Expanded Dialogues: Symposium on “Self/Uncertainties”

In the face of the uncertainties of our current moment, both locally and globally, who are we in relation to it - socially, spatially, and molecular?

The Project

The closure of the Concordia University campus has transformed university life. While the formal functions of the academy have been transferred online, many of the minor aspects of academic life have not made the transition. In particular, shutting down campus life has meant that a necessary part of scholarship cannot happen: those chance encounters and conversations that result from people being in the same physical space. While this withdrawal of a social element is an experience all or most workplaces now face, it affects the university in a very particular way. For what is precluded is the informal flow of ideas: the accidental meetings in the hallway, the lecture or event that you might stumble upon, or a discovery of a shared interest which leads to further collaboration. In short, we now have a university without the spontaneous moments of academic life. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has made such encounters impossible, now more than ever a conscious effort is required to preserve the unpredictable exchange of ideas. With this in mind, ‘Expanded Dialogues’ as virtual symposium aims to recreate such a space of exchange.

As an expanded symposium, it will be centred around the theme ‘Self/Uncertainties’, a topic that has moved into the foreground of many disciplines, asking and discussing how identity, society, communication, and our perception of self and other have become unstable and uncertain – and the implications for the future. 

The Format

The Expanded Dialogues Symposium itself will take place over three days, from mid-April to mid-June, with one Dialogue event per month. The dialogues themselves will be both expanded and expanding: By ‘expanded’, they aim to be events which go beyond the usual disciplinary confines; by ‘expanding’, they will follow a model which progressively broadens itself, bringing more people into the discussion as the each event unfolds. 

In order to replicate a more spontaneous exchange of ideas online than may usually occur during an online lecture or webinar, the format will take the form of an expanded and expanding round table discussion: a small number of core participants (four) invited from different faculties will hold a dialogue on one of the core themes mentioned above; after circa 20 minutes, the dialogue will be expanded to wider group of participants (selected from a call for participation, see below) for another 20 minutes; lastly, the dialogue will be expanded further and opened up to the audience.

Events and Topics

The past year has rendered the idea of ourselves in the world as we know it uncertain. We have become avatars of ourselves, limited in social, creative and mental space. But we have also come face-to-face with a new kind of negotiation: what it means to be part of the world not only on a social, political, and environmental level, but also on a molecular one. We have encountered our molecular selves in the world, an encounter that has blurred the idea of boundaries of self even further. In the uncertainties of the moment, who are we then - and who do we want to become? And at what cost do we become so? Expanded Dialogues invites participants to explore the dialectic of self and uncertainty in three separate events:

Part 1: “Expanded Dialogues: Uncertain Environs, Uncertain Selves” April 20, 2021, 2.30 PM

Part 2: “Expanded Dialogues: Fractured Communication, Fragmented society” May 13, 2021, 2.30 PM

Part 3: “Expanded Dialogues: Molecular Selves, In/Organic Humanity” June 14, 2021, 2.30 PM

The symposium invites researchers - faculty, post-docs, and graduate students - from different disciplines across Concordia and audiences from beyond to participate in a discussion on the uncertainties of Space and Environment, Social and Communication, and Human and the Molecular.

Details on each event, including calls for abstracts and submission deadlines, can be found on the “Call for Participation” page.

Organizers

Marlene Oeffinger is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Concordia University and a coordinator at the Center for Expanded Poetics, where her research focuses on the mediation between physical and metaphysical theories of subjectivity towards an allostatic idea of self. She also holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and her scientific research centers on the relationship of form and function in the plasticity of macromolecular complexes.

Fintan Neylan is a Research Intern at the Centre for Expanded Poetics at Concordia University and completing a PhD. in Philosophy at Memorial University, Newfoundland. His research focuses on Gilles Deleuze's the critique of representation.

This project is hosted by the Center for Expanded Poetics, organized in collaboration with 4TH SPACE Concordia, and supported by the Concordia Faculty of Arts and Science.