Led by IAS Junior Research Fellow, Dr Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed
The following events were organised by the research group:
A monthly research forum on the theme of Identities and Voices, with a focus on concepts and theories of Recognition, were held every month during term time. Aims included initiating an interdisciplinary discussion on issues such as: recognition and identity, the psychology of recognition, the politics of recognition, social visibility and invisibility, recognition and ethics.
New Concepts in the Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease (17 October 2016)
A seminar in philosophy and medicine with Derek Bolton (Professor of Philosophy & Psychopathology, King's College London) and Maël Lemoine (Associate Professor of Philosophy of Biology & Medical Science, Université de Tours).
The biopsychosocial model, introduced by Engel in 1977, is a holistic conception of physical and mental health. It endeavours to understand and to explain illness in terms of three interacting levels: biological, psychological and social. It has had, and continues to have, significant impact on the theory and practice of health-care. Several decades after its introduction, some of the basic assumptions of the model are being questioned. In this seminar, two philosophers of medicine and psychiatry discussed new concepts in the biopsychosocial model, and appraised its relevance for healthcare today.
Fourth Wave Feminism in Schools: Exploring the discursive and affective constitution of feminist groups in and around secondary school spaces (28 April 2016)
Hanna Retallack (UCL IoE) talked about Fourth Wave Feminism in Schools and presented research conducted in the light of theories that we are witnessing a 'fourth wave' of feminism in which there is a resurgence in young peoples' engagement with issues related to gender and sexuality. Claudia Lapping (Senior Lecturer, UCL IoE) responded to Hanna's work.
Despite previous research pointing towards a de-politicisation of feminist projects in neo-liberal landscapes and the suggestion that critiques of over-arching systems of inequity are being cast aside in favour of a focus on improving affairs of the self, there is increasing evidence that a renewed and collectivised feminism has re-entered political and civic life. This presentation was concerned with the manifestation of this new 'wave' in the emergence of teenage feminist groups, in which schoolgirls can be seen to be actively transgressing neo-liberal and post-feminist narratives of 'girl power' and 'successful girls' in order to form feminist collectives within their schools. Much like the consciousness raising (or RAP) groups of the second wave, this involves face-to-face meetings that discuss issues around gender and sexuality, but within specifically school-based spaces that are able to enable, preclude, make and undo the emerging feminisms on their sites. A conceptualisation of schools as shifting spaces that play out varying modes of gendered acceptance and denial will work to support an understanding of the ways in which feminist groups are beginning to take up and create affective and discursive space within schools.
IAS Talking Points Seminar: Understanding Others Without Abandoning The World: Empathy and the challenge of 'psychotic' phenomena (29 April 2016)
This talk by Mohammed Aboulleil Rashed began with an exploration of the problem of understanding delusions and hallucinations, and continued with a philosophical critique of current attempts to solve this problem, and finally proceeded by exploring various anthropologically-inspired approaches as a potential solution to the challenge of understanding others - in this case 'psychotic' phenomena. Respondents: Joseph Calabrese (UCL Anthropology) and James Wilson (UCL Philosophy)
'Banned in China' - Post-Mao Chinese Literature & the Politics of Recognition in World Literature
The recent economic/political rise of China has revived discussions on modern Chinese literature as world literature. However, in a world where English now serves as the lingua franca, the cultural deficit between China and the Anglophone world still characterises the relationship between Chinese literature and world literature.
This talk discussed the position of post-Mao Chinese literature in world literature. It aimed to expose how the Western/Anglophone literary authority and market wield different 'technologies of recognition', especially 'the systematic' and 'the allegorical' that Shu-Mei Shih has highlighted, to confine post-Mao Chinese literature in a constant struggle between domestic authoritarian 'literary governance' and the set of 'predetermined' interpretations and expectations from the West.
Adopting Franco Moretti's methodology of 'distant reading', Flair Donglai Shi (Oxford University) discussed and analysed the presences and absences of a wide range of post-Mao Chinese writers from Gao Xingjian to Xiaolu Guo, from Mo Yan to Weihui Zhou. Through these explorations of the politics of recognition encountered by post-Mao Chinese literature on its route to world literature, this paper argues that though Chinese writers face intersecting oppression from both domestic and international cultural politics, an awareness about the mechanisms of these politics may help them come up with strategies of resistance in their world-constructing creative processes. More importantly, drawing insights from James English and Sarah Brouillette's works on literary prizes and postcolonial writers, he proposed that this awareness itself is a self-conscious and performative strategy which is necessarily characterised by peripheral writers' partial agency in today's global literary marketplace.
Octagon Friday Forum: Recognition (5 February 2016)
Mohammed Aboulleil Rashed convened the Octagon Friday Forum on the theme of Recognition. See the programme here and the poster here.
Medical Anthropology Seminar Series, Department of Anthropology: Mad Pride, Mad Culture and the Demand for Recognition: Difficulties in Responding to Current Socio-political Movements (21 January 2016)
In this talk, Mohammed Aboulleil Rashed discussed his research on activism in mental health and reflected on some of the moral and political issues that arise when writing about groups campaigning for recognition and rights.
Recognition & the Paradox of Representation: The Case of Tribal Politics (16 December 2015)
To seek recognition is to make oneself visible in a specific way. In doing so, the subject of recognition faces a 'paradox of representation': in demanding recognition, the group inevitably presents itself to others in such a way that corresponds to what the latter may deem valuable. Thus, what began as a need for self-realisation ends up being dependent on the affirmation of others according to their own frameworks. Given this, questions arise as to the value of recognition: e.g. whether it results in moral progress, or merely confirms existing social and ideological structures.
This problem is brought into acute focus in tribal politics in India. There, certain groups work to emphasise and sometimes exaggerate their 'tribeness' in order to gain recognition from a government that responds to this.
This seminar was based on the following reading: 'Seeking the Tribe: Ethno-politics in Darjeeling and Sikkim' by Sara Shneiderman and Mark Turin.