Re-inventing/reconstructing cosmopolitanism in contested spaces and post-conflict zones
25–27 May 2022
“The life of the other, the life that is not our own, is also our life since whatever sense ‘our’ life has is derived precisely from this sociality, this being already, and from the start, dependent on a world of others, constituted in and by a social world”. The other of Judith Butler is the universe of others to whom we are inescapably intertwined, irrespective of the arbitrariness of birth, borders, and the cultural particularism that segment social space, and to whom we are joined in “unchosen cohabitation” through the proximities wrought by the historical encounters, frictions, and collisions of people(s).
The purpose of this international conference is to encourage a multi- and transdisciplinary discussion of one of the core analytical and normative problems of our troubled present: the challenge of cultivating inclusive civic and social spaces at a moment when the difference is ubiquitously threatened by exclusionary ethno-nationalisms, the construction of material and symbolic walls of separation, spaces of conflict, and violence-laden representations of the essential alienness of cultural, political, and religious others.
We welcome critical examinations of this problem in various socio-spatial and temporal contexts – refugee flows and transnational migrations generated by poverty and war, civil conflicts and interactions in the world’s border areas and megacities where “North and South” and “East and West” uneasily meet, post-conflict zones at the edges of and in the interstices of states and empire(s)…We aim to broaden the scope to reflections on the necessary rethinking/reinvention/reconstitution of cosmopolitan space(s) challenged by social conflicts, war and/or mass violence.
A summer school will be held in conjunction with the conference. More information on the program, calendar, and registration will be provided in the Fall.