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
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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