Reality and Linguistic Agency
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That semantic registers and conceptual schemes determine how we perceive the world and our spaces of agency, is a commonplace in postmodern and poststructuralist theory. This commonplace has been the target of fervent critique in recent years. The accusation is that the insistence on social construction has paved the way for Fake-news and blatant lying. Now, with the pandemic, the Real seems to be back hard. What does this mean for our ways of doing theory and activism? Where is the place of reality in theory-making and everyday speech-acts, and has the pandemic really changed the game? This event will provide an advanced guide into perspectives in conceptual engineering in philosophy of language and epistemology that address the connection between truth, meaning, and action, and connects them to concrete case-studies. Beyond the presentation of perspectives, the event aims to give a platform to the participants’ own considerations about the operativity of concrete words and speech-patterns by presenting their own projects, activities, and ideas on the topic, and to evaluate the power of their linguistic tools. To have the right words means to have a grip on reality – where social reality is no less real than natural reality. Having a grip on reality means having impact. Yet, the question remains: Which words do give us a better grip? Is it only a matter of marketing or is there something more to it? Further, is there a border between mere manipulation and just cause, and, if yes, where is it? Suggested Readings: Appadurai, A. 2016: Banking on words. The failure of language in the age of derivative finance. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press Cull, M.J. 2021: Engineering is not a luxury: Black feminists and logical positivists on conceptual engineering. Inquiry 64:1-2, 227-248. Fricker, M. 2009: Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press. Haslanger, S. 2012: Resisting Reality. Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford University Press. Haslanger, S. 2016: Theorizing with a Purpose. The Many Kinds of Sex. In: Kendig, C. (ed.): Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice. London-New York: Routledge: 129-144. Llanera, T. 2019: “The Law of the Land has God’s Anointing”: Rorty on Religion, Language, and Politics. Pragmatism Today 10.1 (2019): 46-61. (= a piece on the use of religious language in Duterte’s drug war). Médina, J. 2012: The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination. Oxford University Press. Tirrell, Lynne 2012: Genocidal Language Games. In: Maitra, I., and McGowan, M.K. (eds): Speech and Harm: Controversies over Free Speech. Oxford University Press: 174-221. (= a piece on how language determined particular killing methods in Ruanda’s Genocide)
Yvonne Huetter-Almerigi is Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fellow in Bologna with the Horizon2020-MSCA-IF-2018 Project RELEVANT REALISM, Grant agreement n° 832636. Before coming to Bologna, she was postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, visiting lecturer at the Inter University Centre in Dubrovnik, and research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature in Oslo. She has studied Literature, Philosophy, and Social Anthropology, and has published widely on topics at the intersection of these three disciplines. Currently, she is working on a concept of “realism” in philosophy of language that takes account of the recalcitrance of the outer-world without forgetting the power-mechanisms included in every truth-claim |