Call for Papers for the Panel
Identity and the Self: Personal Identity, Autonomy and Belonging
The panel is part of the 6th Euroacademia International Conference ‘Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities’
22 – 23 June 2017, Florence, Italy
Deadline: 10th of May 2017
Panel Description:
Personal identity is the focal point of any reflective process. The existence of subjectivity implies the demand for making sense of the self that projects meaning to the world. The subjectivity is a hybrid construct – a byproduct of the self-instantiation as autonomy and agency and a result of interactive social belonging that further structures or de-structures the self. Individual autonomy makes possible a positioning of the self through unlimited questioning of imaginary social significations (C. Castoriadis). The subject can escape the status of pure social function as reproducer and proliferator of pre-existent social meanings and orders and autonomously assert social creation and change though reflective processes that configure the self in a relative independence. Personal identity is shaped in the complex process of multiple positioning of the self as autonomous creator of social meaning and heteronomous inhabitant of social environments with pre-asserted social norms and significations. ‘Who am I?’ remains the simple but most complex question and even provisional answers are part of the core self-making project.
The self as a unitary monadic construct was unmasked by multiple contemporary theories as a chimera propagated through the intellectual agenda of the Enlightenment. In overcoming contradictions in modern theories of the self, we are left with multiple selves, dynamic, fluid, hybrid, and multi-layered, conflictual and determined by hidden mechanisms that limit our power to self-mastering. In such a theoretic environment, the topics of human agency and identity are open to a vast, plural and complex multi-disciplinary theoretic scrutiny. As personal identity depends of a reflexively perceived self, its comprehension relies on understandings and makings of the self. A dynamic and fluid self indicates similar attributes for the personal identity. Its ‘liquid’ nature amplifies the difficulty in formation of substantive personal identities and generates volatility in the understanding and making of the ‘other(s)’ that contribute to the heteronomous making of the self.
This panel aims to bring into dialogue and scrutiny various conceptions of the self, autonomy and personal identity together with applied topics that are implicit to such reflections. The panel welcomes contributions from the widest diversity of disciplines that can address the fluidity of identities in manners that can complement each other in a plural and multi-disciplinary universe of discourse and dialogue. Theoretic endeavors and puzzles from the philosophic universe of reflection on identity are welcomed together with contributions from psychology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, political theory, cultural studies, genetics, mnemonic studies, post-colonial, race and gender studies. It is the aim of the panel to dialogically recreate the complex mosaic of details involved in researching personal identities.
Some indicative topics to be non-exclusively considered are:
• Personal Identity: Addressing Complex Theoretic Puzzles
• Philosophy of the Self: Theoretic Impact Assessments of Understandings of Identity
• The Identity and Conceptions of the Self
• Autonomy, Heteronomy and Identity
• Identity and Individual Agency
• Individualism and Identity
• Unintended Consequences of Identitarian Constructs
• The Self and the Other in Identity Making
• Self-Judgement, Self Esteem and Self-Accomplishment
• Memory and the Making of Identities
• Performative Selves
• Psychological Dimension of Identity Making Processes
• Psychoanalytical Contributions to Understanding Identities
• Genealogies of the Self and Identity
• Impact of Genetics on Understanding Identity
• Personal Identity and Systems of Social Beliefs
• Processes of Self-Colonization
• ‘The Human Gallery’: Identity, Diversity and Difference
• The Self as Another: Deconstructing Personal Identity
• From Marxism to Post-Structuralism: Suspecting Identities
• Personal Identity and Cultural Psychology
• The Return of Foundationalism in a Post-Foundationalism Era
• Post-Subjectivity and Post-Identity
• The e-Selves, Internet and Virtual Identities
• Persisting Metaphysics of the Self: Religion and Identity
If interested in participating, please read the complete event details on the conference website and apply on-line. Alternatively you can send a maximum 300 words abstract together with the details of your affiliation until 10th of May 2017 by e-mail at application@euroacademia.org
For full details of the conference and on-line application please see:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/6th-conference-identities-and-identifications/