International conference “Voyage and Cosmopolitanism: From the Island to the World”

Versão portuguesa

The University of Madeira and the Centre for Comparative Studies of the University of Lisbon (Travel and Utopia project, LOCUS group) –  are organizing a scientific meeting entitled “Voyage and Cosmopolitanism: From the Island to the World”, to be held at the University of Madeira on the 25th and 26th October 2018, in partnership with several Research Centres and Institutions.

We intend to problematize various issues in the current scholarship of the humanities and social sciences from inter- and cross-cultural perspectives: cultural heritage, culture and globalization, identity and the sense of belonging, the impact of (re)writing literatures and other arts within the ethics of “reliance”, proposed by Edgar Morin, and of the universalizing singularities, in Alain Badiou’s view.

Citizen of a world which is increasingly liquefied and in constant rebuilding, how have an individual and his/her geography been and still are depicted? In a world which should not deny the frontiers, but rather question them, recalling Galin Tihanov’s perspective on the current concept of exile, as an experience associated with creativity and / or suffering as a way of conceiving a new cosmopolitanism in a society that recreates otherness, how can Social Sciences and Humanities contribute to this mirroring of both the dialogue and interrogation in various clines and categorizations?

In the many paths that Comparison, Relation and Encounter allow in a ever changing world, our objective is to promote reflection and debate on the idea of Cosmopolitanism, voyage and Utopia in its multiple aspects, underlying the dialogic exchange between the local and the global and inherently the idea of Citizenship.