Subject: Literature

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information.

The Film Club will be discussing the short documentary 30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone) and exploring the themes of gender and social collaboration. To be added to the dedicated mailing list and MS Team group and receive further information, please send an email to Sailee (organiser) via sailee.khurjekar@warwick.ac.uk.

Guest Speaker: Guy Longworth (Warwick)

Title: 'Unsettling Questions'

Abstract: "Should we expect someone who knows by seeing to be in a position positively to settle the questions “How do you know?” “Why do you think so?” or “Are you sure?"? I begin to address that large question by defending the following claims. We should not expect someone who knows by seeing that p to be in a position to know how they know that p (§2). However, we should expect someone who knows by seeing that p to have sufficient reasons for thinking that p, but—in light of the first claim—we should not expect their seeing what they do to figure amongst their reasons. A further issue that will figure in the background to the discussion here concerns how, if at all, sensory awareness of things can furnish one with reasons for thinking things so (§3). Despite the fact that one who knows by seeing need not know how they know and need not have amongst their reasons that they see what they do, still their seeing what they do can play an important role in establishing surety (§4)."

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information.

Further details to follow.

Guest Speaker: Kristina Musholt (Leipzig)

'Biopolitics and Deconstruction'

Guest Speaker: Naomi Waltham-Smith (Warwick)

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

Guest Speaker: Andy Hamilton (Durham)

Title: 'Art for Art's Sake: Aestheticising Engaged Art and Philistinism'

We will be discussing the documentary film Paris Is Burning and the themes of drag and sexuality in America. To be added to the dedicated mailing list and MS Team group and receive further information, please send an email to Sailee (organiser) via sailee.khurjekar@warwick.ac.uk.

Guest Speaker: Edward Harcourt (Oxford)

You are warmly invited to our next Philosophy Balloon Debate. What is a balloon debate, you ask? Some philosophical folk are trapped on a sinking hot air balloon. To stay afloat, they need to drop weight. Staff and students from Philosophy will answer questions to determine who stays and who goes. Featuring:

Barney Walker on David Hume

David James on Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Guy Longworth on Gottlob Frege

Diarmuid Costello on Marcel Duchamp (WILD CARD)

Jae Hetterley on Edith Stein (PGR)

Toby Tremlett on Simone de Beauvoir (UG)

This is a Philosophy community event co-organised with PhilSoc. Everyone is welcome – UGs, PGTs, PGRs, and all staff. Please contact David Bather Woods for further information.

'Transgressive Resistance and Biopolitics'

Guest Speaker: Guilel Treiber (KU Leuven)

Guest Speaker: Jessica Keiser (Leeds)

Title: 'The All Lives Matter' Response: QUD-Shifting as Epistemic Injustice'

Guest Speaker: Richard Moore (Warwick

This session will feature a paper from PhD student Carline Klijnman, who will be interviewed by Benjamin Ferguson. The abstract for Carline’s paper is below. We look forward to seeing you there! 

Epistemic Injustice and Expertise

A fundamental characterization of modern societies is epistemic dependence. We rely on (expert-)testimony of others to inform ourselves on complex, politically relevant matters. Especially in the online epistemic environment, the increasing spread of misinformation and the disintermediation of traditional epistemic gatekeepers (a combination I call Epistemic Pollution) have made it harder for citizens to determine the credibility of different information sources.  

Take for example the vaccination debate. In anti-vaccination echo-chambers, the testimony of health-care experts is persistently undermined, whilst the anecdotal stories of concerned parents claiming their child’s disease was caused by vaccination are believed without evidence. These mechanisms of distrust seem to echo Miranda Fricker’s account of ‘testimonial injustice’, wherein the speaker “receives a credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice in the hearer”. However, unlike Fricker’s central cases of systematic testimonial injustice, prejudice against healthcare experts is not rooted in social injustice. Still, as I will argue, the severity of testimonial injustice shouldn’t be measured only by its impact on the individual speaker. Structural prejudice, even if not rooted in social injustice (e.g. against healthcare experts) can undermine epistemically fair conditions of public discourse (in this case re. vaccination debate). This is both epistemically and ethically problematic. 

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

Guest Speaker: Henrike Moll (Southern California)

'From Biopolitics to Bodypolitics'

Guest Speaker: Karsten Schubert (Freiburg)

This session will feature a paper from MPhil student Thaddee Chantry-Gellens, who will be interviewed by David Bather Woods. The abstract for Thaddee’s paper is below. We look forward to seeing you there!

Primitivist Violence? An alternative to Sarkissian’s argument on the darker side of Daoist Primitivism

Violence is a historical fact. It has permeated the development of human history for millennia, sometimes bringing it to the brink of the abyss, other times leading it to the highest peaks. Violence of the oppressor on the oppressed, violence of the oppressed on the oppressor, forcing one’s will on others through aggressive means is multi-faceted and should not be understood as a monolithic phenomenon. Violence can be liberating, and it can be repressive. China has known political violence throughout many of the periods and forms of its long existence. The moment in time this essay focuses on is a transitory one: the shift between the aptly-named Warring States period and the first unification of China under the Qin Dynasty. It will try to depict some of the arguments made in the Primitivist section of the Zhuangzi anthology. This will be done in the context of Hagop Sarkissian’s (2010) article on the “darker side” of Daoist primitivism.

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

Guest Speaker: Christopher Janaway (Southampton)

Title: 'Different Kinds of Willing in Schopenhauer'

Guest Speaker: Ruth Boeker (University College Dublin)

'The Biopolitics of Mobility'

Guest Speaker: Martina Tazzioli (Goldsmiths)

This session marks the last WiP seminar of Term 2. We will be looking at a paper from PhD student Jonathan Clarke-West. The abstract for Jonathan’s paper is below. We look forward to seeing you there!

 Imagination in Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. 

 This paper introduces my thesis before staging the first chapter. It addresses the requirement to study the role of imagination in Recherche before drawing out examples of its operation from Recherche. It outlines three categories by which I understand imagination to operate within the novel: firstly, its operation as a faculty; secondly, its role in the context of artistic production; finally, its articulation in the presentation of society. It then moves to consider the presentation of imagination as a faculty in the novel – the imagination. It looks at the positions held by different commentators – who mostly centre upon the ampliative powers acquired once imagination and sense conspire. It elects to focus upon the operation of imagination articulated by the phenomena of Proustian sensation and involuntary memory. Deleuze’s reading of Kant’s Sublime grants a point of entry to this operation. The similarities enable the claim to be made that Proust articulates a literary analytic of the encounter in these phenomena.

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for further information (j.heemskerk@warwick.ac.uk)

Details TBC

Guest Speaker: Barbora Siposova (Warwick)

Guest Speaker: Jonathan Webber (Cardiff)

Session 1: Preface and Chapter 1: Evil and Unconditional Respect

Contact Tom Crowther (T.Crowther@warwick.ac.uk)

Contact: Jack Shardlow, jack.shardlow@warwick.ac.uk

Guest Speaker: Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Syracuse University)

Title: Contested Legacies: Constellations of Terrorism in the Postbellum United States

Response by Quassim Cassam (University of Warwick)

The seminar will be held online on MS Teams. If you wish to attend and be added to the Team, please send an email to Daniele.Lorenzini@warwick.ac.uk.

We are very pleased to be discussing a paper by MPhil student Sailee Khurjekar. The abstract for Sailee’s paper is below, and the paper itself is attached for those who wish to read it ahead of time. We look forward to engaging with such a vital topic.

Establishing the Place of Race: A Critical Evaluation of Cultural Constructionism 

The metaphysics of race has presented competing theories about the definition and role of human races, alongside debates surrounding the existence of races. Social constructionists on race are concerned with the nature of race and the way that it latches on to our social reality. There are two strands of social constructionism on race: political constructionism and cultural constructionism. This paper is a critical evaluation of Chike Jeffers’ cultural constructionist account of race. I will posit three criticisms of Jeffers’ position, all pertaining to his claim that races ought to be preserved in a post-racist world. The form of my criticisms is as follows:

(1) Criticism 1: Single and Unified Culture by Race

A single and unified culture by race does not exist after the end of racism.

(2) Criticism 2: Racial Difference

Racial difference cannot be celebrated in a utopian world because such difference ceases to exist.

(3) Criticism 3: White Supremacism

The preservation of racialised people worryingly blurs the line between White pride and White supremacism.

I hope that the thesis will show: The significance of the social construction of race; the benefits of adopting Jeffers’ cultural constructionist account of race; and the drawbacks of preserving racial groups after the end of racism.