The 2017 issue of Studia Phaenomenologica will be devoted to the phenomenology of animality. This area can be approached in at least two different ways: one can explore the fruitfulness of the problem of animal being by starting from the fundamental questions of phenomenology; or one can start from issues related to animal philosophy, and explore the explanatory potential of phenomenology in relation to this area.

Depending on the approach taken, the volume’s topic can therefore be understood either as a “phenomenology of animality” which focuses on the distinctive methodology of the phenomenological approach to the animal, or as a “phenomenology of animality” which focuses on the thematic specificity of the animal problem within the vast field of phenomenology. Thus, one might ask, on the one hand, what function can have the phenomenon of animal life within the general framework of a phenomenological research program, whether this is transcendental, ontological, hermeneutical or ethical. And, on the other hand, one might investigate the role phenomenology as such plays in the context of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary contemporary debates about the animal which engage perspectives from biology, animal psychology, ethology, law, etc.

Accordingly, there are two intertwined questions here, and both are equally important: one refers to the significance of the animal being for phenomenology, while the other is related to the significance of phenomenology for the current field of “animal philosophy”. But then, what does the specificity of the phenomenological approach to the animal consist in? How can one identify the dimensions that distinguish and individualize the phenomenological approach in contrast to other forms of animal philosophy? By virtue of which exactly is an approach to the animal a phenomenological one?

Given the fact that the history of phenomenology reveals multifarious approaches to the animal, and thus we are not dealing with one phenomenology of animality, but with a plurality of phenomenologies, one should perhaps attempt to identify a common core or at least central factors that give coherence and unity to this field.

If the phenomenological approach must by definition be carried out in the first person, focusing in a strictly descriptive way on what is given and on what shows itself, and if, furthermore, its paramount task is that of uncovering both the structure of subjective experience and the constitutive structures of the described phenomena, then the same requirements have to be applied to the question of the animal and the diverse experiences we have with animals.

Thus, first, the phase of phenomenological reduction requires a preliminary bracketing of all scientific or philosophical theories about animals in general; in other words, phenomenology should attempt to disregard from the beginning any traditional understanding of the animal that may divert or blur the phenomenological sight.

Second, as an essentially methodical approach, phenomenology raises the question regarding the conditions of access to the being of the animal or to the animal world; from this perspective, it constantly produces a critical discourse highlighting the limits of empathy and the risks of transfer meaning from the human to the animal sphere.

Third, phenomenology starts from everyday experience of and with animals, and investigates the concrete ways these are given to us in our world of factical life, avoiding any artificial construct such as a laboratory setting.

And finally, in virtue of its originally eidetic character, phenomenology focuses on the question of the essence of the animal, the problem of the animality, and the essential structures relating the human and the animal spheres of experience.

Articles can be submitted in English, French, and German. The submissions should comply with the following guidelines: http://www.zetabooks.com/media/wysiwyg/Journals/2016_SP_FORMAL_EDITORIAL_RULES.pdf

EXTENDED DEADLINE : 15 January, 2017.

The papers should be sent to: submissions@phenomenology.ro

Animal Agency: Language, Politics, Culture

Challenging human exceptionalism, speciesism, and anthropocentrism in theory and practice asks not only that we investigate other animals’ capabilities, desires, and relations; we also need to rethink concepts such as language, politics, and culture, with them. This conference addresses the question of nonhuman animal agency from different theoretical directions, ranging from philosophy to ethology, aiming to critically reflect on the exclusion of other animals from thought and practice, and to explore alternatives.

This intensive two day seminar welcomes a broad range of responses from a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, geography, literary studies, art history, politics and critical studies. Companion animals are welcome to join, if so inclined. As are proposals to (non-intrusively) mediate the active presence of wildlife or liminal creatures.

Please submit a 250-300 word proposal by the 31st of January to: e.r.meijer@uva.nl.

For more information, please contact Eva Meijer or Clemens Driessen e.r.meijer@uva.nl / clemens.driessen@wur.nl.

Info : https://animalagency.wordpress.com/

Workshop on Food Justice : CFP

Workshop on Food Justice

Call for Proposals

May 13th and 14th, 2016

Michigan State University

Food justice is a growing movement that has inspired both on-the-ground community projects and theoretical articulations across multiple disciplines. This workshop aims to facilitate scholars and practitioners coming together to share expertise around the challenges and opportunities in food justice. The two-day conference will include scholarly talks and visits to local environmental justice projects. Papers should be accessible to a public audience.

We invite proposals on the justice of practices such as:

Food security and food sovereignty
Local food, slow food, or other food-related social movements
International trade and regulation
Agricultural ecology and sustainability
Labor at all points in the food system
Non-human animals in agriculture
Food, diet, or cooking
Intersectional perspectives on food systems
Agricultural policy and food standards
Seeds and genetically modified foods

The workshop is intended as a transdisciplinary space to forge connections between theories and between theory and practice. Papers in disciplines such as anthropology, critical race studies, disability studies, indigenous studies, economics, gender and sexuality studies, geography, history, literary criticism, philosophy, religious studies, sociology, and the human dimensions of agricultural and environmental sciences are all encouraged. Particularly welcome are talks which bridge theory and practice.

250-word abstracts for individual papers or 500-word panel proposals, are due by March 4th, 2016. Please submit proposals through the workshop webpage at workshoponfoodjustice.com/call-for-proposals/ and direct any questions to workshoponfoodjustice@gmail.com.

Info : http://workshoponfoodjustice.com/call-for-proposals/

Animals Under Capitalism : Art and Politics (Bristol, 2016)

Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics

University of Bristol
Institute of Advanced Studies
May 25, 2016

Deadline for Proposal : December 10 (250-300 word proposal)

Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics

The University of Bristol invites submissions for a 1-day conference to be held on May 25, 2016, on the subject of ‘Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics’. The conference aims to explore the relations between capitalism and animal life, and will emphasise the following themes: 1) the intersections between capitalism and the ‘Sixth Extinction’; 2) artistic representations of animals under the aegis of capitalism; 3) the biopolitics of domestication; 4) the development of industrial animal farms.

This conference welcomes a broad range of responses from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, politics and critical studies. Other topics might include:

artistic responses to endangered and extinct animals
the development of zoos
animals under the law
feminist responses to animal exploitation
Marxism and animals
animal futures and science fiction
animals, class and biopolitics
big game hunting and ‘wildlife management’
Freud, Darwin, modernity and animal life
visual representations of animals in sculpture and painting
literary responses to ‘animals under capitalism’
pre-capitalist modes of relating to animals and post-capitalist alternatives

Please submit a 250-300 word proposal by the 10^th of December to: mm8179@bristol.ac.uk

Conference Summary

Capitalism inaugurated a new set of patterns vis-à-vis our relationships with animal others. This conference explores what some of those relationship are. In this context, we welcome papers that address the following questions:

1) what ‘structures of feeling’ emerged during the long and complex evolution from feudalism to mercantilism to industrial capitalism in the eighteenth century?

2) Does the ‘animal’ signify different things as new economic systems come to predominate, and, if so, to what extent do alternative conceptions of the animal exist despite (or in spite of) these economic configurations?

3) How are changing relationships with animal life embodied in art and popular culture – in paintings, novels, poetry and folklore? In what ways do artistic representations of animals both embody and resist the dominant cultural understandings of their time?

4) What alternative futures have artists imagined for animals (perhaps particularly in works of science fiction?)

Date and place: 25^th of May, 2016; the Institute of Advanced Studies (University of Bristol)

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ias/diary/conferences/animals-under-capitalism/

CFP : 20th Anniversary Meeting of the Symposium for Phenomenology “Play and Power”

20th Anniversary Meeting of the Symposium for Phenomenology

“Play and Power”

4-9 July 2016

PERUGIA, ITALIA

Deadline for abstracts (800 words) : February 15, 2016
Date limite pour les résumés (800 mots) : 15 février 2016

Call for papers

[pour la version française, voir plus bas]

In his ground breaking study Homo Ludens (1938), cultural historian Johan Huizinga, argued that play, not labor, is the primary formative element of human culture. In play, human beings have the power to act and create; when they don’t, something is wrong. In its 20th year, the Symposium for Phenomenology is concerned with the ways in which people play with their possibilities and are being played with by powers beyond their influence. From child’s play and fooling around to loosing oneself in artistic, sportive, competitive or combative action, people shape and exert their skills, undergo discipline and engage in practices. These are games in the large, metaphorical sense. In activity, and passivity, we play with possibilities intrinsic to traditions and institutions, under whose constraint we also stand, sometimes with unanticipated, even violent consequences. Through play are shaped subjectivities (collective and singular), ‘possibilities of personhood’, modes of being and interacting.

Playing confers, changes, and imposes form on bodies and sites, and clearly on events and institutions. Thus play exercises power on power exercised. As such it opens possibility as much as it coerces practices and shapes our abilities to frame our circumstances, sometimes at the risk of being framed in turn.

The concept of play is arguably key to many domains of philosophy. In aesthetics, we find the notion of the Feierspiel and that of artistic creation (from Kant and Schiller to Gadamer). In philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of culture, we find play as social shaping and contestation (Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuze, Caillois, Foucault, Hacking). The ontological dimension of play concerns its disclosure of worlds and the significance of subjects (Fink, Axelos). In phenomenology, play refers us to explorations of possibility and praxis (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty). In turn, we are led to ask: who are the subjects of play and what role does play have in the unfolding of subjectivities?

Play thus concerns capacities, ends, and outcomes—envisioned and unanticipated. Play implies rules and stakes within and without a given game. The dimension of power appears both as object of struggle and limitations placed on given games, whether political or cultural. The semantic universe of “play” in the French, jeu/hors-jeu/enjeu points us toward a series of fields, each one structured and delimited by rules and norms (Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Winnicott), evincing significant pluralism and plasticity, as well as retroaction and hardness.

On the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Symposium for Phenomenology, we invite members for contributions to phenomenologies of play, in their critical, aesthetic, cultural, ontological and political dimensions. Although phenomenology arose within and as a European tradition, we seek to understand play and power today beyond Europe and Eurocentrism. We encourage contributions to the themes of play and power in light of political, geographical, legal, and symbolic power—notably, where power is presented as play, ludic and/or deadly serious, or where play reveals and disrupts the structures and boundaries of power.

With the focus on play and agonistics, we welcome contributions on
– Play and power in critical philosophy and political theory
– Play as aesthetic creation and destruction
– Play and institution: power games and contestation
– Play in community construction (and destruction)
– Les jeux du pouvoir/power plays in geopolitics
– Symbolic play, symbolic power
– Play and power in and beyond “the West”
– Play and race, play and color (lines, hierarchies, confluences)
– Play and terror

We welcome discussion of the methodological difficulties posed to phenomenology by the multiple significations of play (play forging friendship and community, play in good and bad faith, play as critique—“just gaming,” play and normative praxis).

We solicit presentations in French and in English on topics of contemporary urgency that integrate the themes of play and power. Our hope is to foster open debates on these themes. Our concern is with phenomenology as critique, criticism, and indeed crisis. We are enquiring into the relevance of phenomenology to questions of contestation, agonistics, and contemporary realities in and beyond Europe. Presentations drawn from the many disciplines related to phenomenology (from sociology, psychology, critical history, and critical race theory) are likewise encouraged.

Please send an abstract of 800 words to symposium.phenomenology@gmail.com by February 15 2016, at the very latest. Acceptance notifications will be sent by March 15.

Symposium de Phénoménologie – 20^ème anniversaire

“Jeu et pouvoir”
4-9 juillet 2016, Pérouse (Italie)

Dans son étude séminale Homo ludens (1938), l’historien de la culture Johan Huizinga soutint que le jeu, plutôt que le travail, constitue l’élément formateur primordial de la culture humaine. En jouant, les êtres humains ont le pouvoir d’agir et de créer. Privés de cette capacité, quelque chose ne va pas. Pour sa vingtième année, le Symposium de Phénoménologie se penchera sur les manières dont les gens jouent avec leurs possibilités tout en faisant l’objet de jeux de pouvoirs qu’ils ne maitrisent pas. En passant des jeux de l’enfance et des bouffonneries à la perte de soi dans l’action artistique, sportive, concurrentielle ou combative, les humains forment et exercent leurs capacités, se disciplinent et s’engagent dans des pratiques. Ils jouent donc au sens large, voire métaphorique. Actifs ou passifs, nous jouons avec des possibilités inhérentes aux traditions et institutions, néanmoins sous leur contrainte – souvent avec des conséquences non anticipées, voire violentes. C’est ainsi et à travers le jeu que se forgent des subjectivités collectives et singulières, des modes d’être humain et d’être ensemble.

Le jeu confère et impose des formes aux corps et aux lieux, pour ne pas parler de la formation des événements et des institutions. Ainsi le jeu exerce-t-il du pouvoir sur du pouvoir exercé. En tant que tel, il ouvre des possibilités autant qu’il contraint des pratiques ; les jeux servent de montures orientant notre optique du monde, parfois au risque de nous faire subir des coups montés.

La notion de jeu a un rôle clef dans de nombreux domaines de la philosophie. En esthétique, nous trouvons l’idée de Feierspiel et création artistique (de Kant et Schiller à Gadamer). L’anthropologie philosophique et la philosophie de la culture proposent leurs visions du jeu comme formation sociale et contestation (Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuze, Caillois, Foucault, Hacking). La dimension ontologique du jeu a trait aux manières dont il met au jour les mondes et la signification des sujets (Fink, Axelos). En phénoménologie, jouer nous renvoie à l’exploration des possibilités et des pratiques (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty). Se pose ainsi la question : qui sont les sujets du jeu et quel rôle a-t-il dans le déploiement des subjectivités ?

Jouer comprend donc des capacités, des fins et des effets – prévus ou non. Jouer implique des règles et des enjeux dans et en dehors des jeux. La dimension de pouvoir apparaît autant comme objet de lutte que comme limitation imposée aux jeux, qu’ils soient politiques ou culturels. Ainsi, l’univers sémantique du jeu, hors-jeu, enjeu, nous pointe vers une variété de champs, chacun structuré et délimité par des règles et des normes (Wittgenstein, Lyotard, Winnicott), qui manifestent toutes de la pluralité et de la plasticité, de la rétroaction et de la rigidité.

A l’occasion du vingtième anniversaire du Symposium de Phénoménologie, nous invitons des soumissions sur la phénoménologie du jeu eu égard à ses dimensions critiques, esthétiques, culturelles, ontologiques et politiques. Bien que la phénoménologie ait commencé dans et comme une tradition européenne, nous nous proposons de réfléchir au jeu et au pouvoir au-delà de l’Europe et de l’eurocentrisme. Nous sollicitons des contributions sur les thèmes de jeu et pouvoir à la lumière du pouvoir politique, géographique, légal et symbolique – notamment là où le pouvoir est représenté justement comme un jeu (ludique ou fatalement sérieux), et là aussi où jouer démasque et déstabilise les structures et limites du pouvoir.

Nous nous intéressons particulièrement (mais non exclusivement) aux thématiques suivantes :

Jeu et pouvoir dans la philosophie critique et la théorie politique ;
Le jeu comme création et destruction ;
Jeu et institution : jeux de pouvoir et de contestation
Le rôle du jeu dans la construction et la destruction de la communauté ;
Les jeux du pouvoir en géopolitique ;
Jeu symbolique, pouvoir symbolique ;
Jeu et pouvoir dans et au-delà de l’Occident ;
Jeu et ethnicité, jeu et couleur (démarcations, hiérarchies, confluences)
Jeu et terreur.

Sont bienvenues également toutes discussions sur les difficultés posées à la phénoménologie par les multiples significations du signifiant « le jeu » (le jeu forgeant amitiés et communautés ; le jeu de bonne ou de mauvaise foi ; le jeu comme critique – voire farce ; le jeu et les pratiques normatives).

Nous sollicitons des interventions en français et en anglais, sur des sujets d’actualité impliquant des questions de jeu et de pouvoir. Nous souhaitons encourager des débats ouverts et francs sur ces thèmes. Nous nous pencherons également sur la pertinence de la phénoménologie à aborder des questions liées à la contestation, à l’agonistique et aux réalités contemporaines en Europe et au-delà. Enfin, des interventions provenant des disciplines apparentées à la phénoménologie (la sociologie, la psychologie, l’historiographie critique et la « critical race theory ») seront aussi pris en considération.

Veuillez envoyer un résumé de 800 mots à symposium.phenomenology@gmail.com jusqu’au 15 février 2016 au plus tard. Les avis d’acceptation seront envoyés le 15 mars.

Directors / Directeurs : Bettina Bergo (Montréal), Jens Vleminck (Ghent) & Ernst Wolff (Pretoria)

Info : https://symposiumphaenomenologicum.wordpress.com/

Call for papers : https://symposiumphaenomenologicum.wordpress.com/program/

Call for papers – Appel de textes – PhænEx Special Topic Issue on EROS

Call for Papers – Appel de textes

Special Topics Issue “FACES OF EROS” / Numéro thématique annuel “FIGURES DE L’EROS”

PHAENEX – Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture
Revue de Théorie et Culture Existentialistes et Phénoménologique

Vol 12, no 1 (Spring-Summer 2017;printemps-été 2017)

PhænEx is an electronic peer-reviewed journal affiliated with the Canadian-based Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (http://eptc-tcep.net).

Special Topic Issue : Faces of Eros

Eros plays a central role in Western thought. In the philosophical and spiritual traditions, it usually refers to physical love and desire. Eros is a recurring character in the pre-Socratic cosmogonies, and it is the main impulse of the philosophical quest for truth in Plato’s Phaedrus. In the Symposium, Plato also unveils its fundamental ambiguity as half divine and half human, where the desire to merge the opposing sides involves beauty and ugliness, profusion and need. Eros is at the intersection of gift and possession, of radical openness and selfish desire, of interested disinterest and mystical transport, mixing clairvoyance and blindness. Thanks to the manifold nuances of the erotic-sensuous genius that fascinated Kierkegaard, eroticism both produces and dissolves several dimensions of human existence, sociality, understanding, and speech. This Special Topics issue of PhænEx wishes to give a new impulse to philosophical reflections on this fundamental and ambiguous phenomenon, following an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersection of phenomenology, post-structuralism, and social sciences (psychology, sociology, sexology, anthropology, linguistics, etc.).

Submission Information

Submissions in both French and English are accepted, and all papers will be peer reviewed.

Paper submissions must be made directly through the journal’s website (www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca). Please follow the online instructions, guidelines, and stylesheet.

Deadline for submission: Oct. 1, 2016.
Please direct any questions to the Lead Editors : Élodie Boublil (CNRS-ENS), elo.boublil[a]gmail.com & Chiara Piazzesi(UQAM), piazzesi.chiara[a]uqam.ca

Appel de textes

Numéro thématique annuel FIGURES DE L’EROS

PHAENEX – Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture
Revue de Théorie et Culture Existentialistes et Phénoménologique

Vol 12, no 1 (Spring-Summer 2017;printemps-été 2017)

PhænEx est une revue bilingue évaluée par les pairs et publiée par la société Théorie et culture existentialistes et phénoménologiques (TCEP) (http://eptc-tcep.net). Elle se veut un forum interdisciplinaire pour la recherche sur les thèmes et les problèmes relevant de l’existentialisme et de la phénoménologie au sens large.

Numéro thématique : Figures de l’Éros

Eros exprime traditionnellement l’amour dans sa dimension sensuelle et désirante. Il a toujours occupé une place privilégiée dans la pensée occidentale : protagoniste des cosmogonies présocratiques, Eros devient, dans le Phèdre de Platon, le moteur du savoir philosophique, alors que le Banquet décèle son ambiguïté fondamentale : pris entre le divin et l’humain, ce désir d’union avec l’autre participe de la beauté et de la laideur, de l’abondance et du besoin. Eros est situé à la confluence du don et de la possession, de l’ouverture à l’autre et du désir égoïste, du désintérêt intéressé et d’un transport mystique qui se lit à la fois comme clairvoyance et comme aveuglement. Par les gradations de la génialité sensuelle qui avait fasciné Kierkegaard, l’érotisme produit et en même temps dissout des dimensions entières de l’existence, de la socialité, de la compréhension et de la parole humaines. Ce numéro thématique de la revue PhaenEx souhaite donner une impulsion nouvelle à la réflexion sur cette ambivalence fondamentale, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire au croisement de la phénoménologie, du poststructuralisme et des sciences sociales (psychologie, sociologie, sexologie, anthropologie, linguistique, etc.).

Directives pour la soumission

La revue accepte les soumissions d’articles en français et en anglais. Tous les articles seront évalués par les pais.

Les soumissions doivent être faites directement sur le site Internet de la revue (www.phaenex.uwindsor.ca). Veuillez suivre les directives (soumission, conventions typographiques, etc.) qui apparaissent sur le site de la revue.

Date limite pour les soumissions : 1er oct. 2016.
Adressez toute question aux directrices du numéro : Élodie Boublil (CNRS-ENS), elo.boublil[a]gmail.com et Chiara Piazzesi (UQAM), piazzesi.chiara[a]uqam.ca

Télécharger l’appel de texte : PDF (bilingue) – JPG (français) – JPG (anglais)

Category: Call for paper

CFP: Phenomenology of Animality – Studia Phaenomenologica XVII (2017)

Studia Phaenomenologica XVII (2017) – Phenomenology of Animality

Animal Agency: Language, Politics, Culture

Workshop on Food Justice : CFP

Workshop on Food Justice

Call for Proposals

Animals Under Capitalism : Art and Politics (Bristol, 2016)

Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics

Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics

CFP : 20th Anniversary Meeting of the Symposium for Phenomenology “Play and Power”