CFP: Radical Democracy (UK) (4/15/02; ISSEI, 7/22/02-7/27/02)

From: L A Thomassen (lathom@essex.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Dec 06 2001 - 19:45:21 EST

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    Call for papers:

    Towards the Development of a New Radical Democracy Workshop, at European
    Culture in a Changing World: Between Nationalism and Globalism: The eighth
    conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas
    (ISSEI), 22-27 July 2002, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK.

    Deadline for submission of abstracts or papers: 15 April 2002.

    We invite submissions from scholars, graduate students, lecturers and
    professors.

    Submissions should include:
    a. title of the submission,
    b. 300 word abstract,
    c. two or three keywords that describe the paper,
          d. name(s) of the author(s),
          e. mailing address(es) and institutional affiliation,
          f. e-mail address(es),
          g. phone number(s),
          h. fax number(s),
          i. any other information you would like to provide.

    Your presentation should not exceed 15-20 minutes.

    All submissions will be subject to a review process. We will notify
    successful submissions by email. Please submit your abstract and biography
    electronically to either or both of the email addresses below, either as
    attachments in Rich Text Format, or in the body of your email.

    Paper presenters will be expected to circulate their papers to the other
    panelists ahead of the workshop.

    You will find our call for papers, and additional information about
    registration at http://www.aber.ac.uk/tfts/issei2002

    Description of the workshop:

    Democratic theory in Europe and in the United States has changed
    dramatically during the last few decades. Positions like participatory
    democracy and Marxists approaches have lost some of their appeal, whereas
    there has been a surge of interest in, for instance, Habermasian
    deliberative democracy, Rawlsian political liberalism and Anthony Giddens’
    ‘The Third Way’. At the same time, and largely in opposition to the models
    proposed by Habermas, Rawls and Giddens, more radical positions have been
    put forward, inspired by post-structuralist approaches to the social and
    human sciences. Here we could mention, amongst others, William Connolly’s
    democracy of pluralization, Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe’s radical
    democracy, Jacques Derrida’s democratie-ŕ-venir, and Slavoj Žižek’s Lacanian
    approach. The significance of such positions is their insistence on
    accepting the value of democracy while widening the imaginative horizon of
    politics and ethics. In this workshop we present and discuss some of these
    theories of new radical democracy with the aim of evaluating the pros and
    cons of their different approaches as well as evaluating how the collective
    insights of these approaches can be used as a starting point for a critique
    of contemporary mainstream liberal democratic theory.

    In particular, the workshop invites papers that examine one (or several) of
    the following areas of new radical democracy:

    The philosophy of new radical democracy: What are the philosophical
    principles of new theories of radical democracy? How do these principles
    conceptualize our understanding of metaphysics, politics, ethics, and
    religion?

    The ethics of new radical democracy: What are the ethical ideals of new
    theories of radical democracy? What status do these ideals of ethics enjoy
    within their conceptual and political frameworks? How successful are new
    theories of democracy in mediating between the demand for universalism and
    the need for paying attention to singular instances of ethical
    particularity? What kind of answers can theories of new radical democracy
    provide against common-sense charges such as relativism, elitism and
    political arbitrariness and violence?

    The politics of new radical democracy: What are the implications of new
    radical democracy for traditional liberal concepts such as tolerance, public
    order, sovereignty, liberty, and representative government? Are these new
    theories of radical democracy better suited to answer new conditions of
    globalization, multiculturalism and late capitalism more adequately than
    other (liberal) theories of democracy?

    The Enlightenment of new radical democracy: What kind of relationship can we
    identify between the liberal project of Enlightenment, grounded in the
    revolutionary experiences of France and North America, and the practice of
    critique and deconstruction within theories of new radical democracy? Do
    theories of new radical democracy represent a complete break with the
    tradition of Enlightenment, including its discourse of liberalism, or do
    these theories rather continue the tradition of Enlightenment? What is the
    significance of the dialogue that theories of new radical democracy have
    with historical thinkers such as Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche?

    Workshop organisers:

    Mr Lasse Thomassen
    Doctoral Programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis
    Department of Government
    University of Essex
    CO4 3SQ Colchester
    United Kingdom
    Phone: 01206 503839
    Email: lathom@essex.ac.uk

    Mr Lars Třnder
    Doctoral Programme in Political Theory
    Department of Political Science
    Johns Hopkins University
    Baltimore, 21218 Maryland
    United States
    Phone: + 1 410 366 3544
    Email: lars_tonder@hotmail.com

    The ISSEI 2002 hopes to have a limited amount of grants available for
    participants from Eastern Europe. Detailed information about the grant
    programme will soon be available on the conference website at:
    http://www.aber.ac.uk/tfts/issei2002

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