CFP: Re-Membering #Education: Temporally Inflected Approaches Pushing Boundaries of Inquiry

 EERA Network 17. Histories of Education is developing a book publication to mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of EERA (which coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the network). The publication is envisaged as a transdisciplinary one, suited to the EERA-supported Springer book series on Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Educational Research. If you are interested in contributing to the proposed new volume, edited by the Link Convenor and the Convenors of Network 17, please send a 100-200 (max. 500) word abstract to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Geert Thyssen by October 31, 2023 for consideration: Geert.Thyssen@hvl.no.

Authors do not need to have presented their chapter at an EERA conference (ECER). However, candidate contributors should pay especial attention to the temporal lens central to ECER 2024 (“Education in an Age of Uncertainty: Memory and Hope for the Future”) and all Network 17’s interests, whether it concern new forms of scholarship, new media, or underexplored areas. 

For your contribution you should indicate which book section (outlined below) would be best suited and how it may push boundaries in educational research from a transdisciplinary perspective.

Section 1: Data/sources – e.g., revisiting the very concepts of sources and/or data; exploring the workings of data and/or data generation in education as a scholarly/policy/practice field; reconsidering education disciplines’ disciplining around data in terms of what is enabled to qualify and/or excluded from qualifying as such and to what effects; analysing overlooked types and/or sites of source/data gathering (generation) and the potential of these;

Section 2: Methodology/methods – e.g., rethinking methods’ place in educational research; contrasting/combining/realigning methods; proposing new methods/types of methodology; exploring implications of using particular, promising methods/methodology; reimagining discipline-specific method-related constructs (e.g., ethnography, historiography);

Section 3: Theory/epistemology – e.g., reappraising windows upon phenomena of education studied or theories of knowledge regarding “education”; deconstructing discipline-specific notions of knowledge making; reconfiguring theory-practice, meaning-matter, reflection-experience, knowing-sensing or similar onto-ethico-epistemological dichotomies;

Section 4: Edges/niches/gaps – e.g., charting emerging discipline-transcending areas/topics of educational inquiry, investigating cross-disciplinary blind spots, covering less dominant issues, approaches or regions (scholarship from the Global South, queer/trans perspectives, indigenous approaches etc.) and highlighting related potential and/or implications.

While the book sections focus on data, methodology, theory and edges, these aspects are to be elucidated through analysis of specific education themes, cases, topics, events etc. of relevance across disciplines – avoiding presentism and ahistoricism.

Provisional timeline for publication:

- 31 October 2023: Deadline submission chapter proposals

- 31 March 2024: Deadline submission draft chapters

- 31 August 2024: Deadline submission revised chapters

- 31 December 2024: Envisaged publication date

Contact Email

Geert.Thyssen@hvl.no

URLhttps://eera-ecer.de/networks/17-histories-of-education/network-activities

CFP: International Conference on "(Art)ificial Intelligence and the Problems of Language, Thinking, and Writing: Interrogations to #Jacques Derrida"

The first English translation of Jacques Derrida’s La Voix et le Phénomène (1967) translated as  Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs is completing its 50^th anniversary in 2023. This is “an event, perhaps” (Salmon, 2020). This book was translated again in 2011, this time with the title Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Derrida’s views on translation “as transaction and as transfer” (2001) is too well known not to think of this series of translation events as, at least, “dubious”. We are using “dubious” of course to underline the fact that this International Conference which is being organized to commemorate Speech and Phenomena may not be celebrating the “original” book let alone celebrating Voice and Phenomena. Therefore, the question of authenticity and originality is, not putting too fine a point on it, an aporia. We use this aporia of original, translation, and multiple productivity of texts to investigate and contribute to the contemporary debates on artificial intelligence, machine learning, writing, ChatGPT, and several other concerns emerging from the current time of the “algorithmic self” (Pasquale, 2015). This investigation is through interrogations of Jacques Derrida and the series of “events” that his three books of 1967 helped initiate: De la grammatologie translated into English as Of Grammatology (1976); L'écriture et la difference translated into English as Writing and Difference (1978) apart from Speech and Phenomena this conference is celebrating.

We are using “interrogation”, fittingly to the aims of the conference, in the way Oxford’s A Dictionary of Computing (2008) defines the term. Interrogation in this sense is “the sending of a signal that will initiate a response. A system may interrogate a peripheral to see if it requires a data transfer. The response is normally a status byte. When a number of devices are interrogated in a sequence the process is called polling.” This International Conference, therefore, is in a way sending “signals” to Derrida and the texts associated to that proper name, especially Speech and Phenomena. We want to investigate if these texts signal back and to what extent on the questions of language, thinking, and writing that first animated Derrida and which now need a serious revisit, reformulation, and reconsiderations.

With the advances being made in AI and computing, we need a better understanding of how these technologies are changing (or not changing) how we understand language, thinking, and writing. This seems to be one of the urgent tasks of philosophy and theory. The optimism of Hilary Putnam (1995) that “AI has so far spun off a good deal that is of real interest to computer science in general, but nothing that sheds any real light on the mind” (392) to the Chinese Room Argument by John Searle (1980) where he claims that “no program is sufficient for intentionality” (424) have tried to wrest some ground of thinking from computation and algorithm but the field remains highly contested and contentious. Works such as Alien Phenomenology (2012) among many others have shown interesting ways in which interactions and thinking may happen within and between objects. Similarly, with natural language processing (NLP) which enables a predictive model of writing generating signifiers based on big data and algorithm the very notion of “writing” is perhaps undergoing a radical change. If we take Derrida’s claim that “writing thus comprehends language” (1976, 7) it is now an urgent task to see if probabilistic writing is or is not transforming the concept of writing all over again. Derrida’s task of revealing the ethnocentrism that controlled the concept of writing which was seen as “phoneticization of writing” (3) needs to be taken up in the light of the promises and ambitions of “predictive writing.” If Derrida indeed deconstructed the logocentric nature of ethnocentric writing, does predictive writing “liberate” us finally from the stranglehold of the logos? Is algorithmic also logocentric or is it not? There are suggestions that it may just be the case and that what Derrida and others were theorizing about language and writing may have ultimately been triumphant (Underwood, 2023). This conference will think about these questions deeply and hopefully will result in certain insights which give us newer ways of conceptualizing thinking, language, and writing.

This International Conference invites paper submissions from scientists, media scholars, philosophers, literary scholars, Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars, historians, anthropologists, practitioners, professionals, and others. The papers can have varied perspectives and aims. They can be exploratory and speculative and could also be based on empirical studies or lab results. The only requirement is that the papers should be in conversation (or as we mentioned above, in the nature of “interrogation”) with the range of concepts used by Jacques Derrida that pertains to language, thinking, and writing. The topics include but are not limited to:

• Deconstruction and AI
• Derrida and Ethics of Language and AI
• Derrida and Digital Humanities
• Derrida, Politics, and Social Media
• Derrida and AI generated Digital Selfs and Cultures
• Conversational AI and the Presence of Speech
• Trace in the Digital

Please send an abstract (500-750 words) with 3-5 keywords to mithilesh.kumar@christuniversity.in 

Conveners:

Avirup Ghosh, Panihati Mahavidyalaya, Kolkata, India.

Mithilesh Kumar, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, India.

Namitha Shivani Iyer, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Abstracts will be selected through a double-blind review process. Papers presented at the conference will be published as a special issue in Tattva Journal of Philosophy (UGC-CARE Listed Journal. Group I, Arts and Humanities)

Important Dates and Fees:

1. Deadline for submission of abstracts: September 30, 2023.
2. Notification of selected abstracts: October 10, 2023
3. Registration link: October 15, 2023.
4. Deadline for registration: December 01, 2023.

Registration fee: Paper presenters (India)- INR 5,000

Paper Presenters (International)- US $75

Participation- INR 1,000 (India)/US $15 (International)

 

References:

Bogost, Ian. Alien Phenomenology, or, What It’s like to Be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

Daintith, John, et al., editors. A Dictionary of Computing. 6th ed, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Derrida, Jacques.  Of Grammatology. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

---. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Northwestern University Press, 1973.

---. Writing and Difference. University of Chicago Press, 1978.

---. Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Northwestern University Press, 2011.

---. “What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” Critical Inquiry, vol. 27, no. 2, Jan. 2001, pp. 174–200. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1086/449005.

Pasquale, Frank. “The Algorithmic Self.” The Hedgehog Review, https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/too-much-information/articles/the-algorithmic-self. Accessed 7 Aug. 2023.

Putnam, Hilary, and James Conant. Words and Life. Harvard University Press, 1994.

Salmon, Peter. An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida. Verso, 2020.

Searle, John R. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3, Sept. 1980, pp. 417–24. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00005756.

 

 

 

Contact Information

Mithilesh Kumar- mithilesh.kumar@christuniversity.in

Contact Email

mithilesh.kumar@christuniversity.in