Aarhus University Seal

Abetting Everyday Harms reading group: 2nd meeting

Exploring the concept of complicity through an interdisciplinary lens, the Abetting Day Harms reading group invites interested participants from all disciplines and all academic levels to join this second session of the group

Info about event

Time

Friday 27 October 2023,  at 12:15 - 13:45

Location

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), building 1630, room 301

Organizer

AIAS fellow Bridget Vincent and CEH (contact bridgetvincent@aias.au.dk)

The readings for the meeting are:

  • Audrey Bryan. 2022. “Pedagogy of the implicated: Advancing a social ecology of responsibility framework to promote deeper understanding of the climate crisis.” Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 30 (3): 329-348. DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2021.1977979.
  • Rothberg, Michael. 2019. “The Transmission Belt of Domination: Theorizing the Implicated Subject,” in The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pages 31-58.
  • Rothberg, Michael. 2013. “Multidirectional Memory and the Implicated Subject: On Sebald and Kentridge” in Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik (eds.), Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. Pages 39-58.

All texts are accessible through AU Library. If you do not have access to AU Library, please contact Andreas Thyrsted Laursen (anth@ca.au.dk).

About the “Abetting Everyday Harms” reading group

This reading group will explore the concepts of moral complicity (and implication, its close cousin) by bringing together writings from multiple disciplines such as literary studies, law, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, history. We are seeking similarly interdisciplinary reading group participants.

Our exploration of complicity is at once focused through an emphasis on climate change, but at the same time seeks to draw from a broad and foundational conceptual base, and this mixture is reflected in the readings, some of which are devoted to the concept of complicity itself, and some of which are focused on climate. The aim is to set a moderate and achievable amount of reading for shared interdisciplinary discussion which can act as a framework for further individual reading.

The initial few readings will have set content but the organisers will welcome suggestions for additions later in the semester so that the program reflects collective interests as they develop.

We are particularly interested in the ways in which complicity shows up in unexpected ways in our life and work, and hope to think about what less complicit processes could look like. We are particularly interested in the role of cultural production and intellectual methodologies as sites of complicity and of its representation.
We aim to develop a framework for interdisciplinary discussion both of the problem of complicity and some accounts of how we might moving beyond, through, or past it. We are interested not only in why we necessarily abet everyday harms, but also how we might learn to abet them a little less.

This reading group will explore the concepts of moral complicity (and implication, its close cousin) by bringing together writings from multiple disciplines such as literary studies, law, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, history. We are seeking similarly interdisciplinary reading group participants,

Our exploration of complicity is at once focused through an emphasis on climate change, but at the same time seeks to draw from a broad and foundational conceptual base, and this mixture is reflected in the readings, some of which are devoted to the concept of complicity itself, and some of which are focused on climate. The aim is to set a moderate and achievable amount of reading for shared interdisciplinary discussion which can act as a framework for further individual reading.

The initial few readings will have set content but the organisers will welcome suggestions for additions later in the semester so that the program reflects collective interests as they develop.

We are particularly interested in the ways in which complicity shows up in unexpected ways in our life and work, and hope to think about what less complicit processes could look like. We are particularly interested in the role of cultural production and intellectual methodologies as sites of complicity and of its representation.

We aim to develop a framework for interdisciplinary discussion both of the problem of complicity and some accounts of how we might moving beyond, through, or past it. We are interested not only in why we necessarily abet everyday harms, but also how we might learn to abet them a little less.

Previous and upcoming meetings