focusing on myth as both a totalising and interruptive form\, it investigates how communities take shape through narratives\, practices\, and institutions&mdash\;such as taboo\, sacrifice\, ritual\, law\, technology\, and regimes of purity and pollution&mdash\;and how these determinations are legitimised\, naturalised\, and contested. Centering on the consequences for interspecies relations and ecological entanglements\, the workshop examines how the stabilisation of community simultaneously establishes boundaries and exclusions.
\nRecognising the wide spectrum of questions encompassed by the workshop&rsquo\;s theme\, we invite contributions that engage with\, but are not limited to\, the following questions:
\n \; \; &bull\; Can myth operate as an interruptive rather than totalising form\, enabling non-identitarian\, non-sovereign modes of coexistence?
\; \; &bull\; How can community be approached as a process of exposure and relation rather than a stable foundation\, particularly in more-than-human contexts?
\; \; &bull\; How can Nietzschean critiques of humanism\, morality\, and political sovereignty help to rethink community beyond liberal inclusion and moral universalism?
\; \; &bull\; How might diverse modes of relationality&mdash\;such as kinship\, companion species\, sympoiesis\, and Terrestrials&mdash\;shape\, extend\, or even rethink the notion of community?
\; \; &bull\; How do narratives and practices relate to one another\, and in what ways do myths both reflect and enable practices of eating\, killing\, sacrifice\, care\, mediation\, and automation while drawing lines of inclusion and exclusion?
\; \; &bull\; In what ways can dialogue between postmodern thought and Indigenous knowledge generate productive insights for understanding community\, relationality\, and practice?
Forms of Submission
\nPresentations may take the form of individual papers. To be considered\, proposals must include the presenter&rsquo\;s name\, paper title\, and full contact details (email address and institutional affiliation)\, along with an abstract (500 words) and a brief biographical note. The workshop will take place in Vienna on 8&ndash\;9 October 2026. Presentations will be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by 30 minutes of discussion. Submissions should be sent electronically as a single PDF file. Scholars at all stages of their academic careers are warmly encouraged to apply.
\nContact
\nPlease submit proposals to: myth.community@lists.univie.ac.at until the 17.7.2026 \;
The organizers are exploring publication options\; however\, participation in the workshop does not imply a promise of publication.
Actual problems and critical situations &ndash\; such as ecological crisis and political disruption &ndash\; have more and more shown the need for a thought that can be effective\, but nonetheless not all-encompassing.
\nThis conference proposes &ldquo\;experimenting philosophy of religion&rdquo\; as field\, method and a performative mode of exchange: a practice of inquiry that acknowledges precarity and embraces provisional possibilities of thinking. We treat &ldquo\;experiment&rdquo\; in its full sense: trial\, risk\, and iterative testing\, where concepts are articulated\, confronted\, and\, when necessary\, allowed to fail.
\nExperimentation is not external to philosophy of religion but constitutive of it\, insofar as the field opens possibilities for creating what is other &ndash\; new conceptual and practical configurations &ndash\; while attending to how these emerge within existing disciplines. \;
\nWe convene multiperspective approaches to pressing questions in politics\, ecology\, and aesthetics: What perspectives does the philosophy of religion offer on the climate crisis? How can these insights inform political and social practice? How do aesthetic experiences and approaches reflect philosophical-religious research\, and vice versa? \;
\nWe want to provide a room for young voices in order to express their research and test the capacities\, practical and theoretical\, of philosophy of religion.
\nThe conference will have a three parts format\, divided in three days (planned days are 21&ndash\;23 October 2026). The section are the followings:
\n1. \; \; \; \; \;Podium discussion with Vienna‑based senior scholars on the field&rsquo\;s trajectories and futures\;
\n2. \; \;Three thematic panels (organized by VDTR members): Politics &\; Society\; Ecology &\; Nature\; Arts &\; Aesthetics. Contributions by postdocs and PhD candidates\; strong peer‑to‑peer format\;
\n\n3. \; \;Active\, non‑conventional session (e.g.\, reading and discussion group\, collective writing\, method try‑outs) that goes beyond lecture/listen formats.
ORGANIZER;CN=Christian Faber;CN=Marco Fiorletta: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260927T194616Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20270121T090000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20270122T170000 SUMMARY:Politics of Commitment. Militant Subjectivity and Democratic Contestation UID:20260928T195249Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@fe80:0:0:0:10f5:e0ff:fe86:30ee%3 TZID:Europe/Vienna LOCATION:Vienna\, Austria DESCRIPTION:Call for Papers
\nPolitics of Commitment. Militant Subjectivity and Democratic Contestation
\nWorkshop: 22 January 2027\, University of Vienna\, Department of Political Science\,
Organisation: Denis Vyaznikov and Anna Wieder
Commitment is indispensable to political action. Political projects require actors who are willing to stand in for particular principles\, causes\, or collective aims\, to sustain their engagement over time\, and to act together with others. While strong political commitments can generate collective agency and involvement in political struggles\, they can also give rise to exclusion\, dogmatism\, ideological closure\, and an unwillingness to expose one&rsquo\;s position to contestation. This ambivalence is particularly challenging for democratic politics: On the one hand\, democracy requires politically engaged actors who are prepared to commit themselves to collective projects and sustain them over time. Without such commitments\, democratic politics risks being reduced to episodic participation\, procedural decision-making\, or the management of already existing interests. On the other hand\, strong commitments may undermine the very openness and contestability that democracy requires.
\nThe workshop approaches commitment as a problem for political theory and political philosophy. It sets out to fathom which forms of commitment are necessary for politics as well as what kinds of are compatible with the openness\, contingency\, and conflictuality of democratic politics. How can commitment enable collective political action without foreclosing disagreement and contestation? Can political commitment be strong without becoming absolute\, and remain open to revision without losing its binding force? We seek to examine the conditions under which political commitments emerge\, how they are sustained and transformed\, and how they relate to political subjectivation\, collective action\, conflict\, and democratic practice. In doing so\, we aim to bring into dialogue different approaches to commitment\, including understandings of commitment as political obligation\, loyalty\, identification\, partisanship\, decision\, promise\, or collective practice. The question of political commitment and political binding force will be explored along the following four lines of discussion:
\n1. Commitment under Conditions of Contingency: Binding without Foundations
\nOne point of departure is the tension between the need for political binding force and the absence of any ultimate ground that could guarantee such bindingness. Given the contingency of political orders and relations\, identities and institutions cannot be grounded in an unquestionable foundation. Yet political action seems to require forms of commitment through which contingent decisions\, political projects\, and collective identities acquire a degree of durability and practical force. How\, then\, can political commitment be conceived under conditions of contingency? Does commitment suspend contingency\, or is contingency itself constitutive of political commitment? What is the relationship between commitment and decision? Can political actors commit themselves to something whose validity cannot be guaranteed by an ultimate foundation? And how does commitment bind present actors to future possibilities?
\n2. Commitment and Political Subjectivation
\nAnother question concerns the relation of commitment and subjectivity: does commitment require a stable political subject\, or are practices of commitment involved in the very processes of political subject constitution? Through political identification\, association\, and shared practices\, actors may become part of a collective project whose boundaries\, aims\, and identity remain politically contested. To what extent does commitment constitute political subjectivity rather than merely express an already existing identity? How do individual commitments become collective political projects? What is the relationship between commitment\, identification\, affect\, solidarity\, and political association? How does a political we emerge through practices of commitment\, and what forms of inclusion and exclusion accompany its constitution?
\n3. Commitment\, Conflict\, and Dissensus
\nAnother central tension concerns the relationship between political commitment and democratic discourse/practice. Political projects require a certain degree of stability\, persistence\, and identification. Yet strong commitments may also become sources of dogmatism\, ideological closure\, or fanaticism where political subjects fully identify with and absolutely invest in a sacred value. Fanatical actors refuse compromise\, reject deliberation\, and treat their cause as non-negotiable. This raises a difficult question: can conflicts rooted in such ultimate convictions ever produce democratic effects\, or are they simply incompatible with democracy? Can one remain committed to a political project while remaining open to the possibility that one&rsquo\;s commitment is mistaken\, incomplete\, or in need of transformation? What role do antagonism and dissensus play in sustaining or challenging political commitments? Is exposure to contestation a limitation of commitment\, or a condition of its democratic character?
\n4. Symbols\, Practices\, and Institutions of Commitment
\nA final line of inquiry concerns the practices and institutions through which political commitments acquire binding force. Political actors make proposals\, affirm decisions\, negotiate\, promise\, declare\, or otherwise establish claims that acquire collective significance. While acts of political binding often rely on moral norms and legal institutions\, the question remains as to what makes these commitments politically effective. What role do promises\, declarations\, narratives\, symbols\, and political performances play in producing collective bindingness? And what is the relationship between commitment and institutions? Can institutions sustain political commitments over time without neutralising their conflictual and contingent character? Conversely\, what happens to political commitments when the ideas of a movement become institutionalised?
\nThe workshop invites contributions that engage with these questions and\, more broadly\, with the relationship between different notions of commitment such as conviction\, devotion\, identification\, and solidarity on the one hand\, and political concepts such as subjectivation\, dissensus\, antagonism\, collective action\, decision-making\, and institution. We are particularly interested in contributions that approach commitment from post-foundational and radical democratic perspectives\, while also welcoming genealogical\, deliberative and critical theoretic engagements from a broad range of disciplinary and intellectual traditions.
\nFormat
\nThe workshop focuses primarily on discussion and collective engagement with the approaches and contributions of the participants. Speakers will be asked to circulate their papers in advance. We kindly ask participants to stick to a 5000 word limit. Each contribution will be followed by a short response identifying central points for discussion.
\n20 minutes presentation\, 5 minutes response\, 35 minutes discussion.
\nSubmission
\nPlease submit an abstract of 300&ndash\;500 words\, together with a short biographical note and institutional affiliation.
\nDeadline for abstracts: 31 October 2026
Notification of acceptance: 15 November 2026
Submission of papers: 6 January 2027
Contact
\nAnna Wieder\, anna.wieder@univie.ac.at
Denis Vyaznikov denis.vyaznikov@univie.ac.at