Freedom, liberation and emancipation
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YouTube videos of ‘Ends of Autonomy’ colloquium papers: surveillance, neoliberalism, climate
This week my Warwick colleague Prof Oliver Davis and I co-hosted the second ‘Ends of Autonomy’ colloquium, eqploring how freedom is changing today in the light of new technologies, climate change and neoliberalism. Where presenters gave their consent, sessions were recorded and uploaded to the Ends of Autonomy Colloquia YouTube channel. Below are the videos
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COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter: The apocalypse of the social contract
In a previous post I began to consider how the COVID-19 pandemic stress tests our fragile social contract. I now want to pick up that thread again and ask why we are so willing to give up our natural freedom for the sake of the common good, and what the current crises reveal about the state
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António Guterres, Jean-Luc Nancy, and the new social contract
On July 18 this year the U.N. Secretary General António Guterres added his voice to the ranks of those calling for a new social contract, entitling his 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture ‘Tackling the Inequality Pandemic: A New Social Contract for a New Era’. But what does that mean? What do we want when we
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COVID-19 and the social contract
Man is born free, and everywhere today he in self-imposed chains, locked down under COVID-19 regulations. The term “lockdown” is of course a misnomer. With some notable but very infrequent exceptions, no-one is locking our doors and forcing each and every one of us to stay within our four walls. It is relatively trivial to
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The Ends of Autonomy: Updated CFP outlining new arrangements for remote participation
*** Updated Call outlining new arrangements for remote participation *** The Ends of Autonomy The Past, Present and Future of Freedom Call for Papers Twin cross-disciplinary colloquia run out of Warwick University, UK (7-10 July 2020) and Monash University, Australia (15-16 December 2020) will explore the genealogy of ideas of freedom, autonomy, liberation
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Call for Papers: The Ends of Autonomy
Together with my colleague Oliver Davis at Warwick I am organising twin colloquia on freedom, autonomy, liberation and emancipation later this year. Here is the CFP: The Ends of Autonomy The Past, Present and Future of Freedom Call for Papers Twin cross-disciplinary colloquia at Warwick University, UK (7-8 July 2020) and Monash
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Infographic: How does online reporting of climate change frame the question of freedom?
As I continue to work on the how freedom, liberation and emancipation are framed in key areas of public debate today, here is a quick observation about how the language of freedom is deployed in relation to climate change in online news sources, presented as an infographic: …and an accompanying video:
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My paper “Nancy is a thinker of Radical Emancipation”, with a response by Jean-Luc Nancy
A plenary talk given at the ‘Thinking with Jean-Luc Nancy’ conference, University of Oxford, 29 March 2019. 1. Nancy against the emancipation narrative It is not an uncommon view, and it is one fuelled in part by Nancy himself, that his thought is inimical to an agenda of emancipation and liberation. He treats the
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Abstract for Thinking with Nancy conference: Nancy is a thinker of radical emancipation
I have just finished the abstract for my talk at the Thinking with Nancy conference in March. The talk forms part of a larger project on the modern ’emancipation narrative’ I am currently beginning. The larger project will examine the origins and prospects of modern Western ideas of emancipation through engagements with philosophy, literature and
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New project: How stories of liberation shape our selves and our society
As the Michel Serres book reaches its final stages, I am beginning an exciting new project provisionally entitled “The development and limits of the idea of liberation: a narrative approach”. Here is a brief summary: The project will evaluate the ways in which the modern West has made sense of the ideas of emancipation and