A transdisciplinary PG research conference at Glasgow University and online, 12-13th June 2023

ʻAn encounter is perhaps the same thing as a becoming [...] You encounter people [...] movements, ideas, events, entities [...] It designates an effect, a zigzag, something which passes or happens between two as though under a potential difference [...] a single becoming which is not common to the two [...] but which is between the two, which has its own direction, a bloc of becoming, an a-parallel evolution.ʼ

Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues II: 6

Films have for a very long time been used to form a narrative that may oppose what the heteronormative society believes and that is why probably it is one of the most popular forms of artistic expression. When we think of films like Her or the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell we see the use of technology in brilliant ways. It shows how easily humans are replaceable emotionally as well as physically. But how well do these films and many others like these refute the social conditioning that often clouds our visions? Is the world of cyborgs too dystopian for humans to survive in? Or just like any ‘other’ cyborgs and AI will just become another way for the powerful in the human world to exert dominance?

The international journal Thaumàzein will devote a special issue to the topic of philosophers’ philosophical writing.

Is a philosopher’s way of expounding his conception in some ways the content of his philosophy? Does an author’s style reflect his thinking? If so, how? In other words, can we regard the variety of expressions of philosophy as literature?