Dialog-seminar – “The trouble with being human these days”

Onsdag 12. februar, kl 12 – 15
Dialog-seminar:
 “The Trouble with Being Human These Days”
– challenges in education, arts and mental health
In our ongoing dialogue we’ve been intrigued by a phrase from Zygmunt Bauman – ‘the trouble with being human today’ – as it nicely seems to capture that living one’s life is a challenge. In both education and mental health there is a strong pressure to think of being human as a technical problem that in some way can be ‘fixed’ by powerful, research-based interventions. This clearly runs the risk of turning students and clients into objects – things to be acted upon, rather than human beings to be acted with. Yet the turn towards the person or individual in education and mental health – which is often presented as the ‘solution’ for instrumental ‘fixing’ – is also not without problems. A main problem we see, is that such strategies often just put individuals with their desires in the centre, and forget to ask how such desires relate to the real social, physical and natural world. The arts are, in a sense, in a different position – they are not a ‘helping profession,’ so to speak. But interestingly the arts are nowadays often drawn in to address questions about being human today, and one concern there is that the arts are seen as an instrument – again either to ‘fix’ or to allow for expression without limits.

In this seminar persons from various contexts are invited to present ideas and comment on these questions and participate in the dialogue.

Introductions and reflections by Gert Biesta and more…

Sted: UiA Kristiansand, rom kommer
Program her