Queensland School of Continental Philosophy

In August 2022, James Sweet, then president of the American Historical Association, warned historians against "presentism," the act of interpreting the past through the political concerns of the present rather than on the past's own terms. The incident, dubbed the “Sweet Affair,” conjured an old epistemological anxiety that had been haunting the historical discipline since the late-nineteenth century, sparking intense debate and polemics among historians. In this paper I argue that Sweet’s warning was structurally analogous to Husserl's phenomenological epoché, in that it required the bracketing of the historian's own natural attitude in order to encounter the past as it was given to those who lived it. Consulting Merleau-Ponty's account of the impossibility of a complete phenomenological reduction provides an insight as to why Sweet's proposal cannot succeed. The historian, like any subject, is embodied and situated, woven into the present they are asked to set aside, a position which can be examined but never stepped outside of. What Sweet actually objects to (cherry-picking and teleology) is better understood as a failure of intersubjective disciplinary rigour, not as a failure to bracket the present. Ultimately, historical “objectivity” is more appropriately located in reflexive, collectively scrutinised practice than in an incoherent and impossible neutrality enacted by the individual subject.

Dialectics is often presented as a distinctly Western tradition, associated above all with Hegel and Marx. Dialectical Dialogues in Global International Relations challenges that assumption by showing that dialectical ways of thinking have developed across many philosophical and civilisational traditions. Written as a series of sustained conversations, the book brings Hegelian and Marxian dialectics into dialogue with Advaita Hinduism, Madhyamaka Buddhism, Daoism, Islamic philosophy, and Critical Realism. Across five chapters, Shannon Brincat engages with Deepshikha Shahi, Jay Garfield, L. H. M. Ling, Kaan Kangal, and Heikki Patomäki on questions concerning reality, contradiction, causation, relationality, ethics, emancipation, and world politics. Rather than treating non-Western traditions as additions to an established discipline, the book asks what International Relations might become when these traditions are taken seriously on their own terms. It also models a form of intellectual exchange that is critical without being hostile and pluralistic without abandoning the pursuit of better arguments. This talk introduces the book’s central ideas, explains why dialectics remains vital for understanding an interconnected world, and shows how dialogue across philosophical traditions can help create a genuinely Global International Relations. It invites readers to rethink dialectics not as a closed doctrine, but as an open, transformative practice.

Biographical Information: Dr. Shannon Brincat is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast. His research focuses on critical international relations theory, climate change adaptation, dialectics, recognition, and the imagination in global politics. He has undertaken projects related to climate and community organisation in India, Mozambique, Fiji Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste. He has edited or written 10 books and over 50 papers in international journals and his most recent book is Dialectical Dialogues in Global International Relations in the Voices in IR Series at Oxford University Press. He is also a co-editor of Global Discourse. For more information see: shannonbrincat.com. 

Australian Ecofeminist Val Plumwood has provided through her lifetime an eminent contribution to environmental philosophy. Touching on the separation of mind from body, the debate of animal consciousness, factory farming, ‘women as nature’, deep ecology versus eco-feminism, and more in the cannon of environmental philosophy, Plumwood charts a new course through quagmires towards a political feminist and ecological position. Over the series of five talks in October, Victoria Lawson will demystify her wider philosophical project through the content of The Eye of the Crocodile, Plumwood’s most narrative work. This includes specifically Plumwood’s encounter with a crocodile, analysis of factory farming, exposition of culture’s domination over nature, her relationship with Birubi the wombat, and answer to the question of ethical consumption, use, and death. Providing a clear introduction and tour of Plumwood’s philosophical project, each week will have a short reading from the primary text, with a talk providing its context to her whole archive. Attendees will leave with a greater understanding of environmental philosophy and what ethical relationships to the environment can look like.