This lecture is part of the Dag van de Filosofie, tickets are available via www.dagvandefilosofie.be. Doors open at 13:30, lecture starts at 13:45.
Monsters and the monstrous have always evoked the contradictory responses of fascination and fear. The boundaries between the human and the monstrous are dangerously porous and how these boundaries are drawn works to define who we are and how we define the normal (body). A sense of ontological, epistemological and ethical uncertainty and confusion that can resolve either in outright horror at the human inability to control a seemingly threatening materiality, or in a move towards alternative and more hopeful modes of becoming.
It’s little exaggeration to say that the representation of the monstrous/the anomalously embodied/the strange leaks and flows across material, political, philosophical, artistic and bioscientific imaginaries alike. The very excessiveness of corporeality that promises to productively transgress conventional expectations and boundaries can be both scholarly and fun, and under conditions of promise can revalue what has been figured as the excluded other.
Following the lecture, Margrit Shildrick will engage in a conversation with Professor of Ethics and Moral Philosophy Seppe Segers. This afternoon is a collaboration between the Dag van de Filosofie, Ghent University and Studium Generale Gent.
• Margrit Shildrick is Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production at Stockholm University and works mainly in the field of biophilosophy. Her projects include an ongoing collaboration with Queer Death Studies; excursions into bioart and its posthumanist implications; and rethinking the concept of the gift as far more than exchange. Books include Leaky Bodies and Boundaries (1997), Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (2002), Dangerous Discourses: Subjectivity, Sexuality and Disability (2009), and Visceral Prostheses: Somatechnics and Posthuman Embodiment (2023).
• Seppe Segers is a professor of ethics and moral science at the Department of Philosophy and Moral Science at Ghent University. He teaches ethics, moral science and feminist criticism, exploring the open meaning of “morality”, the relationships between description and prescription, and between moral value and non-moral value (if such a thing exists). Most of his published work deals with applied ethics.
This lecture and aftertalk will be in English and will take place in the Zwarte Zaal of KASK. The Zwarte Zaal is located on the ground floor and is accessible to wheelchair users, there’s also an accessible toilet in the hallway of KASKcafé. In case you use a wheelchair, go via the entrance of KASKcinema instead of the Louis Pasteurlaan entrance. There are works in the street of KASKcinema, but it’s possible to pass bu the entrance at Godshuizenlaan 4. A translation into Flemish sign language will be provided. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisation: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be
