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Call for Papers
Challenging Cultures of Death
Aim: A cross-cultural dialogue imagining a political and symbolic world based on life not death: mercy not sacrifice.
Julia Kristeva has claimed that we live under a sacrificial social contract. In the light of this claim, our current history, and the political developments that have brought our world to a state of permanent war and to the brink of nuclear disaster, cultural theorists from many disciplines are asking the question: how do we challenge the mechanisms whereby we appear constantly to achieve our identities at the expense of Others?
The language of sacrifice and martyrdom, international and ecumenical, permeates religious and political discourse and has been culturally elaborated in countless ways. Some theorists argue that the totem secret of our societies is that we periodically send out our young to die, thereby replenishing our political identities. The Reformers and Counter-Reformers challenged sacrifice, but now the sacrifice to end all sacrifices manifests as the war to end all wars.
However, the great religious prophets - radical cultural critics - insistently cried for mercy not sacrifice. Such prophets did not foretell, but imagined and ensured a better future for all of life. Standing in that tradition, and from the depths of their own embodiment, and experience as Outsiders , cultural theorists seek to forge new symbols, theoretical resources, and disciplinary, spiritual, and artistic practices based on life and mercy rather than on sacrifice and death.
The first in a proposed series, this interdisciplinary event seeks to identify and welcome theoretical, artistic, and other proposals that serve this overall aim.
Venue: Trinity College Dublin
Date: Fri 2nd Sat 3rd Sun 4 th Nov 07
Sponsors
Institute for Feminism and Religion
Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin.
Keynote Speakers (to date)
Bracha L. Ettinger, Griselda Pollock, Anne Primavesi, Genevieve Vaughan. (See below for biographies, bibliographies, and current positions).
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