Radboud Annual Continental Philosophy Conference 2025

Registration for the Radboud Annual Continental Philosophy Conference is live. Please use this form to sign up. Participation in the Radboud Annual Continental Philosophy Conference is free of charge, but registration is required. Registration deadline is March 10 2025. 

We look forward to seeing you there.

08.45–09.00                 Opening of the Conference 
 

09.00–10.00                 Keynote talk: Franz Knappik (University of Bergen)/Daniel James (TU Dresden)

Canon Critique and Collective Memory (read the abstract, pdf) 

10.00–10.35                  Marie Louise Krogh (Leiden University)

A Telling Silence? Approaches to race and colonialism in the canon of critical philosophy 

Coffee Break

10.50–11.25                  Erik Brownrigg (York University, Canada)

Reinterpreting Inheritance: Bachelard, Adorno, and Derrida’s Challenge to the Canon of Continental Philosophy 

11.25–12.00                  Peter W. Milne (Seoul National University)

Writing ‘After’: Lyotard and the Canon 

12.05–12.40                  Joseph Tanke (University of Hawai’i, Mānoa)

Styles of Radical Displacement: Foucault and the Decolonial Imperative

Lunch break

13.40–14.15                  Manuel Tangorra (KU Leuven)

Decolonizing the Canon? Insights from Contemporary Hegel Scholarship

14.15–14.50                 Waseem Akhtar Usmani (KU Leuven)

Postcolonial Islam: Iqbal’s Critique of Hegel’s Logic

14.55–15.30                 Andréa Delestrade (London School of Economics)

Internal Critiques of Eurocentrism and the Self-Referentiality Problem: Contaminating the Canon in the Phenomenological Tradition(s)

Coffee Break

15.45–16.20                  Friso Timmenga (University of Groningen)

Thinking with and against the Continental Canon: A Transformative Phenomenological Pedagogy for Diversifying Philosophy

16.20–16.55                 Sophie Withaeckx (Maastricht University)

Aliens, tricksters and goddesses: metaphorical figurations as tools for transforming the philosophical canon

17.05–18.05                  Keynote talk: Stella Sandford (Kingston University)

“Straying From the Rules”: Transdisciplinarity and the Continental Canon (read the abstract, pdf)

18:05-18:30                  Concluding discussion

Continental philosophy is not conceivable without its history—one of its distinctive features is that it explicitly acknowledges the historical conditions of knowledge. Researching and teaching continental philosophy is not possible without engaging with the canon and the canonical thinkers who have helped shape the continental tradition. This engagement can take an affirmative form, by being influenced by the canonical authors, ideas, and arguments and by developing and improving their thought and seeing its continued relevance for contemporary questions and debates. Or, it can take a critical form: recognizing problematic or antiquated aspects of canonical authors’ thought, and analyzing the exclusions and blind spots that have been part of constructing this canon. Rather than adhering to the stark dichotomy of either uncritical celebration or outright dismissal ('canceling') of the canon, our starting point is that both approaches are equally crucial to continental philosophy and can go hand in hand. At the same time, this raises the question of the relation between commitments to the canon, the critique of the canon, and attempts to expand or revise the canon.

The conference will reflect on this rich and ambivalent relationship between canon and critique from different perspectives and will address the positive as well as problematic legacies of the tradition. Against this background, we invite participants to engage with the following questions: 

• What constitutes the canon of continental philosophy? 
• Why is there still value in studying and teaching the canon today? 
• What ideas do we recognize as part of the positive legacy of the tradition? 
• But also: How do we deal with the problematic legacies of continental philosophy that have so profoundly shaped our history of thought? 
• How do we teach and discuss parts of this intellectual legacy that we consider morally unacceptable today? 
• What does it mean (in theory and in practice) to ‘diversify’, ‘decolonize’ or otherwise broaden the canon? 
• How do we deal with those approaches that would dismiss or ‘cancel’ those problematic aspects of the canon? 

By reflecting on these questions, the conference aims to provide a platform where different perspectives and diverse approaches to the canon can enter into a fruitful and mind-opening discussion. The conference will include three keynote lectures by:

• Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan (TU Dresden)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Knappik (University of Bergen)/Dr. Daniel James (TU Dresden)
• Prof. Dr. Stella Sandford (Kingston University)

Interested participants are asked to submit in two separate documents a 500-word abstract and a short biographical note. Abstracts should be prepared for anonymous review. Please submit your abstracts via email (racpconference [at] gmail.com) by October 31, 2024. Presentation time will be 25 minutes + 20 minutes for discussion.

Submission deadline: October 31, 2024
Notification of acceptance: by November 10, 2024

Organizing Committee: Manja Kisner, Aoife McInerney, Katrine Smiet