Habermas and Violence

Panel "Habermas and Violence" - during the Political Theory Workshops, Fourth Annual Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, 3 - 5 September 2007

We are currently looking for contributions to the panel on "Habermas and Violence" to be held at the Fourth Annual conference of the Political Theory Workshops (see http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/polphil/news/event.php?id=82). We are specifically looking at the writings of Jurgen Habermas not only because he is one of the most prominent political thinkers and public intellectuals of our era, but also because he has continuously attempted to bring critical theory to bear on contemporary political affairs. The aim of this panel is thererefore precisely to investigate what problems we encounter when applying his normative models of discourse ethics and communicative action to concrete situations. Do the idealising structures have a totalising and repressive effect on the concrete content? What kind of relationship exists beteen the real and the ideal? We are, therefore, particularly interested in exploring the application of Habermas in a variety of contexts relating to violence, including but not limited to: feminist critiques of his discursive model, conflict and International Relations, issues of civil disobedience, and questions of Otherness. Our definition of violence in this panel is necessarily quite broad. We are interested in the application of Habermas's framework to external affairs as a form of conflict resolution as well in the potential problems of 'violence' that permeate Habermas's own work.

Should you be interested in submitting a short abstract and presenting a paper during the conference, then please contact us. Or should you wish to discuss an idea, then please also feel free to contact either Vivienne Boon, University of Liverpool (vivienne DOT boon AT liverpool DOT ac DOT uk) or Naomi Head, University of Leeds (naomi DOT head AT talk21 DOT com).