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"Making Sense": French Graduate Student Association of Columbia University's 21st annual conference

Publié le par Vincent Ferré (Source : Columbia University)

The French Graduate Student Association of Columbia University is pleased to announce its 21st annual conference, Making Sense.

In fragment 434 of the Pensées, Pascal reflects on the nature of man: “What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!” At a time in history when the nature of man and his place in the universe were becoming increasingly less certain, Pascal dramatically summed up the incomprehensibility of what would seem most familiar: ourselves. Pascal’s apologetics can be read as one man’s attempt to make sense of human misery and greatness for both himself and his contemporaries. But making sense of man in a religious context is just one facet of the human enterprise. Human beings, regardless of their craft or discipline, have relentlessly sought to make sense of themselves, of this life, and of the world around them. Disciplines as diverse as literature, art, music, philosophy, sociology, and the natural sciences all purport to make sense on some level, either through language, symbols, sound, images, machinery, or sheer movement. It seems, as is apparent in all fields of knowledge, that human beings are driven at the core to make sense.

In this conference we will reflect on the different ways in which human beings attempt (successfully or not) to make sense of themselves and their world. We will also focus on attempts to do away with sense-making altogether. When and why is it important to make sense (or not)? What are the concrete tools and epistemological practices necessary to each field of knowledge in order to make sense? When we fail to make sense, how do we know we have failed, and to what can we attribute our failure? Does making sense imply that we humans are in fact producers of sense, or do the tasks and objects we attend to contain their own inherent logic? When we say, “making sense,” do we primarily mean “being understood by others” or “coming into our own understanding of a particular object”? Finally, what is the role of subjectivity in sense-making, particularly in fields that aspire to thoroughgoing objectivity?

We welcome 200-300 word abstracts in French or English addressing this topic within any period of French and Francophone literary, cultural, or scientific history. Perspectives from other disciplinary fields and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes. Please submit your abstract with title and contact information (name, affiliation, email address) by January 6, 2012 to fgsaconference2012@gmail.com. The conference will be held on March 2, 2012.