CALL FOR PAPERS: THE HUMAN CONDITION SERIES: 2nd Annual International Multidisciplinary Conference: May 2-3, 2008, Laurentian University @ Georgian College, Ontario, Canada,

2nd Annual International Multidisciplinary Conference on:
TERROR,May 2-3, 2008,
Laurentian University @ Georgian College, Ontario, Canada,
  

Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS Word Format) to
TerrorProposal@ideologiesofwar.com

DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008.

For more details about the conference go to:
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/ or http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/

Description of the Series and Conference Theme

 

"Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition:
It rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way."
-Hannah Arendt

This conference is part of a larger series of ongoing, international, multidisciplinary conferences--run under the banner of The Human Condition Series--that brings together people from a variety of disciplines to assess a singular topic from artistic, cinematic, literary, ethical, social, political, philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. We encourage you to share innovative ideas and new ways of thinking and acting. Proposals will be considered on any related theme and we especially welcome papers, reports, works-in-progress, workshops and sessions. This year's theme is Terror.

The concept of Terror is often found safely hidden and un-thought in diverse cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions and ways of life. One can see these safe havens extending from the divine mythologies of religious experience to the seemingly opposed rationalized life of contemporary high-tech societies. With respect to religious experience, it is clear that we have to seriously reconsider the dynamics of organized religion in the face of rising religious fundamentalisms and terrorist activity.

But terror in the highly rationalized world of technological societies can also impose its existing logic as a way of maintaining the order of things. We give it various positive names that conceal its potency and negative effects. At precise moments in history, terror's potency has appeared in benign terms such as "child welfare," "residential schools," the "founding nation," the "developed world," the "hysterical woman," the "mentally ill," the "social and sexual deviant," the "immigrant problem," the "disposable income," and the "democratic liberation of other peoples."

It is the absurd rationalizations of these terms in the face of concrete realities that covers over terror's effects and keeps it intact. This conference will investigate what role Terror has in maintaining the contemporary condition of humanity--and what hope there is of envisioning a condition in which Terror is natural and organic rather than strategic and imposed.