Ender’s Game and Philosophy: Call for Abstracts

blackwell

Are you interested in preparing and presenting a paper on themes involving Ender and Philosophy? See below for project information and submission requirements:

Thanks to  http://www.motleyvision.org for the heads up:

Call for Abstracts: Ender’s Game and Philosophy

Edited by Kevin S. Decker

The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader.

Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium.

Possible themes and topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • “A Childhood Deferred?”: the ethics of hyper-specialized training for the very young;
  • “The Military and their Monitors”: issues of privacy and civil rights during wartime;
  • “All-Out War”: just war theory and the ethics of total mobilization of Earth society against the buggers;
  • “We Know What You Think”: how and why monitors could be used to keep track of individuals’ inmost thoughts and desires;
  • “They Aren’t Normal; They Act Like—History”: Hegel and the cunning of reason in history and future wars;
  • “The Hook and the Raft”: does the I.F. “System” colonize the human and bugger “Lifeworlds”?;
  • “The Giant’s Drink”; Ender’s training is a simulation, but are we living in one?;
  • “Know Your Enemy”: the strategic philosophies of Sun-Tzu and Ender Wiggin;
  • “Ender’s Game and the problem of Dirty Hands”;
  • “Constructing Subjects in Space”;
  • Foucault and Ender’s military leaders;
  • “Bugger All!”: when cultural incommensurability turns into conflict;
  • “Wiggin’ the Dog”: ethical and political dimensions of stage-managed wars;
  • “Down with the Warsaw Pact!”: the epistemology of blogging;
  • “Locke and Demosthenes”: ‘virtual’ politics with false personas;
  • “Of Bachelard and Battlerooms”: philosophy of bodies in space;
  • “Peter’s in the Mirror Again”: virtual simulations and artificial intelligence;
  • “Valentine’s Day”; philosophy of emotion in Ender’s Game;
  • “Like a Gun”: is Ender responsible for the terrible consequences of his actions, or has he been a pawn for the I.F.?

Wm [at Motley Vision] interjects: please note that in later editions OSC changed the name of the alien race from buggers to Formics.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Submission deadline for abstracts (100-500 words) and CV(s): March 19, 2012.

2. Submission deadline for drafts of accepted papers: June 18, 2012.

Kindly submit by e-mail (with or without Word attachment) to: Kevin S. Decker at kdecker@ewu.edu

Check out the series website: http://andphilosophy.com/

What Ender-related philosophical topic would you like to see explored?