Dialogue, Ethics and Gender Identity

Description

10.00am-4.00pm, 4 March 2005
The Howard Building, Downing College, Cambridge
Supported by the Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies and CRASSH
Please note this event is free and open to all

Over the past 25 years interest in the ethics of 'dialogue' has pervaded the Social Sciences and Humanities. Conversation, it is argued, can provide the means to reaching rational consensus between the diverse constituencies that make up contemporary society. This notion, however, is not without powerful critics. Voices from across the disciplines have increasingly contended that the appeal to dialogue rests upon a homogenizing form of universalism, which threatens the recognition of the crucial and ineliminable 'differences' that exist between social and cultural groups. Buried in this emerging disagreement has been the question of gender difference, and the manifold ways in which it is manifested in power relations. This conference aims to bring this gender dimension to the centre of debate between the prospects for 'dialogue' and 'difference'. We will draw together world-renowned scholars from all sides of the argument to explore the potential of dialogical ethics as a method to achieving rational consensus whilst accommodating gender difference.

Speakers include Judith Squires (Bristol), Tracy Strong (UCSD), Diana Coole (Birkbeck), Juliet Mitchell (Cambridge) and Carol Gilligan (NYU).