Call for participation
International Conference
Feminism and Philosophy: rethinking Simone de Beauvoir
Centre for Gender Studies,
European Humanities University
Culture, Philosophy and Arts Research Institute
June 18 - 19, 2009
Vilnius, Lithuania
For many countries the year 2008 was a year of widespread celebration of the Simone de Beauvoir centenary. Moreover, 2009 is the year of the 60th anniversary since the "Second Sex" has been published. Despite the fact that Simone de Beauvoir's philosophical, literary and biographical works are well known in the West, it should be admitted that her texts are almost unknown to the broad audience in the Post Soviet countries. It is concerned with the lack of serious study on her intellectual contribution to contemporary philosophy and gender studies, as well as with understanding and recognition of the significance of ideas of the most famous feminist of the XX century. The translation of Beauvoir's key works into the national languages of the Post Soviet countries is still an issue; that is why we cannot consider the context for discussions on the impacts of the "Second Sex" a satisfactory one.
However, we would like to use this occasion to discuss the whole range of other issues related to the Beauvoir's heritage. These issues, first of all, are about the incorporation and development of feminist ideas into the domain of contemporary philosophy, which remains in many senses a patriarchal realm of power-knowledge production. One could speak of the systematic marginalisation of the ideas and conceptual approaches of such feminist philosophers as Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Sarah Kofman, Luce Irigaray, Sandra Harding, Elizabeth Grosz, and etc. by traditionalist philosophical milieu. Why are all these authors still absent in the philosophical curriculum despite their significant contribution to the development of modern philosophy? Why do many philosophers treat the feminist approach to the epistemology and specificity of a cognizing subject as something exotic and less worth to be familiar with? Why do the public and philosophical discussions on biotechnologies lack gender scholars' participation? In order to be able to write another history of philosophy, one must re-construct the genealogy of feminist philosophy starting with - at least - the Renaissance female authors.
These are the following topical areas we suggest for the discussion at the course of the conference:
* Becoming Woman: feminist scholars' contribution to contemporary philosophy
* Personal and Political in the philosophy of existentialism
* Translating Simone de Beauvoir
* Reading Simone de Beauvoir: the reception of the Simone de Beauvoir's ideas in the Eastern Europe
* Metaphysics and the everyday life: on the transcendental and transient in philosophy
* Autobiographical Self in the intellectual history of feminism
* Feminism and political philosophy today
* Feminist epistemology
* Gender(ed) preferences in philosophical writing genres: philosophy or/and literature?
* From Louise Labé and Tullia d'Aragona to Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray: feminist interpretation of "love"
* The philosophy of childhood: becoming adult and shaping gender and intellectual identity in philosophical scholarship
* Sexual differences and embodied experience as objects for philosophical analysis
* Philosophical institutions: feminism as a challenge?
Working languages for the conference are the regional lingua franca - Lithuanian, Russian and English (the translations from Russian and Lithuanian into English shall be provided during the presentation).
Proposals for individual papers can be sent to [log in to unmask] Please include your contact information, brief CV and paper description of up to 300 words in one Word document and use your name in the title of your document. The deadline is April 25, 2009; acceptance notification by May 10, 2009.
The conference committee:
Almira Ousmanova (Centre for Gender Studies, EHU), Audrone Zukauskaite (Culture, Philosophy and Arts Research Institute), Evgenia Ivanova (Coordinator of the Centre for Gender Studies, EHU)
We plan to come up with a publication of the conference materials (revised for the publication and extended to the full-length texts).
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