A workshop by invitation to provide feedback on chapters of "Regenerative Politics," a draft monograph by Kellogg Faculty Fellow Emma Planinc. For more information or for Notre Dame scholars interested in participating in the first session (including the requisite reading of chapter one of the book), please register here.
With invited scholars from outside and inside of the University of Notre Dame, this workshop will look at each chapter of Emma Planinc's "Regenerative Politics" draft monograph, which makes a bold theoretical intervention into the fraught landscape of contemporary liberal democracies.
It argues that the survival of rights depends, first, on losing their claims to self-evidence. Addressing in detail the challenges to the rights-based democracy from both the critical Left and the far Right, the manuscript demonstrates that these challengers only see the elimination of human self-determination in liberal democratic rights, which are ostensibly affirmed and designed for the protection and fruition of freedom and equality. These critics instead offer an alternative vision of a world in which human beings would be capable of truly determining and regenerating themselves, liberated from the stagnating pre-determination and historical legacy of the concept of human rights. The text's argument is that if rights are going to withstand these challenges, we must accept these critics as making legitimate human claims against a political order that is not seen to be one of their own making. Instead of retreating into the idea of the obvious universality of rights, liberal democrats must instead open themselves up to a regenerative politics that accepts all human claims against the political order as self-determinative.
This workshop is cosponsored with the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) and Program for Liberal Studies (PLS).
Author: Emma Planinc, University of Notre Dame
Katlyn Carter, University of Notre Dame
Bernard Forjwuor, University of Notre Dame
Eileen Hunt, University of Notre Dame
Matt Kadane, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sam Moyn, Yale University
Sankar Muthu, University of Chicago Denise Schaeffer, College of the Holy Cross
Phil Sloan, University of Notre Dame
Tom Stapleford, University of Notre Dame
Don Stelluto, University of Notre Dame
Day One: Friday, February 3
The first session is for all registered Notre Dame participants:
1:30-2:00pm Coffee and Snacks available
2:00- 2:15pm Introduction and Welcome
Don Stelluto: Welcome to guests and participants
Emma Planinc: Introduction to the book and the goals of the workshop
2:15-3:30pm Panel 1
Chapter One: "No Humans Left"
Participants:
Sam Moyn, Yale University
Don Stelluto, University of Notre Dame
3:30-3:45 Break
The following sessions are by invitation only:
3:45-5:00pm Panel 2
Chapter 2: "Against the Enlightenment"
Participants:
Sankar Muthu, University of Chicago
Matt Kadane, Hobart and William Smith
7:00pm Dinner
by invitation only
Day Two: Saturday, February 4
8:30-9:00am Breakfast and Coffee available
9:00-10:15am Panel 3
Chapter 3: "The Palingenetic Consciousness"
Participants:
Tom Stapleford, University of Notre Dame
Phil Sloan, University of Notre Dame
10:15-10:30am Break
10:30-11:45am Panel 4
Chapter 4: "The Right to Renounce Dependence"
Participants:
Eileen Hunt, University of Notre Dame
Denise Schaeffer, College of the Holy Cross
11:45am-12:45pm Lunch
12:45-2:00pm Panel 5
Chapter 5: "Regeneration and Revolution"
Participants:
Katlyn Carter, University of Notre Dame
Bernard Forjwuor, University of Notre Dame
2:00-2:15pm Break
2:15-3:30pm Panel 6
Chapter 6: "Restoring Our First Right"
Roundtable for all participants
Discussion of the conclusion, and final discussion of book