Book of Abstracts
Tomaz Amorim: The Indigenous Critique of Modernity: Crossed Dialogues Between Adario and Guaman Poma
While Graeber & Wengrow position Lahontan’s Adario as the root of the ‘Indigenous critique’, they omit a Latin American precursor. As Enrique Dussel demonstrates, Andean thinker Guaman Poma dismantled European reason a century earlier, exposing the extractive idolatry of colonial property and law. Addressing ‘Who enlightens whom?’, this communication contrasts Lahontan’s mediated voice with Poma’s direct agency—both subverting the colonizer's language. Bridging North American and Andean epistemologies, we propose a collaborative framework for Indigenous resistance across the Americas.
Elena Arigita: European Modernity from the Northern Mediterranean: the Legacy of al-Andalus and its Temporalities
Spain evokes geographically a contact zone and a border of Europe within the Mediterranean and with Africa. And yet, it is the heritage of al-Andalus what causes a historical anxiety about a Muslim and Jewish legacy along the construction of the modern State, being its logic a united territory under a Christian rule for which the Muslim population was either assimilated or expulsed in 1609 as had been the Jews after the fall of Granada in 1492. What happens with the legacy of al-Andalus after 1492? This paper will look at the role of Arabism in the transmission and interpretation of this legacy along the construction of the modern State. The aim will be to identify continuities and ruptures in scholarly worldviews that seek at accommodating this legacy to the ideas of modernity and belonging to Spain and Europe.
Elisabeth Décultot: The Invention of the Savage: On an “Aesthetics of Decentering” in Lahontan and Diderot
The lecture examines the literary staging of the tension between center and periphery— understood as the relationship Europe entertains with its Other—in the works of Lahontan and Diderot. It will focus on the question of how both authors make use of a staged dialogue to confirm, criticize, or subvert this relationship. Analyzing the figure of the “savage” and the dialogical structure of their texts, the lecture will trace the emergence of an “aesthetics of decentering” that challenges the epistemic and moral foundations of European self-understanding in the 18th century.
Michael Gaudio: Dancing in Circles: Enlightenment and the “Idolatrous Nations” in Bernard Picart’s Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
Jean-Frédéric Bernard’s and Bernard Picart’s Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-43) stands as a landmark publication in the anthropology of religion, relying upon the printed image to create a critical perspective on the religious customs of peoples of the world. At the same time, the motif of the circular dance in its depictions of the “idolaters” of the Americas draws the beholder into empathetic participation, putting this critical distance into question. This paper dwells on the book’s circular movement between critique and participation.
Johannes Kleinbeck: The Writing of Free Love: Lahontan and the Question of Gallantry
At the core of the dispute between Adario and Lahontan concerning the relationship between the sexes lies the artifice of dissimulation, intimately linked to the question of European writing. As the critique of gallantry and the proprietary rights of the paterfamilias unfolds, the question arises: Who possesses the right to dissimulate?
Kirsten Mahlke: Inca knowledge in knotted cords: Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d‘une Péruvienne (1746) and female Enlightenment
Almost 40 years before Kant’s answer to the epoch-making question ‘What is Enlightenment?’, the fictional author in Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1746) claims to have been liberated from her self-imposed immaturity by her beloved, an educated and cultured Inca prince. De Graffigny wrote her epistolary novel to offer an outside view on the corruption of French society, drawing an analogy with Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721). However, unlike her predecessor, she acknowledges the indigenous sources of her knowledge from pre-Hispanic Peru. Furthermore, she gives a woman an emancipatory voice, establishing her own thoughts and writings (in knot strings) as a benchmark for female enlightenment in Europe. This lecture will explore the Andean origins of European female enlightenment as seen through the literary translation and appropriation of these origins in Madame de Graffigny's epistolary novel.
Maud Meyzaud: On the many Enlightenment Uses and Abuses of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Living, Son of Wakeful)
From its rediscovery by the Orientalist Edward Pococke in late 17th century up to its second German translation by the end of the 18th century, the reception of Ibn Tufayl‘s philosophical tale merged with the history of the European Enlightenment to such a degree that one argue that its European uses and abuses are actively involved in the very inception and unfolding of a Western Enlightenment, especially if considered as the decisive period of ‘secularization’. In my opening remarks, I will highlight three distinct, though intersecting main lines from circa 1675 to 1760: a) the ‘religious’ translations from the Quakers up to German Quietism; b) the entanglement of the Arabic Autodidact Philosopher with Defoe‘s Robinson Crusoe; c) the mingling or merging of Ibn Tufayl‘s Ḥayy with other famous characters of the same period (the Turkish Spy, the indigenous medicine man, etc.).
Stephan Milich: Comparing two island narratives. A decolonial Reading of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Alive, Son of Awake, 12. c.) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (18. Jh.)
Beyond questions about the possible influence of the island narrative of the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and physician Ibn Ṭufail on Defoe's ‘Crusoe’ (cf. e.g. Baroud 2012, 2019), my aim is to highlight the fundamentally different ways of ‘being-in-the-world’ embodied by the protagonists of the two works. To problematize the relationship between the two texts, I propose to draw on a chiasm that allows the four concepts of civilisation and reason on the one hand, and indigeneity/savagery and unreason on the other, to intersect. I ask whether Crusoe’s civility should be understood as a moderate greed for foreign resources and, conversely, whether the indigenousness of the self-taught philosopher is to be related to an ethical reason that goes beyond self-interest and is oriented towards a good life and work.
Nick Nesbitt: “I am Toussaint Louverture“: Who is the Subject of Radical Enlightenment?
If the Radical Enlightenment was arguably initiated in the Malian Mande Charter of 1222, demonstrated more geometrico in Spinoza’s Ethics of 1677, and further pursued in the 1793 Jacobin revolution, I wish to argue that it was only with the coming of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) that it both fulfilled its promise as universal emancipation while foundering upon the neo-slavery of global capitalism in a dialectic of Radical Enlightenment that continues into the present.
Oliver Precht: Bewilderments: Lahontan’s Dialogues and the long history of (missed) encounters with the New World
Lahontan’s dialogues can be situated within a long history of missed encounters that began with the arrival of the first colonizers in the New World. Since the early 16th century, these encounters—despite countless mutual misunderstandings—have produced numerous texts which sought a critique, relativization, and transformation of the modern worldview . In my presentation, I will aim to situate Lahontan’s text within this broader history and thereby bring it into dialogue with recent theoretical debates surrounding the notion of "cosmopolitics" as developed by authors like Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour or Marisol de la Cadena.
Stefan Schick: Aristotelian Science, Mystical Union, or Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone? Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān in Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophical Historiography
Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān addresses three central philosophical themes: the system of Aristotelian science, the mystical union with God, and the relationship between religious law and philosophy. One might expect that Kantian and post-Kantian philosophers would have appreciated only the latter theme, since mystical union was widely regarded as a form of unphilosophical enthusiasm and Aristotelian science as obsolete. Ibn Ṭufayl’s treatment of religious law, by contrast, appears to anticipate key elements of Kant’s critique of religion. Yet this expectation is largely frustrated. This frustration, however, proves philosophically instructive, as it illuminates the misconceptions, problematic translations, and conceptual misalignments that have shaped the Western reception of medieval Arabic philosophy more generally.
Hanna Zoe Trauer: Ḥayy Between Idyll and Utopia Animals and Humans in Ibn Ṭufail's Philosophical Novel
The island on which Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān comes into being, or on which the waves wash him ashore, seems to be an idyllic place. Ḥayy's relationship with the animals, especially with his ‘mother,’ the gazelle, is intimate. And yet not entirely harmonious: while on the one hand animals are role models for numerous cultural practices, one the other hand Ḥayy's activity as a natural scientist and his existence as a deficient being gradually establish an instrumental relationship to them. Even more problematic is Ḥayy's relationship to other humans, who are not only as “dull-witted as cattle” and “comparable to irrational animals,“ but even “more likely to stray from the path.” His foray into society and his utopian impulses remain an interlude, and he decides to retreat to his island. Based on these rough outlines, I would like to explore the relationship between humans and animals, culture and nature, utopia and idyll in Ibn Ṭufail’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān.
Book of Abstracts
Tomaz Amorim: The Indigenous Critique of Modernity: Crossed Dialogues Between Adario and Guaman Poma
While Graeber & Wengrow position Lahontan’s Adario as the root of the ‘Indigenous critique’, they omit a Latin American precursor. As Enrique Dussel demonstrates, Andean thinker Guaman Poma dismantled European reason a century earlier, exposing the extractive idolatry of colonial property and law. Addressing ‘Who enlightens whom?’, this communication contrasts Lahontan’s mediated voice with Poma’s direct agency—both subverting the colonizer's language. Bridging North American and Andean epistemologies, we propose a collaborative framework for Indigenous resistance across the Americas.
Elena Arigita: European Modernity from the Northern Mediterranean: the Legacy of al-Andalus and its Temporalities
Spain evokes geographically a contact zone and a border of Europe within the Mediterranean and with Africa. And yet, it is the heritage of al-Andalus what causes a historical anxiety about a Muslim and Jewish legacy along the construction of the modern State, being its logic a united territory under a Christian rule for which the Muslim population was either assimilated or expulsed in 1609 as had been the Jews after the fall of Granada in 1492. What happens with the legacy of al-Andalus after 1492? This paper will look at the role of Arabism in the transmission and interpretation of this legacy along the construction of the modern State. The aim will be to identify continuities and ruptures in scholarly worldviews that seek at accommodating this legacy to the ideas of modernity and belonging to Spain and Europe.
Elisabeth Décultot: The Invention of the Savage: On an “Aesthetics of Decentering” in Lahontan and Diderot
The lecture examines the literary staging of the tension between center and periphery— understood as the relationship Europe entertains with its Other—in the works of Lahontan and Diderot. It will focus on the question of how both authors make use of a staged dialogue to confirm, criticize, or subvert this relationship. Analyzing the figure of the “savage” and the dialogical structure of their texts, the lecture will trace the emergence of an “aesthetics of decentering” that challenges the epistemic and moral foundations of European self-understanding in the 18th century.
Michael Gaudio: Dancing in Circles: Enlightenment and the “Idolatrous Nations” in Bernard Picart’s Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde
Jean-Frédéric Bernard’s and Bernard Picart’s Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-43) stands as a landmark publication in the anthropology of religion, relying upon the printed image to create a critical perspective on the religious customs of peoples of the world. At the same time, the motif of the circular dance in its depictions of the “idolaters” of the Americas draws the beholder into empathetic participation, putting this critical distance into question. This paper dwells on the book’s circular movement between critique and participation.
Johannes Kleinbeck: The Writing of Free Love: Lahontan and the Question of Gallantry
At the core of the dispute between Adario and Lahontan concerning the relationship between the sexes lies the artifice of dissimulation, intimately linked to the question of European writing. As the critique of gallantry and the proprietary rights of the paterfamilias unfolds, the question arises: Who possesses the right to dissimulate?
Kirsten Mahlke: Inca knowledge in knotted cords: Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d‘une Péruvienne (1746) and female Enlightenment
Almost 40 years before Kant’s answer to the epoch-making question ‘What is Enlightenment?’, the fictional author in Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1746) claims to have been liberated from her self-imposed immaturity by her beloved, an educated and cultured Inca prince. De Graffigny wrote her epistolary novel to offer an outside view on the corruption of French society, drawing an analogy with Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721). However, unlike her predecessor, she acknowledges the indigenous sources of her knowledge from pre-Hispanic Peru. Furthermore, she gives a woman an emancipatory voice, establishing her own thoughts and writings (in knot strings) as a benchmark for female enlightenment in Europe. This lecture will explore the Andean origins of European female enlightenment as seen through the literary translation and appropriation of these origins in Madame de Graffigny's epistolary novel.
Maud Meyzaud: On the many Enlightenment Uses and Abuses of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Living, Son of Wakeful)
From its rediscovery by the Orientalist Edward Pococke in late 17th century up to its second German translation by the end of the 18th century, the reception of Ibn Tufayl‘s philosophical tale merged with the history of the European Enlightenment to such a degree that one argue that its European uses and abuses are actively involved in the very inception and unfolding of a Western Enlightenment, especially if considered as the decisive period of ‘secularization’. In my opening remarks, I will highlight three distinct, though intersecting main lines from circa 1675 to 1760: a) the ‘religious’ translations from the Quakers up to German Quietism; b) the entanglement of the Arabic Autodidact Philosopher with Defoe‘s Robinson Crusoe; c) the mingling or merging of Ibn Tufayl‘s Ḥayy with other famous characters of the same period (the Turkish Spy, the indigenous medicine man, etc.).
Stephan Milich: Comparing two island narratives. A decolonial Reading of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (Alive, Son of Awake, 12. c.) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (18. Jh.)
Beyond questions about the possible influence of the island narrative of the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and physician Ibn Ṭufail on Defoe's ‘Crusoe’ (cf. e.g. Baroud 2012, 2019), my aim is to highlight the fundamentally different ways of ‘being-in-the-world’ embodied by the protagonists of the two works. To problematize the relationship between the two texts, I propose to draw on a chiasm that allows the four concepts of civilisation and reason on the one hand, and indigeneity/savagery and unreason on the other, to intersect. I ask whether Crusoe’s civility should be understood as a moderate greed for foreign resources and, conversely, whether the indigenousness of the self-taught philosopher is to be related to an ethical reason that goes beyond self-interest and is oriented towards a good life and work.
Nick Nesbitt: “I am Toussaint Louverture“: Who is the Subject of Radical Enlightenment?
If the Radical Enlightenment was arguably initiated in the Malian Mande Charter of 1222, demonstrated more geometrico in Spinoza’s Ethics of 1677, and further pursued in the 1793 Jacobin revolution, I wish to argue that it was only with the coming of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) that it both fulfilled its promise as universal emancipation while foundering upon the neo-slavery of global capitalism in a dialectic of Radical Enlightenment that continues into the present.
Oliver Precht: Bewilderments: Lahontan’s Dialogues and the long history of (missed) encounters with the New World
Lahontan’s dialogues can be situated within a long history of missed encounters that began with the arrival of the first colonizers in the New World. Since the early 16th century, these encounters—despite countless mutual misunderstandings—have produced numerous texts which sought a critique, relativization, and transformation of the modern worldview . In my presentation, I will aim to situate Lahontan’s text within this broader history and thereby bring it into dialogue with recent theoretical debates surrounding the notion of "cosmopolitics" as developed by authors like Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour or Marisol de la Cadena.
Stefan Schick: Aristotelian Science, Mystical Union, or Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone? Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān in Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophical Historiography
Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān addresses three central philosophical themes: the system of Aristotelian science, the mystical union with God, and the relationship between religious law and philosophy. One might expect that Kantian and post-Kantian philosophers would have appreciated only the latter theme, since mystical union was widely regarded as a form of unphilosophical enthusiasm and Aristotelian science as obsolete. Ibn Ṭufayl’s treatment of religious law, by contrast, appears to anticipate key elements of Kant’s critique of religion. Yet this expectation is largely frustrated. This frustration, however, proves philosophically instructive, as it illuminates the misconceptions, problematic translations, and conceptual misalignments that have shaped the Western reception of medieval Arabic philosophy more generally.
Hanna Zoe Trauer: Ḥayy Between Idyll and Utopia Animals and Humans in Ibn Ṭufail's Philosophical Novel
The island on which Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān comes into being, or on which the waves wash him ashore, seems to be an idyllic place. Ḥayy's relationship with the animals, especially with his ‘mother,’ the gazelle, is intimate. And yet not entirely harmonious: while on the one hand animals are role models for numerous cultural practices, one the other hand Ḥayy's activity as a natural scientist and his existence as a deficient being gradually establish an instrumental relationship to them. Even more problematic is Ḥayy's relationship to other humans, who are not only as “dull-witted as cattle” and “comparable to irrational animals,“ but even “more likely to stray from the path.” His foray into society and his utopian impulses remain an interlude, and he decides to retreat to his island. Based on these rough outlines, I would like to explore the relationship between humans and animals, culture and nature, utopia and idyll in Ibn Ṭufail’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān.