The symposium deals with the epistemic and emotional landscapes of our times – cynicism, ressentiment, righteous indignation, media bubbles, difficulties in intergroup communication and demonization of the other. We ask: what is there beyond the polarizing trends of our time? How do we shift from a reactive attitude to conscious responding and make room for solidarity and shared horizons? How might the conceptual resources of the phenomenological tradition, psychoanalysis, and critical theory help us to explore these possibilities? Looking for answers to these questions, the symposium highlights experiences of alienation, loss of ethical relationship to others, fractured bodily orientations towards a shared reality, and ambiguities in debates about freedom of expression and authenticity
Program:
Thursday 6 February
Chair Irina Poleshchuk
14.00–14.10 Welcoming Words, Prof. Ryhor Miniankou
14.10–14.30 Erika Ruonakoski (University of Jyväskylä) and Pauliina Mäkela (University of Helsinki), HARMAA and the Problem of Post-Truth
14.30–15.10 Erika Ruonakoski (University of Jyväskylä), Space for Resistance: Rethinking the Role of Philosophy
15.10–15.50 Ilya Inishev (European Humanities University), Hesitation, Inflection, Viscosity: Slowed Perception and Indirect Politics
15.50–16.20 Coffee Break
Chair Tatiana Shchyttsova
16.20–17.00 Natalia Artemenko (TU Dortmund, OSUN/TSI Fellowships at EHU 2024/2025), Phenomena of Linguistic Erosion and Loss of the Future in the Situation of Ruined Everyday Life: The Collapse of the Common World?
17.00–17.30 Discussion
Friday 7 February
Chair Jaakko Vuori
10.00–10.40 Irina Poleshchuk (University of Helsinki / European Humanities University), Pain as a Practice of Decolonizing Consciousness: Rebuilding the Lost Agency
10.40–11.20 Tatiana Shchyttsova (European Humanities University), Actualisation of the Postcolonial and Decolonial Approach in the Contemporary Belarusian Intellectual Milieu and the Epistemological Limits of the Narrative of the ‘In-betweenness’
11.20–11.50 Coffee Break
Chair Joonas S. Martikainen
11.50–12.30 Volha Davydzik (Leuphana University), Ruptures, Resistance, and Emancipation: Rethinking Sociality and Power in Authoritarian Contexts (online, Zoom)
12.30–14.00 Lunch
Chair Erika Ruonakoski
14.00–14.40 Veranika Furs (European Humanities University), Building Imaginary Worlds as a New Form of Escapism
15.20–16.00 Jaakko Vuori (University of Helsinki), Powerless Phantasies and Working Through Ambivalence:
A Butlerian Critique of Ressentiment
16.00–16.30 Coffee Break
Chair Ilya Inishev
16.30–17.10 Joonas S. Martikainen (University of Helsinki), Serious Minds: Cynicism, Ressentiment, and Rifts in Democratic Solidarity
17.10–18.00 Discussion
Unable to attend in person? Join us via Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87062294817?pwd=oOO3X8018XelKg2aMfYfTcotIPooXF.1