CAPPE Conference | Radical Interventions: Politics, Culture, Society

Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)

11^th Annual, International, Interdisciplinary Conference

Radical Interventions: Politics, Culture, Society 

Wednesday 7^th – Friday 9^th September 2016

University of Brighton, UK

 

Keynote Speakers:

Mary Evans, Centennial Professor, Gender Institute, LSE
Steve Davies, Education Director, Institute of Economic Affairs
Natalie Fenton, Goldsmiths College

 

Ever since the 1970s, it is often claimed, radicalism has been in decline. But has it? Isn’t the neoliberal revolution then initiated itself genuinely radical? To ask this question is to ask, in effect, just what it is for something to be radical, whether politically, culturally or socially; and to begin to press the question of the normative status of the radical. In so doing, we want to suggest, there might open up the possibility of a dual debate: just what is it to be radical; and why does that matter?

In particular, what might it be radically to reconfigure both the content of politics, culture and society and their inter-relations? Might the fundamental questions of politics, for example, concern at least as much how politics is understood and what counts as political, as the specific content of particular positions understood as paradigmatically political?

To begin to think about these issues, we invite contributions from philosophy, politics, political philosophy, cultural studies of all varieties, sociology, social studies and related disciplines or areas that address matters relevant to these issues. Topics covered included, but were not limited to:

• What might make the Left radical? Should the Left be radical?
• What sorts of radical Right are there?
• How relevant is “Left” and “Right” for radical social change?
• Must radicalism always be opposed to conservatism?
• What was radical about (e.g. Plato, Aquinas, Wollstonecraft, Burke, Mill, Marx…)?
• Is the “cultural turn” in politics radical?
• What is radical writing?
• In what ways, if any, might a culture be said to be radical?
• In what ways, if any, might various social arrangements be said to be radical?
• What is it for painting, architecture, photography, theatre…etc…to be radical today?
• Was Syriza radical? Is it (still) radical?
• Are (e.g.) Podemos, Occupy…radical?
• Should we aim to be radical? Or perhaps to avoid being radical?

Academics working in, among other areas, cultural studies, philosophy, political theory, art, politics, sociology, media studies, social geography and history were in attendance.