Healing of the po 魄-soul through the hun 魂-soul in early China

    Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference paper

    Original languageEnglish
    Publication statusPublished - 30 May 2024
    Event12th East-West Philosophers’ Conference: Trauma and Healing - University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, Honolulu, United States
    Duration: 24 May 202431 Jul 2024
    https://manoa.hawaii.edu/ewpc/ (Conference website)
    https://manoa.hawaii.edu/ewpc/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/EWPC_2024_Program_web.pdf (Conference program)

    Conference

    Conference12th East-West Philosophers’ Conference
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CityHonolulu
    Period24/05/2431/07/24
    OtherThe 12th East-West Philosophers’ Conference will explore the many dimensions of trauma and healing. While trauma can be physical, it can also be psychological, social, political, economic, and cultural—encompassing the immediate effects of global pandemics, the ongoing impacts of ethnic and gender bias, the intergenerational legacies of colonization and geopolitical strife, and the planetary ramifications of anthropogenic climate disruption.

    Ours is an era in which differences of histories, cultures, and identities are engaged as sources of insight, but also one of retrenchment—a period of relational appreciation, but also one of schism. The global scientific community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a stunning example of human potential for empathetic collaboration in the face of global personal and public health trauma. Yet, the economic trauma of the pandemic has resulted in crumbling international alliances, deepening trade wars, and an unfortunate collective reinvestment in zero-sum endgame framings of geopolitics against which there is no vaccination and through which the terms of healing have become delinked from the restoration of global wholeness.

    These traumas do not stop shaping our lives when the immediate danger comes to an end. Traumatic pain remains stored in the memories of peoples and individuals, it populates their imagination and shapes horizons of possibility. Thus a philosophical exploration of trauma and healing is not only diagnostic of current problems but also a form of genealogy.

    We invite participants to reflect upon the relational complexity of both trauma and healing, critically and historically engaging concrete occurrences of trauma while also drawing out theoretical insights regarding healing that strengthens and empowers and resists the forms of personal and social amnesia that make the repetition of trauma so tragically common.

    Of special interest are panels and papers that explore the trauma and healing at all scales from the interpersonal, to the relational traumas experienced by nations at war and cultures in conflict, thus addressing the interplay of the private and public spheres, of ethics and economics, of the human and the natural sciences, and among disciplines, classes, genders, and generations. Panel and paper proposals are encouraged that explore trauma and healing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma of refugees, displaced and colonized peoples, trauma and healing in personal relationships, climate change as a form of trauma to the planet and its people, trauma and healing related to issues of gender and sexuality, and how philosophers of all traditions, ancient and modern, cross-culturally deal with trauma and healing.
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