Interspecies Friendships and Non-human Companionships (2024 annual conference of the Polish Association for the Study of English (PASE))
Friendship and companionship offer complementary relationships with the world as they in various ways undermine the idea of singularity. As Jean-Luc Nancy notes in Being Singular Plural, what makes the idea of the singular pure and simple an uncertain kind of category is “the originary plurality of origins and the creation of the world in each singularity, creation continued in the discontinuity of its discrete occurrences.” This is also the case of species, both human and non-human, whose singular names betray this kind of plurality. Through her concepts of cyborgs and companion species, Donna Haraway offers a framework for bringing together the organic and inorganic, the natural and the technological, as well as the modern and postmodern in unexpected ways. This theoretical foundation has destabilized our imagination of nature and ecology, both fundamental concepts in the history of Western thought and aesthetics. From animals, plants, and fungi to ecosystems, machines, and algorithms, a network of (in)organic and (im)material agencies shapes the world in common. It is through friendship and companionship that we never walk alone, given that we do not posit ourselves in a masterly position of domination. Yet we must also remember that the first-person plural may be misleading, or, as Nancy claims, paradoxical. We are thus called to reimagine the borders we impose on our communities and ourselves. Following Julietta Singh, in questioning anthropocentric definitions of communality we must unthink the logic of mastery that has long determined our subjectivities, relations, and disciplines. In this sense, the process of de-humanism by which we might re-envision our friendships and companionships is itself allied with theories and practices of decoloniality.
In situating these concerns, this conference proposes to decenter traditional humanisms by addressing the problem of being with, rather than in the world from a broad spectrum of fields and methods. The language of the conference will be English. The conference will be held in person at SWPS University in Warsaw.
We welcome panel and individual paper proposals addressing themes including but not limited to:
- Human, animal, and plant entanglements
- Queer kinships
- New figurations of the commons
- Deep time and the temporality of kinship
- Decolonial critiques of humanism and nature
- Philosophies of friendship and enmity
- Biopolitics and disability aesthetics
- Post-nature and critiques of ecology
- Machine and computer-assisted translation
- Applications of AI models in the humanities
- Learning analytics and computer-assisted pedagogy
- Corpus tools for linguistic research
- Digital literacies
- Computer-Mediated communication
Submission guidelines:
A minimum of 3 presentations is required of panel proposals. We ask that the panel organizer submit the following information in a single document:
- Panel description (350 words max)
- Abstract for each paper (250 words max)
- Bio of each panel participant (150 words max)
Individual paper proposals should include both an abstract and bio in a single document.
Please send all submissions to the conference e-mail: pase2024@swps.edu.pl
Important Dates
- April 8, 2024: Proposal submission deadline [extended]
- April 15, 2024: Notification of acceptance
- May 15, 2024: Registration deadline [extended]
Conference fees:
- Standard fee: 700 PLN / 160 EUR
- PASE members: 600 PLN / 140 EUR
Organizing Committee
- Agnieszka Pantuchowicz, Ph.D./Associate Professor
- Thomas Matusiak, Ph.D/Assistant Professor
- Ma?gorzata Wa?niewska, Ph.D/Assistant Professor
https://english.swps.pl/pase2024
Organizing Committee