Call for Papers - Graduate conference "Russia, in Theory"

Conference venue: University of Pennsylvania
Period: March 7, 2014
Deadline for submitting abstracts: January 12, 2014

The “end of history” in 1991 was, in many ways, a Russian affair. Seemingly overnight, Russia was transformed from "the most progressive society on earth" into the defeated arch-nemesis of the free world, thus ushering in a new era of post-history—quite an accomplishment for a country that supposedly entered “world history” only in the eighteenth century. Of course, Fukuyama’s cosmic, geopolitical vision was hardly the first time that Russia has been cast in such a grandiose role. Since Peter the Great’s heavy-handed transformation of “medieval” Rus’ into a Western-styled Empire, Russia has presented a tempting playground for theorizing and applying European conceptions of history, enlightenment and progress. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Russian intellectuals, influenced by German Idealist philosophy of history, fought over the place of the “Russian Idea” in the civilizational economy of the world. In the twentieth century, generations of European thinkers struggled to understand the meaning of the Soviet experiment. Finally, in our ostensibly post-historical twenty-first century, the experience of post-socialist Russia continues to pose meaningful questions for the ideologues of the Western political, economic and social establishment, as well as for those who wish to resist their hegemony.

Our conference aims to examine and complicate the idea of “Russia” and its role in both local and global philosophical discourse. What place does Russia hold in the imaginations of Western philosophers, from Hegel and Marx to Žižek and Badiou, and how did it come to do so? What meaning does standing with or apart from the West hold among ideologues of the so-called “Russian Idea,” from Gogol’ to Limonov? Finally, what does Russian philosophy, art and political practice, from Chaadaev to Podoroga, from Karamzin to Pussy Riot, from Catherine to Lenin, to Surkov— have to contribute to our understanding of the past, the present and the future states of world history and its discontents?

We are interested in submissions from all humanitarian disciplines, including, but not limited to philosophy and critical theory, literature, history, anthropology, political science, culture and media studies, which may in some way tackle the following general topics:

Please send your 300 word abstracts in the body of an email with “Russia, in Theory submission, LASTNAME” in the title to Pavel Khazanov and Alex Moshkin at slavicswithoutborders@gmail.com , by January 12, 2014. Submissions should include the paper title, author’s name, affiliation, and email address.

Mr Pavel Khazanov and Mr Alex Moshkin
e-mail: slavicswithoutborders@gmail.com