CfP: Discourses of weakness and the futures of societies
Discourses of weakness and the futures of societies
June 28th to June 30th 2018
Goethe University Frankfurt/Main
Reflecting
one’s own weakness and putting it into words almost always includes a
certain amount of willingness to change. Or, to put it the other way
round: for a historical formation, the willingness to develop its own
abilities or to find new orientations towards the future quite often is
linked to the establishment of a variety of discourses of weakness.
Adopting
such a perspective has an impact on assessing processes of social
innovation: the motivation to employ something “new” is less related to
the question of genuine innovation but much more to the wish to change a
social formation, since one’s own current status has been recognized as
“being weak” in one or several respects. Innovation thus needs to be
related not only to ingenuity but rather to the willingness to change
oneself or the social formation to which one belongs, which in turn
often is a consequence of perceived weakness.
In order to
better understand how societies prepare themselves for the future, how
they deploy and adjust resources and the role of assessments of
weaknesses in this process, the conference will discuss the following
topics:
1. Regional specifities and global entanglements.
2.
How are discourses of weakness articulated in the domains of politics,
economics, law, knowledge and other fields of the humanities?
3. How were discourses of weakness articulated in different historical periods including the distant past?
4. How are discourses of weakness related to cultural heritage, memory and imaginations of futures (past and present)?
We
especially would like to encourage junior scholars from all region and
affiliations to apply. We will provide reimbursement of traveling
expenses and provide accommodation for researchers without financial
support from their home institutions.
Proposals in German or English (max. 500 words) should be sent together with a brief CV by February 16, 2018 to:
Selected presenters will be informed by March 16, 2018. Working languages of the conference will be German and English.
Contact Email: amelung@em.uni-frankfurt.de