Critical Studies Research Group

The next work in progress seminar will take place tomorrow Tuesday (18th February) with Michael Neu‘s presentation: ‘On Ugly Lifes”. You can find an abstract below. The seminar will take place at 1-2pm in Pavilion Parade, room 102. We’ll meet in the foyer a couple of minutes before to show the way to those unfamiliar with the building. Hope to see you all there!

This is a paper on the ugliness of human lives in liberal capitalist democracies, or immaculate liberal societies, as I shall call them; ugliness not as a physical attribute but as a facet of conduct and attitude. When I talk about ugly conduct, I mean human complicity in suffering (I focus primarily on human suffering, but think that what I say might apply to non-human suffering as well). Indifference about suffering is what I refer to as ugly attitude. The people whose ugly lives I write about have both of these features; they are complicit in suffering and indifferent about it – both about the suffering itself and their being complicit in it. The discovery of complicity and indifference might require a degree of attentive silence and reflection, rather than the frenetic study of daily news. It is not clear to me whether or not, and to what extent, indifferent accomplices (i.e., those who engage in ugly conduct and hold ugly attitudes) are suitable subjects of moral condemnation. Some of them might well be, assuming anybody is; others might not. I am going to talk about human beings, then, who are complicit in, and indifferent about, suffering; who ought not to be that way; and whom it is difficult to condemn – and not always possible to deplore.