Organizatorem wydarzenia jest Centrum Myśli Polityczno-Prawnej im. Alexisa de Tocqueville'a Wydział Prawa i Administracji Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.
Tocquevillian Workshops #3:
Shaping Dignities – An arts-based workshop exploring ‘Dignity’ as a plural and relational concept and its implications for Law & Human Rights work
Seminar conducted by Dr. Florencia Benitez-Schaefer
May 8, 5-6.30 p.m., room no. 1.18 and May 9, 5-6.30 p.m., room no. 1.18
University of Lodz, Faculty of Law and Administration
Registration required, open till April 30. Please fill in the form.
It is not incidental that core instruments of the practice of international law and politics have lost legitimacy at a similar rhythm as core methods of political and social sciences since the second half of the 20th century. Exemplarily, the category of dignity is a main but highly contested source of legitimation in the discourse of international law, politics and Human Rights movements since its very insertion in the UNDHR in 1948 (Engle 2001). Decolonial and feminist approaches have been driving forces in this debate. Concomitantly, these perspectives have critiqued the notion of doing research, particularly of doing philosophy and social inquiy, as an activity that (should) happen(s) only in mental, rational, intellectual, disembodied or verbalized forms. (Haraway 2016, Greenwood 2019)
Despite the strong tendency to work in multimodal and multisensorial forms in related fields, socio-legal studies, including legal philosophy, have remained quite indifferent to this development. This seminar offers a learning and research space to explore artistic research and to experiment with it productively in the field of law philosophy, particularly in relation to the issue of dignity and human rights.
In terms of method, we will:
- work with an arts-based method, namely collage-making (while other arts can be integrated during the workshop, like drawing, poetry, etc.), and
- exchange and reflect on our experiences during the workshop process, relating them to our usual research and/or practice
During the workshop, participants will apply this method on
- a research topic of their choice, linking it to the issue of dignity and/or human rights, or on
- the broad research topic of ‘human dignity’, as an issue that is easily linkable to the different subfields of legal and social philosophy.
You are invited to bring material of your choice to work in the seminar.
Dr. Florencia Benitez-Schaefer is a Post-Doc Researcher in the fields of Law Philosophy as well as Peace and Conflict Studies. She holds a PhD from the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna, where she engaged with the issue of Legal Development Models and Cultural Diversity. She has taught and researched in the fields of International Law & Human Rights, Legal Anthropology, Cultural Studies as well as Peace and Conflict Studies in diverse universities, amongst them the University of Vienna and the UNESCO Chair for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Innsbruck. As Consultant to the NGOs in the fields of Human Rights, Development and Peace she weaves her academic research and teaching with socio-political work and creative practices. She is currently working on the issue of dignity from a relational perspective, integrating the lenses of peace studies, posthumanism and creative research in socio-legal research.
