Leading Journal of Contemporary Culture Publishes Papers from CGCC Conference

Several papers from the CGCC-sponsored conference, “The Bearable Lightness of Being: Weak Ontology and the Affirmation of Moral and Political Life,” have recently been published as part of a special issue of The Hedgehog Review, an award-winning journal of contemporary culture. The special issue, Commitments in a Post-Foundationalist World: Exploring the Possibilities of “Weak Ontology,” is guest edited by Northwestern University’s Dilip Gaonkar (Associate Professor of Communication Studies) and Keith Topper (Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Political Science), and explores one of the most troublesome questions of contemporary political thought and life, namely, the question of how we justify and affirm those bedrock moral and political commitments that express what most deeply matters to us. As we engage in discourse and deliberation about moral and political affairs, we draw on and are at times prompted to justify these fundamental commitments. Yet because they are so tightly bound to our own identities, it is easy to forget or deny that they are contestable. In his widely influential book, Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory, Stephen White outlined a new and distinctive way of negotiating this dilemma, one that would recognize the importance of reflecting on these fundamental commitments while resisting the temptations of dogmatism. White’s book, which developed this idea through an explication of what he called “weak ontology,” was the central topic of the March 2004 conference, “The Bearable Lightness of Being,” and is similarly the focus of the recent issue of The Hedgehog Review.

In explaining their decision to publish the conference papers, the editors of The Hedgehog Review remark “we think this conversation has relevance far beyond the boundaries of political science to discussions taking place in moral philosophy, social theory, aesthetics, psychology, and religious studies. Our desire, then, is to introduce this significant discussion to a broader audience.” The issue includes contributions from several participants in the 2004 conference. In addition to an essay by White, “Weak Ontology: Genealogy and Critical Issues,” it contains papers by William Connolly (Johns Hopkins University), “White Noise”; Charles Taylor (Northwestern University), “The ‘Weak Ontology’ Thesis”; Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith College), “The Politics of Avoidance: The Limits of Weak Ontology”; Charles Larmore (University of Chicago), “Respect for Persons”; Leslie Paul Thiele (University of Florida), “Ontology and Narrative”; Elizabeth Wingrove (University of Michigan), “Ontology: A Useful Category of Analysis,” and Gaonkar and Topper (Northwestern University), “Afterword: Notes on the Bearable Lightness of Being.” The issue also includes an interview with Richard Flathman and an essay by George Kateb (Princeton University), “The Idea of Individual Infinitude.”