Apr
14
Thu
With/In Environments: Reimagining Frameworks and Practices for Environmental Philosophy–Graduate Student Conference @ New School Dept. of Philosophy
Apr 14 – Apr 16 all-day

Since Plato, western philosophy has been set down a path paved by a disavowal of the sensuous, bracketed material bodies, and delimited aesthetic conceptions, leaving human beings and their built environments separated from the natural world. Such exclusions have left philosophy ill-equipped to deal with the various environmental crises we currently face, as economic rationality and utilitarian logic further de-animate the world and sharpen the human/nature distinction. Even the concept “environment” often, and ironically, brings with it implicit anthropocentric assumptions, conceptualizing, and thereby separating, the human as independent from the surrounding world and reinforcing the human/nature divide. As a result, our (mis)understandings of “nature” and “environment” may make us insensitive to and perpetuate, rather than address, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. To avoid ambiguities and clarify our understanding, we must ask: what role does Nature play within our theories and practices concerning so-called Environmental Philosophy? Furthermore, what spaces, practices, and questions are made possible when we broaden our understanding of “environment” to include a more robust conceptualization of the natural world and how the human being ought to be contextualized within it?

This conference asks how we might reorient the language and practices of philosophy in a way that can enable us to adequately respond to ongoing environmental crises. As a starting point, we propose a need to reimagine the concepts “human,” “nature,” and “environment,” as well as the reciprocal relations that constitute them. To recognize humans as natural organisms, we must reevaluate the sensuous, the material, and the aesthetic and the roles they play in our attempts to construct, understand, and preserve our environment(s). How should we make sense of our practices and our relations to those with whom we share our surroundings? How can we re-situate the human with/in the environment? Do we have the right tools to guide these investigations? How might philosophy look beyond itself—to literature, architecture, music, film, design—to better bring Environment, and thus the world, into view? In the spirit of this, we invite paper as well as project submissions from current graduate students in any discipline.

Possible Topics:

●        Environmental Aesthetics: Re-Considering Beauty + the Sublime

●        Environmental Justice + Restorative Justice + Transformative Justice

●        Environmental Ethics + Sustainable Practices

●        Diversity + Biodiversity

●        Capitalism and Climate

●        Eco-phenomenology

●        Eco-deconstruction

●        Environmental Racism/Racist Environments

●        Ecofeminist conceptions of nature

●        Land Rights and Property Relations

●        Posthumanism + Object Ontologies

●        Afrofuturism + Technological Utopias

●        Environmental Ethics In Narratives

●        Mastery of Nature in Philosophy

●        Anarcho-primitivism

●        Queer and Trans Ecologies

●        Local and Global Ecologies

●        Regionalisms and Globalisms in the Ecological Imagination

 

Confirmed Conference Keynotes:

Sandra Shapshay, CUNY Graduate Center, New York

Emanuele Coccia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris

Dates and Location:

This conference will be held at the New School for Social Research in New York City from Thursday, April 14, to Saturday, April 16. While we (tentatively) plan to hold the conference primarily in-person we would also like to provide a hybrid option for those who would prefer to participate remotely. Following the conference, on Sunday, April 17, all participants and attendees are invited to participate in a conference hike in Cold Spring, NY (about an hour and a half north of NYC and accessible by the Metro North commuter train).

Call for Papers: Submission Procedure:

Please submit complete papers (Word Limit: 3500) and an abstract of 250 words or less by January 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) or PDF to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com. Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information from the body of the paper. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and paper title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.

Call for Projects: Submission Procedure:

Please submit a project description (Word Limit: 1000) by December 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com, as well as:

For Visual Arts projects: submit 5 images of your work as .jpeg.

For Performing Arts projects: submit video/ audio of your work in .mp4 format

Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and project title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.

If you have any questions please email WithInEnvironments@gmail.com

 

Sep
15
Thu
Book Panel: Chiara Bottici, Anarchafeminism @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Sep 15 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Book Panel with: 

Chiara Bottici (NSSR and Lang College), Judith Butler (UC Berkeley and NSSR) and Romy Opperman (NSSR and Lang College).

Abstract: 

How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their turn? How can we envisage a feminism that doesn’t turn into yet another tool for oppression? By arguing that there is no single arche explaining the oppression of women and LGBTQI+ people, Chiara Bottici proposes a radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major claims: that there is something specific to the oppression of ‘the second sexes’, and that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. On the basis of a Spinozist philosophy of transindividuality, Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and deimperial attitude and for a renewed awareness of the somatic communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In this revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the liberation of the lucky few, but liberation of the planet from both capitalist exploitation and an anthropocentric politics of domination. Either the entire planet, or none of us will be free.

 

External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.

 

Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.

Sponsored by the NSSR Philosophy Department & The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI)

Oct
20
Thu
Revokable Rights and their Grammar of Power: Post Roe, Post Foucault. Penelope Deutscher (Northwestern U) @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Oct 20 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Abstract:

As a specific form of rights insecurity the revocability of reproductive rights manifests contradictory understandings (privative and productive) of the political status of pregnancy.

I ask how and why we should understand reproductive rights as revocable, giving a broad meaning to the term “revocability,” and suggesting a conjoined vocabulary that includes conditionality, exceptionality, and disqualifying qualification.

I ask: what kind of grammar might help us understand more specifically how the concurrent action of conflicting combinations of power (such as sovereignty, discipline, security, necropower, and neoliberal expectation) coordinate together in relation to reproductive rights-bearing, and how heterogeneous combinations of power also produce a mutual disruptiveness, even auto-critique, manifesting as conflictual embodiment.

External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.

 

Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.

Oct
27
Thu
Hobbes on Sex. Susanne Sreedhar (BU) @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Oct 27 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Even on a close reading of Hobbes’s corpus, it is difficult to extract a clear picture of his views on gender.

In the history of philosophy, most of the ‘great’ philosophers engaged with questions about women’s ‘nature’ and the appropriate role for women in the family, society, and state.

Hobbes, however, seems to have far less to say on the subject than most, and what he does say is often ambiguous or paradoxical.

It is a fundamental tenet of Hobbes’s political theory that all people are equal in the state of nature, women included; yet he makes reference to the general superiority of men as regards physical strength, courage, wit, and suitability for rule.

Hobbes denies the naturalness, inevitability, and godliness of patriarchy, and he even argues for natural maternal right; however, he describes families in civil societies in terms of fathers ruling over their servants and children—leaving women out of the picture altogether.

His texts are peppered with various offhand comments, allusions, and intimations about women and sexuality more generally, many of which are provocative and undeveloped.

One of the most intriguing parts of his analysis is his repeated appeal to the example of the ancient Amazonian warrior women who engaged in procreative contracts with men from neighboring tribes.

 

In this paper, the speaker uses Hobbes’s discussion of the Amazons to examine his views about gender and, thereby, his place in the history of philosophy as seen from a feminist perspective. 

 

External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here:

https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors

 

Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.

Feb
10
Fri
Book Panel “A Feminist Mythology” @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Feb 10 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

A Feminist Mythology, Bloomsbury, 2022

A book panel with Christen Clifford (The New School), Jean-Michel Rabate’ (University of Pennsylvania), Rose Rejouis (The New School) and a response by Chiara Bottici.

A Feminist Mythology takes us on a poetic journey through the canonical myths of femininity, testing them from the point of view of our modern condition. A myth is not an object, but rather a process, one that Chiara Bottici practises by exploring different variants of the myth of “womanhood” through first- and third-person prose and poetry. We follow a series of myths that morph into each other, disclosing ways of being woman that question inherited patriarchal orders. In this metamorphic world, story-telling is not just a mix of narrative, philosophical dialogues and metaphysical theorizing: it is a current that traverses all of them by overflowing the boundaries it encounters. In doing so, A Feminist Mythology proposes an alternative writing style that recovers ancient philosophical and literary traditions from the pre-Socratic philosophers and Ovid’s Metamorphoses to the philosophical novellas and feminist experimental writings of the last century.

Apr
13
Thu
Feminism as a Concept of Movement: the Sediments of the Historical Reorganization of Feminist Imaginaries. Maria Pia Lara @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Apr 13 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

The speaker will explain the meaning of concepts of movements such as communism, liberalism, and republicanism. Then she will argue how these concepts were used as guides to praxis by focusing first on republicanism and Kant. Finally, she will articulate her concept of feminist imaginaries focusing on how the sediments of historical time have enabled different struggles for emancipation.

 

Nov
3
Fri
Non-Idea Justice: A Family Resemblance Approach. Nadia ben Hassine (Cambridge) @ New School room 1101
Nov 3 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The importance of incorporating value pluralism into a theory of justice is recognized in many conceptualizations of justice. This pluralism is often seen as a reason to attend to a range of perspectives, perspectives which can function as a source of information in determining which principles should guide justice. However, philosophy’s ability to properly attend to different perspectives has received extensive attention in the criticisms of various non-ideal theorists, who argue that ideal-theoretical philosophy runs the risk of excluding important aspects of actual social problems. Taking these criticisms on board, this paper builds on non-ideal theory by arguing for a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach to justice. I will explain how this linguistic practice-embedded understanding of justice can be a helpful tool for non-ideal theory, as it can give us insight into why, in various similar but different cases, the notion of justice is seen as applicable. In light of this approach, I will suggest a reorientation of the pluralist demand towards an empirical starting point.