While the category of dignity has been questioned from its very insertion in the UNDHR in 1948, it still continues to be a main source of legitimation in the discourse of international politics and social movements. In turn, I invite the participants to explore ‘dignity’ as a plural category that serves as umbrella for a variety of experiences, recovering (an) enlivened sense(s) for the abstract notion of dignity. In the last decades, the notions of ‘biodignity’ (Pele et al. 2022) and the posthumanist proposals, like Haraway’s Chthulucene (2016), along with indigenous concepts like sumak kawsay, have shown the need for a different approach that allows us to build enlivening relations with and through the cultural and natural diversity we are part of. Based on the conviction that it is insufficient to engage with ‘human dignity’ in its diversity only by means of words, the workshop proposes an experiential and creative approach to explore meanings of ‘dignity’ beyond its (centralized) conceptualization.
In this workshop we will use artistic inquiry to explore the divergent and convergent aspects of experiences of dignity and their cultural embeddedness. We will concentrate on the work with and through images, drawings and collage. While this workshop focuses on the topic of dignity, it aims also to offer the participants tools and a space to ‘prod’ the use of creative methods and explore how can they enhance their own research. Creative methods offer possibilities that are often more appropriate to encounter cultural diversity than conventional inquiry methods that depend only on conceptual language.
Participants need no previous experience or knowledge.
