◙ Second Annual Levinas Society Conference, June 10-12, 2007 at Purdue University
NORTH AMERICAN LEVINAS
SOCIETY
Second Annual Conference and Meeting on “Levinas and Community”
June 10-12, 2007 | Purdue University
Call for papers
[open in .pdf]
“Does a face abide in
representation and community; is it community and difference?
What meaning can community take on in difference without reducing
difference?”
Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being
Building on the excitement and enthusiasm stoked by last year’s inaugural conference, the North America Levinas Society invites submissions of individual paper proposals and panel proposals for the second annual meeting and conference to be held June 10-12, 2007, at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. We will be organizing the conference around the broad theme of “Levinas and Community”; however, in an effort to draw together wide interests for this second annual conference, we are accepting proposals for papers and panels on any topic related to Levinas.
As interest in Levinas’ work continues to develop, scholars, activists, and religious persons around the world are discovering new possibilities for theorizing and applying Levinas’ theories of ethics and responsibility toward concrete considerations of social justice. One of the more pressing, and perhaps difficult, questions remains the question of community. From specific instantiations of community to the very broadest articulations of sociality in terms of hope, responsibility, and resistance, the question of applying the ethical often comes down to a question of community.
Beginning with Levinas’ own question, we might ask, “What meaning can community take on in difference without reducing difference?” How are difference and community to be experienced according to Levinas’ commentaries on humanism, responsibility, and sociality? In light of the ethical, what tensions emerge between individualism and communitarianism? How is community articulated differently in Levinas’ Talmudic readings from his more properly philosophical work? How do the different traditions from which Levinas works—that is, from Jerusalem or Athens—affect our conceptions of community, politics, and filial obligation? In what provocative ways is Levinas’ work being appropriated or addressed by new critical theory, philosophies of liberation, critical social theory, and radical philosophy? How can considerations of community influence debates on public communication and mass media? How is Levinas’ work developed by feminist concerns and critique? How do ethics, sociality, and community bear on questions of Judaism, Israel, and Zionism? What is Levinas’ attitude toward utopian traditions and literatures? In what ways can we effect a reconciliation between Levinas’ ethical singularity and Marx’s critique of political economy? Why do some political philosophers find in Levinas an apology for liberalism while others discover a radical call to anarchy? How can we understand the differences, through Levinas’ texts, between communities of the desert versus citizens of the polis? In what ways can we engage Levinas’ considerations of community with the philosophical work of Jean-Luc Nancy (The Inoperative Community), Maurice Blanchot (The Unavowable Community), or Giorgio Agamben (The Coming Community)?
Certainly, these are only a few questions of community broadly posed, but it is clear that such questions open Levinas’ work to a more difficult, and perhaps edifying, scrutiny.
We are especially excited to announce the attendance of some members of Levinas’ family at the 2007 conference. David Hansel, George Hansel, Joelle Hansel, and Simone (Levinas) Hansel will all deliver plenary presentations. We are additionally very pleased to announce that George Kunz, fitting with the theme of Levinas and community, will give a plenary on Levinas's inspiration for understanding psychopathology and psychotherapy; Professor Kunz’s work is proving integral to developing new ways of concretely applying Levinas’ work toward issues of ethics and social justice.
Submissions
● Individual paper proposals: Individual abstracts should be 200-300 words for a 20 minute presentation. We will assess and organize individual papers into panels of three or four.
● Panel proposal: Panel proposals should be 500 words for a 75-m inute session. Please include the session title, name of organizer, institutional affiliation, discipline or department, along with the chair’s name and participants’ names in addition to brief abstracts detailing the focus of each paper.
Please send materials via email attachment (preferably Microsoft Word) to: submissions@levinas-society.org.
If you have questions regarding the Society or the conference, please send inquiries to secretary@levinas-society.org.
The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2007