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Poli33


Conviviality, identity and stagnation 
Convenor:
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes (Deakin University)
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Format:
Panel
Streams:
Politics and International Relations (x) Inequality (y)
:
Philosophikum, S54
Sessions:
Wednesday 31 May, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin

Short Abstract:

Nyamnjoh's conviviality emphasises incompleteness and openness over competition and conflict. This panel explores possibilities for conviviality in the face of stagnation of identities and relations manifest in hardening forms of identify difference and politics.

Long Abstract:

Francis Nyamnjoh's conceptualisation of Africans as frontier subjects, cognisant and embracing of subjective incompleteness, has been widely taken up across numerous disciplines. His suggestion that conviviality, as a mode of living constructively and pleasurably with and through difference, is a more natural state of being for African peoples than competitive and conflictual forms of relationality has obvious appeal. It calls for humility and a capacity to change - one's mind, one's identity, one's way of being with others.

Yet these notions are at odds with some hardening forms of identity politics and many of the channels through which those politics play out (e.g. social media). This panel is concerned with social and political circumstances in which identity differences and relations between identity groups are in a state of stagnation characterised by bitterness, refusal to constructively engage with Others, and hardened and foreclosed senses of identity difference. In these scenarios, what are the possibilities for futures of conviviality? And for an enactment of identity difference as joyfully incomplete? What kinds of materialities, discourses and social practices constitute practical barriers or conduits to conviviality, and/or to stagnation in identities and forms of relationality?

We welcome submissions from all disciplines and locations, and focused on any form of identity difference, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion. Preference will be given to papers which can advance thinking specifically about the interplay between identity, stagnation and conviviality through strong empirical research.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 31 May, 2023, -