September 8th and September 9th, 2023
Workshop Theme
While current efforts to diversify philosophy have tried to move past the conventional comparative approach which tagged philosophies to identifiable world cultures, many of these efforts continue to associate the ability to initiate changes in the field only to thought emanating from Euro-America. Given this state of affairs, what is it that actually prevents philosophers from genuinely transforming the field? Why, for example, is there such reticence to questioning the comparative process? Or adopting and implementing non-Western concepts in discourses of social theory, politics, science, comparative literature, spirituality, psychology, health (to mention a few)? One way to address this issue is to consider how non-Western philosophies might approach the question “What is Thinking?” How is thinking informed by material, cultural, historical and political factors? What goes on in the in-between space, or the interface where comparative, cross-cultural, or embodied thought takes place? How do the participants distinguish (or not) their work from the multi-cultural turn toward comparative philosophy? Can we explore new images of thought that are potentially conducive to the reality of lived/embodied experiences of people which (if they are not already situated between different cultures) are moving in that direction as the world becomes more inter-twined (the current phase of global nationalisms notwithstanding)? How might philosophy and theory (since these two significantly overlap) be reimagined rather than just broadening the canon of the field?
Workshop Schedule
