Deception, Dishonesty, and Duplicity 2019
Friday, April 26 to Saturday, April 27 on J4.
Fake News, Alternative Facts, and internet trolling: stories of deception, dishonesty, and duplicity seem more omnipresent than ever. While it appears that dishonesty only became rampant ever since Donald Trump rose to political power, deception has been a modus operandi of the powerful since the dawn of mankind; the Trojan Horse or the propagation of Flat Earth Theory through the Roman Catholic Church or more recently through popular American athletes and musicians are some of the most famous examples. In war, deception is considered cunning, in relationships we call it unfaithful, and in academia we deem it plagiarism.
Needless to say, it is not only the mighty and powerful who deceive, distract, and divert, but we lie and deliberately mislead on a much more mundane and private level, whether it is a little white lie to our dear ones or (self-)deception on a grander, public scale. On Facebook, Instagram, and other Social Media platforms, we deceive others and ourselves by constructing the self as flawless beauty, disciplined athlete, and/or tasteful foodie all the time. Unreliable narrators, disinformation and psychological warfare, and propaganda: deception has many faces.
Surely, the distinction between truth and non-truth is not as simple as medial discourses sometimes suggest. Instead of condemning attempts to distort truth, in this conference we wish to examine the functions of and the dynamics created through deception, dishonesty, and duplicity within a broader scope. This conference is interested in political, philosophical, literary, cultural, historical, psychological, sociological, and theological contexts of these phenomena, but not limited to the above.
Are deception and dishonesty characteristic flaws of humankind, or rather opportunities we take to gain advantages in all kinds of relationship dynamics? Is objective truth an unreachable ideal? Can subjective truth truly be true when it is someone else’s un-truth? What do deception, dishonesty, and duplicity do to the different people confronted with or subjected to it? Could dishonesty even be a good thing?
Download the full Call for Papers here.
