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Featured Speaker: Luce Irigaray
 We are delighted to
have Luce Irigaray
deliver an original presentation for the EROS Conference via
satellite from Paris. In Thinking the Difference, she writes “Poor
Eros!…What has become of us, that we are so poor in love?” inviting
reconsideration of the Freudian position that relationships must be broken
for civilization to exist. In her view, relations must be restored if we
are to save ourselves and the earth from total annihilation. Irigaray’s
ideas challenge the necessity of breaking the bonds of love, for it is
human ties that are the “missing pillars of our culture”.
Special Plenary Talk: Shannon Bell
 Shannon Bell is a fast feminist immersion
philosopher who lives and writes philosophy in action. Her books include
"Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body," "Whore
Carnival," and "Fast Feminism." Bell is an associate professor
in the York University Political Science Department where she teaches on
psychology and politics, post contemporary theory, and identity/post
identity politics.
Description of the
Series and Conference Theme
“On the face of it at least, our civilization possesses no
ars erotica. In return, it is undoubtedly the only civilization to practice
a scientia sexualis…”
—Michel Foucault, The History
of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
This conference is
part of a larger series of ongoing, international, multidisciplinary
conferences--run under the banner of The Human Condition Series--that
brings together people from a variety of disciplines to assess a singular
topic from artistic, cinematic, literary, ethical, social, political,
philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. We encourage you
to share innovative ideas and new ways of thinking and acting. Proposals
will be considered on any related theme and we especially welcome papers,
reports, works-in-progress, workshops and sessions. This year's theme is
EROS.
Though a human
nature may not exist, there is comfort in the notion that a unifying force
should subsist within all humankind: the will to live. Sigmund Freud named
the driving impulse Eros. If humankind does possess, as a matter of our
continuance as a species, an impulse for life— a drive to overcome all
adversity in order to reproduce itself—what does this say of the human
condition? How can desire, pleasure and love lead to social bonds that
ensure the perpetuation of the species in healthy abundance? What types of
relations cultivate worth and esteem in the individual, and how can
destructive elements of these same tropes damage the psyche and dissolve
the very relations that lead to a healthy self-concept? How does pathos
reveal itself in minds and in societies and how can we know when there is
satisfaction in love or if an alternative object has been found through
sublimation?
The Human Condition
Series invites you to consider the concept of Eros, and to share original and
revisited thoughts that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. We
encourage expressions about how culture, habit, language, science and art,
embody, remedy or fail Eros. Without prescription, we urge theorizations
and analyses which seek to look beyond the here and now towards the
possibilities to come.
Please submit a working
title, a ONE-PAGE ABSTRACT (300-400 words) as an email attachment, and a short
biography before March 1, 2010 to Professor Toivo Koivukoski at EROSab...@libraryofsocialscience.com
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT
OF ABSTRACT: MARCH 1, 2010.
NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE:
MARCH 15, 2010.
PRESENTERS ARE
REQUIRED TO SUBMIT A 10-15 page summary paper by APRIL 15 and to register
for the conference.
Presenters will have
until June 25, 2010 to prepare their manuscripts for submission to the
double-blind review process for possible publication.
For information
about the HUMAN CONDITION SERIES please go to: http://www.humanconditionseries.com/
For information on the 2008 conference (including the conference program)
please go to: http://www.humanconditionseries.com/conf08/
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- The concept of Eros in the
work and scholarship of Luce Irigaray.
- Heroines and Heroes of Eros
- The Eros of War
- The Eros of Motherhood.
- Representation, construction,
reproduction or analysis of Eros.
- Subject/Identity formation
and constructions of gender, sex and sexuality
- Eros and parthenogenesis in
history and literature
- Categories of normativity,
disorder, pathology or deviance in desire
- Eros as nature, power,
cosmology, mythology, and society
- Eros and the transformation
of consciousness, near-death and dreamlike states.
- Sacred marriage,
immortal/mortal love
- Sex tourism, sex trafficking
- From Eros as mythos to Eros
as logos
- The sensuous in the human
world
- Eros and Gaia in the
marketing of holistic healing
- Contemporary Families and
Eros
- Eros in women’s literature as
a distinct tradition
- The role of Eros in different
religious and spiritual traditions
- Semiotic approaches to Eros
and culture, place, space, time
Film Feature
“Eros”
is the collection of three short films exploring the subjects of love,
sexuality, and desire: “Il filo pericoloso delle cose”, directed by
Michelangelo Antonioni; “Equilibrium”, directed by Steven Soderbergh; and
“The Hand”, directed by Kar Wai Wong.
Bracebridge,
Ontario, Canada (Google
map)
For
information on Nipissing University, please go to: http://www.nipissingu.ca/muskoka/
Bracebridge is north
of Toronto. Shuttle service and other transportation are available.
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