The Graduiertenkolleg 2638 will host its first international conference in 2023. „Moving Normativity“ will be held on May 11 and 12 at the Uferstudios in Berlin. Bringing together researchers from Philosophy, Law, Political Theory, Religious Studies, and several disciplines from the Arts, the conference seeks to create a space for a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to pressing questions on normativity, agency, and social change. According to a general premise of our research, action is based on norms on the one hand, and only possible through a distance from norms on the other. In this understanding, critique is inherent to normativity. The conference sheds light on the various sites of tension inherent to agency, normative action and critique in four panels.

The abstracts of the talks are linked below. A list of them can be found here.

The conference as well as the Artistic Interventions to be held beforehands are open to the public. No RSVP needed.

Thursday, May 11 23

9:30 Opening

Panel 1: Negotiating Normative Power. Identifying with, resisting against, and (re)shaping social standards

How is the normative power of action negotiated between multiple agents (norm authorities, role models, activists, artists, etc.) and in which way can marginalized groups participate in the negotiation process? Is participation in progress based on a subversive potential? How is this expressed and acted upon in religious, linguistic, and artistic practices?

Speakers: Ana Deumert (Linguistics), Giulia Sissa (Religious Studies and Classics), Sumi Madhok (Political Theory and Gender Studies) / Moderation by Deborah Mühlebach

10:00-10:45 Voice: Reflections on Expressive Insurgency (Ana Deumert)

10:45-11:30 Talk by Giulia Sissa

11:30-11:45 Coffee Break

11:45-12:30 Talk by Sumi Madhok

12:30-13:15 Panel discussion

13:15-15:00 Lunch Break 

Panel 2: Social Movements, Blockade, and Contestation

In which sense can social change be shaped by social agents and movements which themselves have to rely on existing normative structures, for example in the form of rights? Can the grounding structures and bodily practices of contestation be understood as truly emancipatory, or do they rather tend to normalize subjects involved in practices of dissent, thus taming and neutralizing potentials of radical change?

Speakers: Tim Wihl (Jurisprudence), Daniel Loick (Philosophy), Bojana Kunst (Dance and Performance Studies) / Moderation by Tobias Wieland

15:00-15:45 Hegel and Spinoza – Towards an integral jurisprudence of political protest (Tim Wihl)

15:45-16:30 Fugitive Freedom: Towards a Standpoint Theory of Normativity (Daniel Loick)

16:30-16:45 Coffee Break

16:45-17:30 Contesting through care: on the precarious ecology of social action (Bojana Kunst)

17:30-18:15 Panel discussion 

Friday, May 12 23

Panel 3: Reshaping Norms Through Counter Memories

How does story-telling and the (re-)writing of history contribute to the constitution of both individual and collective agents? Is the contribution in question realized through a negation of social standards or through the re-affirmation of them? Might the reappropriation of forgotten or repressed memories, images, and myths of the past empower new imaginative spaces of the present and future?

Speakers: Jessica Ullrich (Art Studies and Aesthetics), Massimiliano Tomba (Philosophy), Sarah Colvin (German Studies and Literature) / Moderation by Isabel Mehl

9:30-10:15 Exhibiting Animals. Decentering the Human in Art and Curating (Jessica Ullrich)

10:15-11:00 Anachrony, Revolution, and Restoration (Massimiliano Tomba)

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:00 Literary storytelling and social change: from counter-normativity to reciprocity as resistance (Sarah Colvin)

12:00-12:45 Panel discussion

12:45-14:00 Lunch Break

Panel 4: Disabling/Enabling Agency through the negation of movement of body and mind

Given that movement is crucial to both understanding and representing human action, how does the choreography of body and mind change in situations of disruption, error or restriction? What are the generative potentials of the body or mind in pause or passivity? What are blocking and paralyzing factors that shape the movement of the body and the mind, and in which way can these factors open new spaces for agency?

Speakers: André Lepecki (Performance Studies), Fiona McGovern (Art History), Francesca Raimondi (Philosophy) / Moderation by Jochen Schuff

14:00-14:45 The dispute over movement and the non-time of the struggle. (Notes for a performance on the way). (André Lepecki)

14:45-15:30 Beckett’s Nephews. Exhausted Repetition in Contemporary Art (Hassabi, Tarr) (Francesca Raimondi)

15:30-15:45 Coffee Break

15:45-16:30 Moving away from the white cube. On museums’ norms and attempts to break them (Fiona McGovern)

16:30-17:15 Panel discussion

Closing remarks

Conference Concept: Friederike Allner, Johanna Baumgardt, Marlena Jakobs, Ina Karkani, Marta Lietti, Rodrigo Maruy van den Broek, Andrea Messner, Yon Natalie Mik, Ben Seel, Deborah Mühlebach, Jochen Schuff, Tobias Wieland, Georg W. Bertram