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  • Editor's Introduction:Symposium I: Words, Bodies, War
  • John J. Stuhr

In April 2008, the American Philosophies Forum held a symposium called "Words, Bodies, War" at Vanderbilt University. Most of the twenty-four presentations, revised in light of significant discussion at the symposium, now are published in this and the subsequent two issues of this journal.

For purposes of context, it is helpful to understand the more specific topics and questions addressed. They are as follows.

Words, power, pluralism: Are words and languages, multiple and frequently contested, employed as weapons and powers to constitute (rather than merely represent) and legitimize some ways of seeing, speaking, and acting rather than others? If communication is a kind of sharing or having in common, do multiple voices point to multiple and different communities (rather than a single Great Community), and, if so, how is it possible for different voices to register, ensure, and even celebrate their differences without these differences being incommensurable, nonharmonious, or even warring? If one can "do things" with words, how and what should be done?

Words, signs, experiences: What is the relation among words, signs, language, and experience? Is there no thought without signs? If words do not represent experience or the world, what do they do? Is there a dimension of experience or the world that cannot be captured by, or in, language? If so, does it follow that this dimension literally has no significance? What is the importance, if any, of attending, in thought and through language, to ways in which experiences outstrip that thought and language? Is this importance political as well as ontological? Is this importance always a kind of violence, of doing violence?

Bodies, meanings, identities: What is the meaning of embodiment? Is there anything like a universal or shared or even partly shared meaning? Given different words, languages, and cultures, what is the relation of the meaning or meanings of embodiment to multiple embodied meanings and different specific lives? Further, what is the relation of embodiment to identity—or identities? Are embodied identities results or products of political powers? In turn, does embodiment have any political implications or consequences? If so, how and what? Are any of these implications democratic or pluralistic? [End Page 69]

Bodies, identities, power: How are body and identity linked? Is body, or the meaning of specific bodies, at least in part culturally constructed? Is the same true for identity and specific identities? To what extent does the power of constructing body and identity rest with the self itself? Or to what extent does this power rest with or depend on others—others in general but also, even more, specific others who exercise this power, a power perhaps not shared equally? Is it important for a person to have some or much power over his or her own identity and the meaning of his or her body? Why? What are the political implications of this—generally or more specifically in terms of gender or race or class or ability or age or sexual orientation or nationality or other axes of identity? In particular, what are the implications for pluralism, for difference, and for democracy?

Relativism, war, justice: We live in a world marked by wars, terrorism, and institutional and personal violence. In the face of these realities, what resources, if any, does democratic deliberation offer? Given that our preferences and ways of life differ, are values simply relative to these different preferences? Is a given person's view of justice simply one of these preferences? Is there a way to sort through or build from these differences? Do democratic ends require democratic means? Whether you agree or disagree, is democracy itself just one of so many different preferences? If there are reasons to be committed to democracy, what practices and actions should flow from that commitment today?

War, manipulation of consent, democracy: If powerful economic, political, military, and other elites often can successfully (even if not totally) manipulate consent (and perhaps dissent too), what is the relation of consent (e.g., majority vote) to genuinely democratic ways of life? In contrast, is any notion of a nonmanipulated and, thus, "free" consent merely utopian and naive—the sort of thing...

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