Feb 13
Talk by Prof. Alexis Shotwell: "Life as fanfiction: Building a self and a world beyond what has shaped us"
"Is our fate – as individuals or as a species – predetermined by nature or nurture? Many people think so: They say, your genes or your parents determine who you can be. Humans are just made to dominate and destroy each other and our shared world. I disagree. In this talk, I offer an existential-aesthetic model of selfhood and transformation. This is an account of self-making as an ongoing project without recourse to predestination and in the face of death, and through which we keep fidelity to artfully making of ourselves something beyond what our original authors may have intended. In art or life, we can be part of an unfinished, collaborative process of creating something that doesn’t yet exist out of what we receive. We can do that with wonderful things, but also we can do it with the lousy, complicated, terrible things that make up so much of our world. People joyously and prolifically generate new work, selves, and worlds even in the face of despair, and we can too."
Professor Shotwell lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She is a Professor in Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, where she is cross-appointed with the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation and the Department of Philosophy.
This talk is sponsored by Ethical Inquiry at Carleton and the Center for Community and Civic Engagement.
THERE WILL BE PIZZA!
from Philosophy