Panel Proposal for the ISA Annual Convention, New Orleans, February 2015

 

Of Copula, Quodlibets, and Liminal Spaces: Contingent Encounters of East Asian Political Thought and International Relations

                                             

International Relations experiences a rising interest in political thought beyond its putative Western confinements and particularly East Asian political thought attracts IR-scholars. By aiming to open up spaces to imagine alternative political orders, many of these contributions embark to uncover the multitude and diversity of East Asian thought, as they argue that this has been and is still being silenced through Western knowledge-impositions and the Eurocentric worldview the discipline is perpetuating. This panel aims to transcend the dichotomies, path-dependencies, and incommensurabilities of this kind of thinking by stressing a lacuna in it: contingent intellectual encounters have been an important stimulus for 19^th and 20^th century East Asian scholars to theorize about questions of subjectivity, community, and modernity and it enabled them to provide distinctive contributions. As these encounters were multi-dimensional, East Asia is not conceptualized logo-centrically, but it is a vehicle to identify and recapture the amorphous knowledge-transfer. Aiming to open up new spaces of political imagination finds, therefore, less satisfaction in an enclosed, essentialist investigation, but in reconsidering the moments of becoming by focusing on copula, quodlibets, and liminal spaces that these encounters generated which enabled East Asian scholars to rethink the political constellations of their time.

 

If you are interested in contributing to this panel, please contact with your paper-abstract (max. 200 words) by 7^th May 2014 the latest:

 

Atsuko Watanabe: [log in to unmask]

 

and

 

Felix Rösch: [log in to unmask]

 

 

 

Dr. Felix Rösch
Senior Lecturer in International Relations
Department of International Studies and Social Science
Faculty of Business, Environment and Society
George Eliot Building
Coventry University
Priory Street
Coventry CV1 5FB
United Kingdom
Office: GE 109

E-Mail: [log in to unmask]

Phone: 0044 (0)24 7765 7127

Academia.edu | Website | Staff Profile

 

Published with Palgrave Macmillan:

The Concept of the Political | Emigre Scholars and the Genesis of IR

 

Book Series with Palgrave Macmillan Pivot (edited with Hartmut Behr): Global Political Thinkers

 

Classical Realism meets Critical Theory (Leverhulme Trust Research Network)

 

BISA Working Group: International Relations as a Social Science