[SydPhil] UOW Philosophy Seminar: Dr. Joanne Faulkner "Humanity's Little Scrap Dealers: The Child at Play in Modern Philosophy and Implications for Sexualisation Discourse"

[michael kirchhoff]

UOW Philosophy Seminar, Spring 2014. All are welcome!



*Speaker*: Dr. Joanne Faulkner (University of New South Wales)



*Title*: Humanity’s Little Scrap Dealers”: The Child at Play in Modern
Philosophy and Implications for Sexualisation Discourse



*Abstract*: The child at play has been a touchstone of philosophical texts
in the modern era, through which a new humanity is imagined and tested.
>From John Locke’s observations of children and recollections of childhood
that delineate how knowledge is formed in the mind, to Sigmund Freud’s
focus on the child as the forge of the self, the child — and particular the
boy child exploring the world through play — has occupied a pivotal, if
heretofore relatively under-explored, role in the key texts of European
thought. While to this point the observation of boys at play has been
central to negotiating understandings of the human, recently girls have
come under scrutiny, in ways that arguably also attempt to delve a deeper
truth about the human condition. Particularly discourses on the
sexualisation of girls have grown in cultural importance, to narrate the
demise of innocent childhood. This paper will develop the conceptual
connection between current anxiety about the sexualisation of girls, and
former articulations of childhood. This will help shed new light on what is
at stake for contemporary conceptions of childhood as in crisis.



When: Wednesday 24 September

Time: 3:30 - 5:00pm

Where: Research Hub 19.2072B, building 19



There will be a student seminar from 2:00 - 2:45pm, also in the Research

Hub.



Best,


*Dr. Michael D. Kirchhoff *
Lecturer in Philosophy
School of Humanities and Social Enquiry
Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts
University of Wollongong NSW 2522
Australia
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