 |
 |
RECONSIDERING DETACHMENT: THE ETHICS AND ANALYTICS OF DISCONNECTION An interdisciplinary conference Cambridge - 30th June-3rd of July With the support of The ESRC and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Over the past three decades, connection, relationship and engagement have become unavoidable keywords for thinking about ethics and knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences. Going against this grain, a number of scholars have recently urged a reconsideration of the productive potential of disconnection, distance and detachment, as ethical, methodological and philosophical commitments. Scholars in fields as diverse as the history of science, literary studies and philosophy have argued for the need to suspend or reconfigure the critique of objectivity, in order to bring into view various actors' pursuit of detachment as a form of virtue. In parallel, the recent emergence of an anthropology of ethics and self-formation has brought detachment to the fore, feeding into ethnographic topics as diverse as monasticism, cosmopolitanism, development, human-animal relations and the biosciences. Rather than treating detachment simply as the moral inversion of compassion and engagement, such studies illustrate the range of contexts within which distance and disconnection can offer meaningful frameworks for action. This conference will allow an international and diverse range of scholars who are engaging with detachment to come together for the first time, for a fresh and timely opportunity to rethink the dominant academic paradigm of engagement and connectivity. Speakers include: Michael Carrithers, Paul Du Gay, Veena Das, Ilana Gershon, Antoine Hennion, Eduardo Kohn, Hannah Landecker, John Law, James Laidlaw Joel Robbins. Registration is now open. Please visit: www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1275 - In association with the Detachment Collaboratory: www.detachmentcollaboratory.org -- Samuel Mather Development and Publicity Assistant The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) 17 Mill Lane Cambridge CB2 1RX Tel: 01223 (7)66838 Email: [log in to unmask] Website: www.crassh.cam.ac.uk