Post-symposium Workshop on Subjectivity - A Report

Department of English and Media Studies, Christ University organised a post-symposium workshop on Subjectivity on Sunday, 6 March 2011 from 9.00 am to 1.30 pm in the Conference Hall, III Floor, Block II, Christ University. Anup Dhar, Associate Professor, School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University, New Delhi was the Resource Person. The workshop was organised as a follow up of the National Symposium on Subjectivity held on February 9 and 10, 2011 at Christ University. The workshop was attended by the symposium participants, students and faculty of English and Media Studies, Law, and Psychology of Christ University, and students and staff of Mountfort College, Bangalore and members of the general public. 

The workshop elaborated on the keynote address of the symposium and addressed the various questions and concerns that emerged in the two-day symposium. 

Anup reflected on the symposium and mentioned that the symposium took a strong social science turn and did not take the philosophic questions on subjectivity on board. He then located the polemic positions that occurred in the symposium on subjectivity, one coming from science, where it was argued that there was no subjectivity issue, and that other defense of subjectivity from social science. Anup traced these positions within the structure of universities, which give rise to these polemic positions. He stressed the need to bridge this gap and tried to show through Derrida, as to how this gap was shown and bridged by Derrida in his work, especially through Derrida's critique of Heidegger. He took another route to demonstrate how it is important to bridge the two polemic positions by invoking neurobiology. He concluded saying the two dominant positions - the objective relations to the world and the subjective relation to the world - displayed twoness of human engagement with the world.