Held on June 13-14 at the Universität Bonn, the conference was a collaboration of the Max Kade Institute for Modern German Thought at JHU & the GRK DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Gegenwart/Literatur.

Conference description (English):

A generation ago, the universalist pretensions of “Western” culture were submitted to radical critique from many different angles: Lyotard’s Le différend, Edward Said’s Orientalism, and the work of Gayatri Spivak—to name just a few points of reference—all revealed the invisible fault lines within what to some had seemed to be a shared philosophical and literary space. If for Kant sensus communis was the condition for the universality as well as necessity of aesthetic judgments, that same sense came to be seen as a restriction eliminating other voices and other experiences.

The current interrogation of universalism and its limits takes up many of the same issues as Lyotard, Said and Spivak, albeit in a new frame. Instead of asking whether the subaltern can speak, the question has become who can speak to works from historically marginalized communities without reproducing the language of domination. The conference “Sensus Non-Communis: Contested Presents” will consider the possibilities for consent and dissent beyond the framework of a universally shared common sense. The event is jointly organized by the Graduate School Gegenwart/Literatur at the University of Bonn and the Max Kade Center for Modern German Thought at the Johns Hopkins University.

Full conference description and program are available below

• Tagungsexposé
• Programm
• Conference website: Sensus Non-Communis. Gegenwarten im Widerstreit