INTIMATE2021: The Politics of Intimate Life Online UK, September 8-9, 2021 |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=intimate2021 |
Abstract registration deadline | June 1, 2021 |
Submission deadline | June 1, 2021 |
The Politics of Intimate Life
MANCEPT Workshop: 8-9th September, 2021
Abstract deadline: 1st June, 2021
Intimate life is shaped by politics. Politics shapes intimate life. This workshop aims to better understand these commonplaces, and builds on the Politics of Romantic Life at MANCEPT last year. We invite talks which seek to understand and ameliorate the situation of sexual minorities and alternative intimate lives in the context of the modern state. Read ‘intimate life’ as broadly as the range of visible experiments in living. Some people happily eschew sex, others reject romance, or the couple, or marriage, or domestic life, or the family. Intimate arrangements, like sexual desire itself, are polymorphous.
Our questions are: Can the state accommodate this diversity? Should it try? Might love, or the pursuit of pleasure, offer ways of resisting neoliberal ideals? Or is intimate life insular and isolating? These and other tensions abound at a time when some revel in the fact that (nearly) all is permitted, and others feel increasingly anxious and disconnected.
One function of philosophy is to help us describe, criticise, and perhaps reconcile ourselves to our situation. We do this on the go, from the inside, and approach these questions already as people who love, or hope to love, or as people for whom the happy absence of love inevitably strikes others as a problem. Join us to consider together some of the political questions related to intimate life: an area of human concern at the intersection of philosophy of emotion and political philosophy, and with vibrant interdisciplinary depth drawing from feminist, political, gender, and psychological theory, as well as speaking to a host of applied questions in law, education, sociology, social work, and beyond.
Abstracts of 500 words or below are welcome on the following questions, or on any other topic related to the political aspects of intimacy (the list below is by no means exhaustive):
- Are some intimate configurations more conducive to flourishing than others?
- Does oppression deform our ability to love well?
- Does romantic love help, or hinder, justice?
- How can we desire better?
- Should the state support intimacy?
- Should the state privilege certain relationships? If so, which ones?
- Is the vulnerability of intimate life something to be mitigated, or embraced?
- To what extent is intimate vulnerability separable from political vulnerability?
- What would a just intimate life look like?
- Should the state try to ensure a fairer distribution of intimate goods?
- Should the politics of intimate life feature in Sex and Relationship Education curricula?
- Can we educate (for) intimacy? Would we want to?
Workshop Details & Submission Guidelines
The workshop will be held online, on the 8th and 9th of September, although we may extend the sessions onto the 7th if there is sufficient demand.
Please submit your abstract via the Submission link here, by 1st June (midnight, last time zone on Earth): https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=intimate2021#
Information about registration, fees, and bursaries can be found here: https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/mancept/mancept-workshops/mancept-workshops-2021/
Contact
All questions about submissions or the workshop itself should be emailed to the organisers: Luke Brunning (l.brunning@bham.ac.uk) and Lauren Ware (l.ware@kent.ac.uk).
We look forward to reading your abstracts!