Conflicting Conflicts:Annual Conference of IRC

Conflicting Conflicts:Annual Conference of IRC

11-14 October, 2018

Meizhu Resort Hotel, Hangzhou, China

This conference is a part of a broader attempt to revisit the place and role of contemporary science and thought in face of growing social conflicts. More specifically, it is an attempt to call into question science’s basic epistemic approach, its basic understanding of the nature of social conflicts, by asking the explicit question concerning the epistemology of social conflicts – what are social conflicts as knowledge events?

One central characteristic in the common perception of contemporary social conflicts, which lends them their specific acute gravity, is the sense of irreconcilability. It is the sense of lack of common ground that seems to generate the specific threat perceived in inter-cultural and most paradigmatically in inter-religious conflicts, as inter epistemic conflicts, i.e. as conflicts between different systems and conceptions of knowledge.

If inter-epistemic social conflicts, such as religious conflicts, are nonetheless to be analyzed epistemologically, as knowledge events, it may be suggested that such conflict situations are particularly complex since the conflict concerns the very understanding of the conflict: not only a conflict on the matter in conflict, but more radically a conflict on the very nature of conflict. The conflict conceptions themselves are in conflict.

In an attempt to explore the idea of conflicting conflicts, this conference will try to generate an encounter, debate and conflict between different conceptions of conflict. Scholars specializing in different knowledge traditions will present and disagree on conflicting categories and notions of struggle, polemos and disagreement, both as conceptual structures and as active elements in historical and contemporary conflicts.

For the sake of a lively exchange, presentations will be limited to 15 minutes, followed by prepared responses and discussion. Papers will be pre-circulated to all participants. Conference languages are English, Chinese, and German.

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the organizing institutions.
The conference is the first event of the subproject “Disagreement Between Religions. Epistemology of Religious Conflicts” within the Interfaculty Research Cooperations (IRC) «Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies».