European Summer School in Cultural Studies
This year, the session of the European Summer School in Cultural Studies takes place in Amsterdam. The 2008 session of the ESSCS takes “forms of life” as its signature term and core theme proposing to explore how past conceptions and present perceptions of “life” have manifested themselves in cultural practice and theory, and how they are likely to change in the future. While also referring to earlier uses of the concept (Wittgenstein), we will use “forms of life” to move beyond the nature versus culture divide – re-mapping the human and non-human, matter and mind, people and things, art and life, zoe and bios, form and process – and explore how culture inflects all forms of life, their objective study and analysis, as well as their performative presence, through enactment, embodiment and self-reflexivity. Moreover, we will strive for a critical analysis of the procedures and figures that give life intelligible form.