We cordially invite you to join us for a two-day conference at the intersections of literature, philosophy, religious studies, and anthropology from March 24-25.
StylesofBeing
One of the great ethical and political questions of our historical moment is how best to understand and move between cultures, whether we have in mind the cultures of the present or of the past. But what if the language of “cultural difference” is itself the problem? For thinkers associated with “the Ontological Turn” in anthropology, to think in terms of cultural difference is already to have assumed that there is one unified object, “nature,” towards which different cultures varyingly comport themselves. That seemingly straightforward approach betrays a philosophical provinciality: it forecloses the possibility that this nature/culture distinction might be meaningless within other communities’ metaphysical frameworks. Our speakers bring the insights of anthropology’s ontological turn into robust theoretical dialogue with literature, history, religious studies, art history, classics, and philosophy.
