Europes in Margins
Helsinki
Organization: University of Helsinki
Who gets to think about, write and shape ideas of Europe? How are bodies, stories, and perspectives made invisible or visible? What political horizons open up when we think across marginalisations of bodies, ecologies and societies that have been produced in the making of ‘European’ institutions?
The conference attends to the plural, many-voiced prisms of ‘Europes’ seen from and in different margins and marginalities. In doing so, we are particularly interested in ways of moving beyond mere criticism of Eurocentrism and the production of margins of Europe. We invite contributions that speak from locations and positions that disrupt and dislocate Europe as the centre of the world yet seeking alternative ways of knowing that erode binaries of centre/margin and internal/external. Our wager is that tackling contemporary global crises (racial violence, populism, wars, epistemicide, legal and ecological crises, among others) requires moving towards horizons emerging from knowledges understood as being neither of, in or from Europe, what we call ‘Europes’ in margins. While we welcome postcolonial and decolonial approaches, we are especially interested in works that speak across locations, positions and regions canonically obstructed as the margins in a broad sense.
The conference invites participants to engage with and think further from the plurality of ‘Europes’ in margins – in the intellectual traditions, political practices, ways of knowing, legal traditions, relational ecologies and ways of being.
We welcome abstracts for papers. Paper presentations can address one or several of the following topics, or other related questions:
Architectures of juridical violence, European rule of law and democracy
Relational ontologies of being, especially perspectives on abolition, border thinking and marginalized forms of knowledges
Racisms across locations and histories
The ecological crisis and alternative politics of nature
Institutional and mundane politics of gender/sexuality
Marginal temporalities, memories and ways of thinking about time
We are looking forward to receiving your individual paper proposals! We welcome abstracts until 15th of June 2023.
Please submit your abstract (max. 300 words) via the electronic from link below. In the abstract include your name, affiliation and contact details. For questions, please contact: europesinmarginsconference@helsinki.fi
europesinmarginsconference@helsinki.fi
organizing committee