Conference Schedule
Day One (Thursday, 20 February)
9:30–10:45: Inaugural Session:
Chair: Professor Sudha Pai, Rector JNU
- Welcome and Introduction to the conference: Makarand R. Paranjape
- Inaugural address: Karan Singh
- Rector’s Address: Sudha Pai
- Introductory Remarks: Debashish Banerji
- Concluding remarks from the chair and vote of thanks
10:45: Tea Break
11:00–12:00: Keynote Address I
Chair: Allan Leslie Combs
Speaker: Pal Ahluwalia
12:00–1:00: Session 1.1: Post-human Contexts: Back to the Future
Chair: Saitya Brata Das
- Michel Lantelme: “Human, Nothing but Human: From Neanderthal to Clones”
- John Tangney: “Platonism, Epicureanism and Transhumanism”
1:00–2:00: Lunch
2:00–3:30: Session 1.2: Machines, Utopias, Cosmism: Probing New Frontiers of Consciousness
Chair: Debashish Banerji
- Allan Combs: “Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On: Machines, Consciousness, and the Future”
- Peter Heehs: “Utopia, Dystopia, and Attainable Futures”
- Andrei Zavaliy: “The Quest for a Post-human Era in the Tradition of Russian Cosmism”
3:30–3:45: Tea Break
3:45–5:15: Session 1.3: Science Fiction: Literature and Cinema
Chair: Makarand R. Paranjape
- M K Raghavendra: “Glitches in Mankind’s Imagined Future: The Russian SF Film and its Significance”
- Aruna Bhat: “Beyond Bionic Beings: Cybernetics as an Extension of the Human – A Study of William Gibson’s Novel Neuromancer”
- Geetha Bakilapadavu: “What is Beyond Human? Science-fictional Perspectives of Arthur C. Clarke”
5:15 onwards: Science fiction film screening
Day Two (Friday, 21 February)
9:45–10:45: Session 2.1: Biopolitics, Psychopower
Chair: Dhananjay Singh
- Federico Luisetti: “Technological Vitalism: Rethinking the State of Nature”
- Samrat Sengupta: “Autoimmunity, Animality and the Irony of Self-Definition”
10:45–11:00: Tea Break
11:00–12:15: Keynote Address II
[Video] Speaker: Rosi Braidotti: Critical Post-humanism
Discussion
12:15–1:15: Session 2.2: Shaping Future Subjects: Media Effects, Digital Humanities
Chair: Saugata Bhaduri
- Niyathi R. Krishna and Sangeeth S. Pillai: “Internalizing Superhuman and Becoming Subhuman—Where Lies the Human?”
- Anirudh Sridhar: “Digital Humanities and the University: The Conflict of Koenigsberg”
1:15–2:15: Lunch
2:15–3:45: Session 2.3: Ethics of the Post-human
Chair: Franson Manjali
- Anirban Das: “The Many Ways of Thinking the ‘Non-Human’”
- Ritu Sen Chaudhuri: “Reading Ajantrik: Talking Technicity”
- Ananta Kumar Giri: “Spiritual Pragmatics: New Pathways of Transformation for the Posthuman”
3:45–4:00: Tea Break
4:00–5:30: Session 2.4: Virtual Capital and Digital Fetishism
Chair: John Tangney
- Mun-Cho Kim, Nam-Og Kim, Andrew Kim: “Changing Conception of Body in a High-Tech Society”
- Prayag Ray: “‘Synthetik Love Lasts Forever’: Sex Dolls and the (Post?)Human Condition”
- [Video] Michel Bauwens: “Digital Economies and Networks of Cooperation”
Day Three (Saturday, 22 February)
9:45–10:45: Keynote Address III
Chair: Richard Carlson
Speaker: Amrita Pande: “Beyond the Mother-machine: Surrogacy and Neo-eugenics in India”
10:45–11:00: Tea Break
11:00–12:00: Session 3.1: Technological Progress and the Subaltern
Chair: Amrita Pande
- Monirul Islam: “Posthumanism: Through the Postcolonial Lens”
- Sucharita Sarkar: “Durga, Supermom and the Posthuman Mother India”
12:00–1:30: Session 3.2: Virtual Violence/Precarious Bodies
Chair: Ritu Sen Chaudhuri
- [Video] Arthur Kroker : “When Drones Come to Town”
- Heba Ahmed: “Beyond Belligerence? Towards Posthuman War”
- Bedatri Datta Choudhury and Promona Sengupta: “The Case of Exploding Humans: The Human Bomb as a Questioning of the Human Condition”
1:30–2:30: Lunch
2:30–4:00: Sessions 3.3 and 3.4 [in two parallel sessions ]
Session 3.3: Science Fiction
Chair: Geetha Bakilapadavu
- C.S. Bhagya: “The Final Frontier: The Solipsistic Self in Andrei Tarkovsky’s (and Stanislaw Lem’s) Solaris”
- Suryansu Guha: “The Imperialist Post-human: Alien Invaders, the Syndicate and the Politics of Colonisation in the X-Files”
- Kanak Yadav: “The Politics of the Im(possible): What underlies the Posthuman?
Session 3.4: Post-human Deferrals
Chair: Ananta Kumar Giri
- Saronik Bosu: “The Death of the Machine and its Mystical Journey Beyond the Human”
- Huzaifa Omair Siddiqi: “The Postponement of the Post-human: Analysing Post-human Conflict in Science Fiction”
- Isha Singh: “The Superhero as the New Age Shaman: What Is It That We Want to Become?”
4:00–4:15: Tea Break
4:15: Concluding Session: Technologies of Self-Transformation and Post-Human Futures
- Opening Remarks: Ashis Nandy
- Concluding Discussion: Makarand R. Paranjape, Richard Carlson, Debashish Banerji