The Watershed, Bristol

Friday April 12th, 6 to 8 pm

There is no doubt that many of us fear that there will be no future for our planet and all the living beings which live on it without a radical evolution of our current world. This cannot happen without changes in our way of bringing up and educating children, of envisaging our natural and cultural environment, and of conceiving of theory and culture. Some contributors, spanning a range of disciplines, to Towards a New Human Being (Palgrave 2019) – Katrina Mitcheson (UWE), Maria Fannin (University of Bristol), Harry Bregazzi (University of Bristol), Andrew Bevan (Kingston University London) – will briefly expound their own proposals for the dawn of a new humanity and a new world. First, Luce Irigaray, the main editor of the volume, will present the intention behind this cultural and political project, which arose from To Be Born her most recent book (Palgrave, 2017). Then, we anticipate an intense discussion with the public, and perhaps some new suggestions. Books can be bought at a discount – what is more, with a dedication for people who want it.

Luce Irigaray is one of the leading thinkers of our age. She is the author of more than thirty books translated into various languages, the most recent of which are Sharing the World (2008), In the Beginning, She Was (2012) and Through Vegetal Being (co-authored with Michael Marder, 2016). She is also the co-editor (with Michael Marder) of Building a New World (2015), a volume in which early-career researchers from her seminars explore new ways of thinking, in order to promote a world-wide community respectful of differences between the sexes, generations, cultures and traditions.

Andrew Bevan is a researcher in philosophy working on the intersection between neurosci-ence and philosophy at Kingston University, and author of ‘The Plasticity of Empathy: A Materialist, Post-Phenomenological Critique of Einfühlung in Aesthetics, Phenomenology and Contemporary Neuroscience’, in Thinking Catherine Malabou: Passionate Detachments, Eds. by T. Wormald and I. Dahms, (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018).

Harry Bregazzi is a researcher in geographies of peace at the University of Bristol. He has recently published ‘Agonism, critical political geography, and the new geographies of peace’ with M Jackson, in Progress in Human Geography, vol 42 (2018).

Maria Fannin is Reader in Geography at the University of Bristol, she has published widely on feminist approaches to health and understandings of motherhood, and is editor of Reproductive Geographies; Bodies, Places and Politics (Routledge, 2018), with Marcia R England and Helen Hazen, and Refiguring the Postmaternal: Feminist Responses to the Forgetting of Motherhood (Routledge, 2018), with Maud Perrier.

Katrina Mitcheson is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England, and President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society. She has published on the philosophy of art, Nietzsche and Foucault, and their relationship to Hellenistic thought, and is author of Nietzsche, Truth and Transformation (Palgrave, 2013).

Attendance is free and open to all but register for being sure to have a place: https://info.uwe.ac.uk/events/event.aspx?id=24206