9th Annual Duquesne University Graduate Conference in Philosophy
February 21, 2015
Duquesne University
Imaginary, Ideology, Illusion: The Reality of the Unreal
Keynote Speaker: Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto
The Duquesne Graduate Students in Philosophy (GSiP) invite philosophical papers that address questions regarding the imaginary, ideology, and illusion and their importance for questions of ontology, politics, and ethics. How does something imaginary, something that strictly speaking is not real, still produce real effects? What role does fiction, myth, ideology, or illusion play in our lives, positively or negatively? And what is the relationship between imaginative experience and knowledge? We invite submissions that engage both contemporary philosophical discourse as well philosophical discourse which is primarily informed by perspectives grounded in the history of philosophy (or some combination of the two).
To help facilitate this discussion, possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- ideology in the Marxist tradition
- the imaginary in psychoanalysis
- illusion in Kant & Hegel
- imagination in early modern philosophy
- Husserl and phantasy
- Merleau-Ponty and illusion
- Benjamin and the dream-image
- perception versus intellection
- the relationship of rhetoric and opinion to reason and knowledge
- the relationship between aesthetics and politics
- myths and identity-formation
- analysis of dreams and hallucination
Submissions: Please prepare abstracts of no more than 500 words for blind review and send to duquesnegradconference@gmail.com by December 1, 2015. Cover sheets should include name, submission title, email address, and institutional affiliation. Each presentation will be allotted approximately 25 minutes.