PG Work in Progress Seminar
About the WiPThe Postgraduate Work in Progress (WiP) Seminar is a student-organised session intended to provide all philosophy graduate students, and occasionally graduate students undertaking philosophy projects in other departments, with the platform to present and discuss their ongoing research. All philosophy PGs, whether MA, MPhil, or PhD, are encouraged to attend, and faculty members and visitors to the department are very welcome. No extensive knowledge of the week’s topic is necessary. The seminar offers an invaluable opportunity for graduates to present their work in a friendly, supportive, unassessed setting, and receive vital peer-review feedback and tips, allowing them to improve and practise defence of their work, as well as to get to know and socialise with fellow students and members of the wider department. Seminars normally take place on Thursdays, from 5:00pm until 6:15pm in S2.77, and can also be attended online on via Teams. The title and abstract for each talk along with a Teams link is circulated to all PG students on a Monday.The format will consist of a roughly 30-minute presentation of a paper, followed by a roughly 30-minute open discussion and Q&A. Current term scheduleA list of seminars occurring in the current academic term can be found below. Term 2 (2023-2024) Schedule
Thursday 11th January - Aurian De Briey - 'From Heidegger's social ontology to his answer to the technological challenge' Thursday 18th January - Emily Boocock - 'Some Characteristic Features of Extremist Ideology' Thursday 25th January - Chris Hall - 'Knowing What We're Doing' Thursday 1st February - Sara Gorea - 'Sideways music and sideways obligations' Thursday 8th February - Gustavo Ruiz da Silva - 'Paul Veyne: Elegiac Storiography' Thursday 15th February - Lumeng Liu Thursday 22nd February - Simon Gansinger Thursday 29th February - Efan Owen Thursday 7th March - Harland Cossons Thursday 14th March - Oscar North-Concar Previous term scheduleTerm 1 (2023-2024) Schedule
Friday 6th October - Clarissa Mueller - 'A Phenomenology of Neurodivergence' Thursday 12th October - Eve Poirier - 'Plausible Abstractions: The role of fiction, truth and history in Genealogy and State of Nature Philosophy' Thursday 19th October - Aurian de Briey - 'The Articulation between Liberty and Happiness' Thursday 26th October - Ben Campion - 'Videogame Photography Returns: Photography versus ‘the Photographic’ Thursday 2nd November - Elias Girma Wondimu - 'Mixed-Raced Inclusion: Revising Existing Definitions of Race' Thursday 9th November - Johan Heemskerk Thursday 16th November - Haley Burke Thursday 23rd November - Fridolin Neumann Thursday 30th November - Oscar North-Concar - 'A Problem For Objectivism in Ethics' Thursday 7th December - Marco Rienzi Notes for presentersThere is no strict minimum or maximum limit on paper length, and you may present an entire paper, a chapter of a thesis, an article, or outline the scope of a project, etc. The general recommendation is 3000-5000 words, as your work should be amenable to summation within 30 minutes. Please provide your title and abstract to the WiP organisers by the end of the Sunday on the week you are presenting.Please keep in mind that the seminar is best used to gather valuable suggestions with which to improve to your work, and to gain experience in presenting your work. As such, your work does not need to be a watertight, polished piece, but may be a draft or substantial set of notes. You are welcome to share work at all stages of the writing process. Contact the organisersIf you would like to present at the WiP or have any questions about it, please email both Chris Hall (Chris.Hall.1@warwick.ac.uk) and Grainne O'Shea (Grainne.O-Shea@warwick.ac.uk). |
Next talk: Thursday 8th February 2024, 5pm, S2.77Gustavo Ruiz da Silva: 'Paul Veyne: Elegiac Storiography'WiP Organisers 23/24: Chris Hall (Chris.Hall.1@warwick.ac.uk) Grainne O'Shea (Grainne.O-Shea@warwick.ac.uk) |
|
|
|
CANCELLED: PG Work in Progress Seminar
This week Michi Nanayakkara will present her paper 'Colonial Regimes of Truth: Idealising and Assimilating to the Coloniser’s world'.
Abstract:
Physical violence, imperialism (epistemic domination), economical exploitation, slavery, and racial discrimination are among the many devasting events comprising Colonisation. Despite these horrific tragedies, colonisation can have the effect of creating a peculiar relationship between the coloniser and the colonised in postcolonial worlds; wherein the colonised subject begins to idealise their coloniser and desire assimilation into the coloniser’s world. This peculiarity can be elucidated in reference to Foucault’s Regimes of Truth which capture the phenomenon where subjects of power relations exhibit the ‘truth’ of those powers through their subjectivity.
To explain how we arrive at a situation like a Colonial Regime of Truth, I will be critically engaging with Berlin’s contentious evaluations of ‘Positive liberty’ which, according to Berlin, arises namely from Rousseau’s attempt to reconcile the absolute value of personal freedom with authorities (although Berlin also says that positive liberty is perhaps the oldest conception of freedom in Western Philosophy). By moreover using Charles Mills’ Racial Contract to construct a postcolonial critique of positive liberty, I will argue that it is internally consistent for a positive theorist to justify acts of imperialism in the name of freedom. Furthermore, by referring to past and present case studies of imperialism, I hope to convey the illiberalism underwriting positive liberty which is used to create and justify Colonial Regimes of Truth. In other words, I hope to explain how we get to Foucault without the Foucauldian terminology (ideal for those who dislike Foucault for whatever (wrong) reason 😊)