[ecrea] CFPs GASC 2017 Stockholm University

Pre-human, Human, Post-human: Generative Anthropology and Mimetic Theory 
in Conversation with Cognitive Studies

Stockholm University, Sweden June 8-10, 2017
Plenary Speakers: William Flesch, Eric Gans, Peter Gärdenfors
Conference Website - https://gasc2017.com

NB: Media and communication studies scholars are most welcome!

The Generative Anthropology Society and Conference (GASC) is pleased to 
announce its 11th annual summer conference. The first one in Europe, it 
will be held at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, not far from the 
center of the city and very easy to reach by public transportation. 
Stockholm is a historic and very beautiful city with many attractions, 
and early June is the best time to visit.

This conference will initiate a dialogue between Generative 
Anthropology, mimetic theory, and cognitive science. Some philosophers 
of cognitive science agree with Generative Anthropology that the 
development of language marked the appearance of symbolic thinking. 
While cognitive scientists argue that this capacity has enabled advanced 
forms of cooperation, Generative Anthropology and mimetic theory 
emphasize the emergence of ethics as a response to mimetic violence. The 
cognitive and anthropological perspectives, however, converge in their 
recognition of a specifically human cultural consciousness on a scene of 
representation, making dialogue urgent and valuable, with the potential 
to generate new ways of thinking about human interactions, violence and 
conflict resolution, as well as diverse cultural expressions and 
aesthetic forms.

What might be seen as the anthropocentrism uniting cognitive science, on 
the one hand, and Generative Anthropology and mimetic theory, on the 
other, need not exclude dialogue with those theories of the post-human 
that have critiqued the effort to distinguish and therefore privilege 
the human as an anthropocentric denial of other forms of subjectivity. 
Such views point to our anthropocentric blindness as a cause of 
political and environmental crises, but the anthropocentrism addressed 
by such critiques may simply represent insufficiently “scenic” 
understandings of the human. Both sides in this debate might benefit 
from testing their views against one another. Seeking an ever broader 
and more productive conversation, we invite papers that engage with GA 
on both sides of the debate. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

·       The  anthropology of symbolic thinking


·       The evolution or history of cultural and aesthetic forms


•       Evolutionary game theory


•       Mimetic theory (René Girard)


•       Narratology, including cognitive narratology and affective 
narratology


·       Literature on the scene of representation


•       Animal Studies, Ecocriticism, Posthumanism, Affect theory, 
Neo-vitalism


•       Object-oriented ontology


•       Sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics, Sociology of 
language

Please submit short proposals for 20-minute papers in either Word or PDF 
format to (marina.ludwigs /at/ english.su.se) by April 1, 2017.

Students are invited to apply for GASC Student Award (value approx. $CND 
400). See https://gasc2017.com/student-award/ for details.

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