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This is a tentative program (may be adjusted for traveling participants). For more information about the student poster sessions see ‘preparation and assessment’ below. For abstracts, see below.

Thursday, January 30

10:00 – Coffee and Welcome

10:30-11:30 – Keynote Lecture I: Maren Wehrle (Rotterdam): “‘There is f(r)iction in the space between’* On the difference between social and intersubjective normality.”

11:30-12:30 – Student Poster Session I

12:30-14:00 – Lunch

14:00-15:00 – Keynote Lecture II: Stefan Niklas (UvA): “Towards a Planetary Aesthetics.”

15:00-16:30 – Practical Session I: Philosophy Beyond the Academy

Speakers: Sanne Bloemink (journalist, writer); Irma Croese (civil servant at the ministry of education) and Esha Guy Hadjadj (writer, translator).

16:30-21:00 – Dinner and Reception: Philosophy and Music

Friday, January 31

10:00-11:00 – Keynote Lecture III : Jamila Mascat (Utrecht)

11:00-12:00 – Student Poster Session II

12:00-13:30 – Lunch

13:30-14:30 – Keynote Lecture IV : Lilith Lee (VU)

14:30-15:00 – Practical Session II: The Lives of Researchers

15:00-15:30 – Coffee

15:30-16:30 – Keynote Lecture V : Katrin Schulz (UvA)

16:30-17:00 – Pause

17:00-18:00 – SWIP Panel Discussion

Speakers: Karen Vintges (UvA), Mari Mikkola (UvA), Vaas de Wit

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Abstracts

Maren Wehrle: ‘There is f(r)iction in the space between’* On the difference between social and intersubjective normality.

Often, the terms ‘normal’ and ‘normality’ are used to express what is socially acceptable within a given cultural or social context. While an established social normality often presents itself as a timeless and self-evident truth, it normally grows out of a contingent and fragile state, where norms have not yet been established or institutionalized. This dynamic state is a precondition of established social norms, so I want to show, and can be phenomenologically described as intersubjective normality. Lived intersubjective normality is understood as an interactive and ongoing process of making and (un-)making of normality, which is characterized by an experienced friction between different ‘normalities’ of individuals or groups.

First, I will introduce the genetic dimension of lived normality, that is, how something becomes normal on an individual level. In a second step, I will try to show how we can study how normality is made and unmade intersubjectively. I will thereby distinguish between a social and an intersubjective normality. Whereas social normality situates and shapes every individual experience, intersubjective normality refers to the actual encounter between subjects. Such a space between, so I want to finally show, is a source of normative friction, and conflict, but also the place where one can stop clinging to old fictions, and begin to perceive the world and others anew, do things differently, and tell more inclusive stories.

*The title is inspired by a line of the song ‘Telling stories’ by Tracy Chapman

Stefan Niklas – Towards a Planetary Aesthetics

In my talk, I will first lay out the problem of a planetary perspective and why it is vital to develop such a perspective as a guiding principle of human action today (i.e., for the future). I will then argue that this perspective requires a yet impossible kind of imagination—namely the imagination of the concrete totality of planetary complexity including timescales that elude human intuition. Furthermore, I will argue that such imagination is blocked under current conditions, relegating it to the realm of “mere” speculation. However, such speculation has long been productive within in the arts and especially in speculative/science fiction. Drawing on examples from science-fictional works, I aim to demonstrate the speculative power of a fictional worldbuilding that allows to take impossible standpoints, to conceive of impossible objects and to develop (virtual) attitudes towards these. Finally, to show how philosophy could employ its own speculative powers in close alliance with art, I briefly outline the idea of a “planetary monadology”.

Jamila Mascat – The Black Dialectics. A Case for Postcolonial Cannibalism

This paper examines the circulation of Hegelian dialectics within the black radical anti-colonial genealogy of the 20th century, advancing a case for the postcolonial cannibalization of modern-colonial philosophy.

By tracing the afterlife of Hegel’s dialectics through its dislocation into Afro-diasporic territories, cultures, and temporalities, the paper highlights major resignifications and sabotages of the dialectical legacy of Western modernity that occurred in the works of black radicals from Africa and the Caribbean, including A. Césaire, F. Fanon, C. L. R. James, and W. Lam, across the domains of philosophy, literature, poetry, and the arts.

Moreover, the paper revisits the trope of cannibalism—drawing on Montaigne, Hegel, Derrida, among others—and examines its inversion within the postcolonial Caribbean tradition, where its colonial stigma is reappropriated. It finally argues that the master’s tools can indeed be devoured—albeit often indigestible—and repurposed to dismantle the master’s house.

Lilith Lee – Navigating through the Straits between Two Empires: Philosophical Comparisons and Compromises in Singapore at the Turns of Centuries

Throughout the history of the island, as the archaeological record suggest, the people on Pulau Ujong have always had to negotiate between various imperial interests: from the Majapahit and Srivijayan empires in the first half of the second millennium, as Temasek; to the Chinese and European empires in the later half, as Singapore. Given its equatorial location connecting maritime trade between China, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian peninsula, Maritime Southeast Asia, and, later, Europe, the island and its surrounding ports played a crucial role not only as regional and global emporiums for goods and services, but also philosophical outlooks and ideas. In this paper, I introduce two moments in the history of anglophone philosophy on the island, both a century apart: roughly, 1890 to 1920, as the British crown colony of Singapore, and 1990 to 2020, as the independent city-state of Singapore. That is, I present here not only my own work that focuses on the first moment, but also recent work by Ben Blumson and Daryl Ooi that attends to the latter. I will then locate both these moments within the broader history of anglophone comparative philosophy, suggesting that the distinctive characteristics of philosophical activity in each period can help us to explore the possible enablements and constraints affecting philosophical practice at the peripheries of imperial control—for better or worse.

Poster Presenters

Thursday, 30 January

Mario Damborenea Iglesias
Luisa F. Iglio
Emerence Kapteijn
Jule Koester
Vincent Spit
David Zuilhof

Friday, 31 January

Sam Langelaan
Riccardo Molin
Chiara Silipigni
Emma Varini
Edvin Vetterfalk Strömblad
Lene Vos