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:

Register Here

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