SWIP UK (Society for Women in Philosophy) Annual Conference 2016 organised in collaboration with CAPPE
Thursday 16–Friday 17 June 2016
In the current context of austerity, growing levels of inequality, insecurity and injustice mean that many around the globe are forced to eke out an existence under increasingly precarious conditions. Few remain sanguine in the face of this, and whilst some argue that precarity is necessary given current conditions many others express anger, frustration, resentment and a passionate determination to find alternatives. In the academy, the term “precarity” has gained currency across disciplines to both describe conditions and theorise responses. However, this conference problematises precarity as both an analytic tool and topic of academic investigation. Firstly, since precarity is structured unevenly via our social identities and positions it asks whether (and why not) those experiencing precarity can express this within the academy? To what extent can they be heard and responded to before the embedded hierarchies, structures of power and language dilute, deflect and silence their angry and passionate articulations, by twisting them via requirements for “reasoned arguments” as defined by others?
Furthermore we note that precarity has a more positive resonance when it describes the destabilisation of norms and binary frameworks; such as those that structure gender, sexuality, nationality and race. Here, precarity is seen as something to celebrate; a field within which to challenge authority and constraint. Additionally, as destabilisation – in terms of working and living conditions, and identity – precarity is celebrated as “flexibility” through the neoliberal paradigm, with fragmentation and uncertainty seen as conditions for creativity, choice, motivation and competition. As a consequence, we ask whether precarity’s radical potential needs to be revised.
Conference Programme
Thursday 16th June
Introduction: 10 – 11.30
Keynote lecture and discussion | M2 Fabienne Brugere, Paris VIII University
Coffee: 11.30-12.00
Session 1: .12.00–1.30
Panel 1: Theorising precarity | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder, Moral Reasoning in Situations of Precarity
Simona Azzan, University of Milan, Precarity as Ethical Foundation of Equality
John McGuire, University College Dublin, Precarity and Cynicism
Panel 2: Analysing ‘Precarity’ | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Amy Kings, University of Keele, The Precariat as a New Global Class: Useful Concept or Academic Hairsplitting?
Pam Laidman, The Vulnerability of Practical Precarity
Panel 3: Subjects of Precarity 1 | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Alexandra Valadas, Michigan State University, Women at Risk
Charlotte Haynes Lyon, York St. John University, Precarious Voices: From Containment to Dissensus
Roxanna Akhbari, York University, Canada, Race and Indigeneity in the Age of Apology
Lunch 1.30 – 2.30
Session 3: 2.30-4.00
Panel 4: Global Case Studies | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Nadia Fayidh Mohammed, Kings College, London, Iraqi Feminism: Precarious Literary Existence Before and After 2003
Laura Lapinskiene, Soderton University, Stockholm, Stuck in Transition-Lost in Precarisation: Hope v. Despair in Post-Soviet Lithuania
Sini Paakkinen, University of Turku Graduate School, Development Work and Inequality
Panel 5: Representations of Precarity | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC,
Heather McKnight, University of Sussex, UK, Mother, Martyr, Cyborg
Melle Starson, Upper Iowa University, USA, Victim or Exterminator: Female Avenger Archetypes in Blaxploitation Films
Panel 6: Subjects of Precarity 2 | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Clare Woodford, University of Brighton, Emancipation, Knowledge, Precarity
Mark Devenney, University of Brighton, Precarity and the Improper
Sarah Charalambides, Goldsmiths University of London, Precarity as Activism: Breaking Through Existing Logics of Security and Insecurity
Coffee: 4.00-4.30
4.30-6.00: Keynote lecture and discussion | M2
Michelle Bentley, Royal Holloway University of London Evening dinner: 7.30
Friday 17th June
Session 4: 10.00 – 11.30
Keynote lecture and discussion | M2
Olivia Guaraldo, University of Verona
Coffee: 11.30-12.00
Session 5: 12.00 – 1.30
Panel 7: Precarity and Work | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Andy Knott, University of Brighton, UK, Neoliberalism and the crisis of common goods
Robert Zheng, University of Cambridge, UK, Organising the Ivory Tower: Power, Precarity and Solidarity in the Neoliberal Academy
Duygu Turk Karahanogullari, Ankara Univerrsity, Turkey, Deniz Özçetin, Akdeniz University, Turkey, Precarity in the Turkish Academy: Doing Injustice to Research Assistants
Panel 8: Hegel and Marx | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Yuka Okazaki, Precarity as Independence in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Yehudi Webster, California State University, USA, Reviewing Precarity
Rebecca Carson, Kingston University, UK, Fictitious Capital and Precarity
Panel 9: Subject of Precarity 2 | Room: TBC | Chair: TBC
Dalene Swanson, University of Stirling, Politics of Silence: Lived Narratives of Precarity and the “Refugee”
Emma Andrea Ingala Gomez, Complutense University of Madrid, From Nomadic Subjects to Flexible Workers: Viva la Difference?
Emily Cousens, Precarity, Precariousness and Vulnerability in Judith Butler: An Examination and a Critique
Lunch: 1.30 – 2.30
Session 6: 2.30-4.30: Workshop and discussion | M2
Fabienne Brugere: Intellectual crossings: care ethics, work and precarity between the Continental and Anglo-American traditions.
Evening drinks from 5.00
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