Panel: The limits of subjectivity

Description

Who governs subjectivity? What is the basis for determining the subjects who are totally excluded and deprived of their fundamental rights? Why does stating that we treat people like animals and animals like people sound so ambiguous? Who decides who is and who is not excluded, and how is such a decision justified?

Participants:

Szymon Wróbel is a psychologist and philosopher. In 1996 he defended his doctoral thesis in philosophy and in 2003 his habilitation thesis at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), Warsaw. He is the author of the following books: Odkrycie nieświadomości, Galaktyki, biblioteki, popioły (The Discovery of the Unconscious. Galaxies, Libraries, Ashes) which explores the philosophy of literature, Władza i rozum. Stadia rozwojowe krytycznej teorii społecznej (Power and Reason. The Development Stages of Critical Social Theory, the Prime Minister Award, 2004), Granice polityczności (The Limits of the Political, co-author with Paweł Dybel) and Gramatyka, umysł ewolucja (Grammar, Reason Evolution). For several years he has been associated with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, PAN, Warsaw, and the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts, AMU, Kalisz, Poland. He has recently become a lecturer at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw.

Title: Nietzsche's Three Hypotheses on the Origins of the Chorus in Tragedy .

Anat Pick is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Film & Video at the University of East London. She holds a D.Phil in English Literature from the University of Oxford (2001), and an MA in Critical Theory from the University of Sussex (1996). She has written on James and Lévinas, the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, Nietzsche and Giorgio Agamben, as well as posthumanist fiction, and independent documentary film. Anat Pick has written the book Creaturely Poetics (2011) and is the co-editor (with Guinevere Narraway) of Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human (forthcoming in 2012).

Title: Animals: Between Kinship and Exclusion.

Monika Bakke is an assistant professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan. She writes on contemporary art and aesthetics with a particular interest in posthumanist, cross-cultural and gender perspectives. She is the author of the books Bio-transfiguracje. Sztuka i estetyka posthumanizmu (Bio-transfigurations. The Art and Aesthetics of Posthumanities, 2010) and Cialo otwarte (The Open Body, 2000); the co-author of Pleroma. Art in Search of Fullness (1998) and the editor of Estetyka Aborygenow (The Aesthetics of Aborigines, 2004), Going Aerial. Air, Art, Architecture (2006) and Zoo(genea)logia (Zoo[genea]logy, to be published). She is also an editor for the Polish cultural magazine Czas Kultury.

Title: The aesthetics of concern: nonhumans in the art of the biotech age.

Leading speaker:

Paweł Mościcki (b. 1981) is a philosopher, essayist and translator. His interests include contemporary philosophy, art and critical political discourse. He has translated books by Alain Badiou, Derek Attridge, Slavoj Ziezk and Jacques Rancière. He was the editor of the book Maurice Blanchot. Literatura ekstremalna (Maurice Blanchot. Extreme Literature, 2007) and has authored Polityka teatru. Eseje o sztuce angażującej (The Politics of Theatre. Essays about Compelling Art, 2008) and Godard. Pasaże (Godard. Passages, 2010). He is currently working on his doctorate at the School of Social Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), Warsaw, on Agamben's concept of potentiality. He is also working on a project dedicated to art and utopia in the 20^th century.