Date: 15.-16. July 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Format: Online conference <\/p>\n\n\n\n
International conference organised by the research initiative (East) European Epistemologies: Studies in the Reflexive Pluralisation of the World in the 20th Century (Friedrich Cain, Dietlind H\u00fcchtker, Bernhard Kleeberg, Karin Reichenbach and Jan Surman)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In cooperation with
– Faculty Centre for Transdisciplinary Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, GWZO, Leipzig<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– Research Group \u201cPraxeologies of Truth\u201d\/University of Erfurt<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do Andrei Sakharov, Noam Chomsky, a 19th century sect of German Catholics, and today\u2019s mask opponents have in common? They all have at times been called, and identified themselves as, dissidents \u2013 \u201cthose who do not agree.\u201d But while all of them were convinced that they presented \u201cthe truth,\u201d opposing mainstream religious, social, political or intellectual climate, they did not meet with the same reactions \u2013 for instance, Corona dissidents and Soviet dissidents seem to stand on the opposed poles of the political and social spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, we almost intuitively associate dissidents with Soviet intellectual nonconformists, and those from other countries of the Eastern Bloc, with towering figures like V\u00e1clav Havel, Jacek Kuro\u0144 or Andriej Sacharow. At our conference, we want to look more closely at how the figure of the \u201cdissident\u201d became constructed and solidified across the Iron Curtain and after the fall of the Soviet Union. We will focus on practices, techniques, and media settings which (co)produce the dissident as a (mostly male) \u201ctruth figure\u201d (Kleeberg 2019), which includes practices of staging oneself, and ways of embodying the (epistemic) values and virtues associated with this figure. As truth figures are historically heterogeneous, so is \u201cthe dissident,\u201d varying from person to person, group to group, from country to country, and changing over time which itself is a matter of our inquiry. Yet, as a truth figure, it became an important point of reference, used as self-designation by a variety of people from different poles of the political spectrum, not only across Soviet and Post-Soviet space. Central Europe, for instance, in the 1990s witnessed a mushrooming of dissidents, who had not been identifiable as such before. Obviously, a specific relation to truth is crucial for the figure of the dissident not only as it is understood today: from ancient parrhesiastes to today’s dissidents, speaking the truth to power, being \u201ctrue to oneself,\u201d \u201cliving the truth,\u201d has been essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the imaginary of truth and a depiction of concrete instructions about how to authenticate truth, truth figures form an intersection between local and transnational dissidence-discourses. In Soviet times, the dissident was created locally: in oppositional media like samizdat and through practices like creating rumors, and as enemies of the state through state media. At the same time, Radio Free Europe, Nobel Prizes, tamizdat or interviews in important journals like Le Monde<\/em> or The New Yorker<\/em> largely contributed to the emergence of dissident as a truth figure both locally and abroad (cf. Szulecki 2019). Some \u2013 like Russian feminist dissidents \u2013 were publicly recognized as such only abroad (Vasyakina\/Kozlov\/Talaver 2020). <\/p>\n\n\n\n In our conference we want to approach the question of the life and afterlife of the \u201cdissident\u201d as a figure of truth with particular attention to post-Soviet space. We are particularly interested in contributions addressing following topics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Please send us short proposals (up to 300 words) by 28 January 2021 along with a CV or a link to your online CV. Please direct proposals and questions to jan.surman@gmail.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Quoted literature<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vasyakina, Oksana \/ Kozlov, Dmitri \/ Talaver, Sasha (eds.) Feministskij samizdat: 40 let spustya<\/em> [Feminist Samizdat: 40 years later]. Moscow: Common place 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bernhard Kleeberg, Post Post-Truth. Epistemologies of Disintegration and the Praxeology of Truth, in: Stan Rzeczy \/ State of Affairs 2(17)\/2019, forthcoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n