Session Information
MC Keynote A, What Is ‘The Human’ About the Humanities Today?
Keynote Speaker
Contribution
This paper starts from the assumption that we need to sharpen the academic awareness of the public perception of the Humanities in society today. My aim is to compare notes on different and new concepts of ‘the Human’, developed both within disciplinary and interdisciplinary academic scientific research and in broader social practices. The main focus will be on the shifting relationship between the ‘two cultures’ of the Humanities and Science in the light of contemporary developments, such as the sophisticated forms of interdisciplinary research that have emerged in the fields of bio-technologies, neural sciences, environmental and climate change research and Information and Communication Technologies. These rapid changes affect the very definitions of the human and of human evolution. The question is how and to what an extent they have an impact on both the practice of the Humanities and on their self-representation. Is Humanism challenged or strengthened by these developments? To what an extent is anthropocentrism called to task by what is becoming known as post human theory?
Besides tracking these new developments in the relationship between the Humanities and the exact sciences in the twenty-first century, the paper will also interrogate some of the ways in which ‘the human’ is being debate in society at large, in issues related to the construction of new, globalised notions of ‘humanity’, ‘human interest’ and ’human values’ in debates about humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention, including our technologically mediated wars.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.