Title: Un/doing Things With/out Words: Critical Discourse Practice Across Disciplines and Potential Contribution to Social and Cultural Analysis in the Philippines
Speakers:
Alwin C. Aguirre, Aileen O. Salonga, Michelle G. Ong, Monica FA W.
Santos, Joseph Palis (University of the Philippines Diliman)
Date &Time: 16:00-18:00, June 6th (Thur) 2019
Place: Tonan-tei (Room no. 201), on the 2nd floor of Inamori Foundation
Memorial building, CSEAS
Discussant: Mario Ivan Lopez (CSEAS, Kyoto University)
Coordinator: Hau, Caroline Sy, (CSEAS, Kyoto University)
Roundtable Programme:
16:00-16:10 Introductions
16:10-16:20 Overview and Background of the panel (Alwin Aguirre)
16:20-17:10 Individual presentations (5 presentations, 10 min each)
17:10-17:20 Synthesis (Michelle Ong)
17:20-17:50 Discussion (Participants & Presenters)
17:50-18:00 Planning for potential collaboration and future activities
Closing
Roundtable abstract:
The roundtable traverses the different scholarly practices built on the
theoretical and methodological foundations and revisions in critical
discourse studies. Recent global events prove that integrated,
intersectional, and interdisciplinary modes of critique are crucial in
social and cultural analysis. The five presentations navigate this
complex relationship that people have with language and representation
in society, but also foregrounds the limits of the foundational
frameworks of a discourse-centered lens in order to cultivate
transgressive possibilities of understanding the human condition.
Unpacked, the main title of the presentation implies both fractions and
inclusivity in discourse theory and practice. Doing things with words is
a reference to an Austinian privileging of language as a means of
performative intervention. Undoing things with words pertains to the
unraveling of covert and overt meanings—the apparent agenda of
foundational critical discourse projects that focus on language and its
entanglements with power. On the other hand, doing things without words
is a challenge to the logocentric bias by affirming the value of human
experience beyond the confines of linguistic signification. Such an
ontological revision proposes an epistemological shift by undoing things
without words, through critical engagement with emerging fields of
discourse that compel new ways of understanding people, culture, and
society.
Background:
Alwin C. Aguirre (College of Arts and Letters [CAL]), Michelle G. Ong
(College of Social Sciences and Philosophy [CSSP]) and Aileen O. Salonga
(CAL) formed the University of the Philippines Diliman Discourse Studies
Group (UPDDSG) in 2016 with the general aim of advancing the theories
and methods of critical discourse studies for social and cultural
analysis. The proposed roundtable is in line with such goal as we intend
to conduct events, produce materials, and develop programs that propound
discourse as a productive theoretical, methodological, and analytic
framework in different fields of study even as it is interrogated and
extended within and by these different fields. Joseph Palis (CSSP) and
Monica Santos (CSSP) had been among the featured speakers in the group’s
past public lectures largely co-hosted by the College of Social Sciences
and Philosophy and College of Arts and Letters in the University of the
Philippines Diliman. The UPDDSG has so far organized at least 10 public
lectures and roundtable discussions covering various theoretical and
methodological themes. The proposed roundtable hosted by the CSEAS Kyoto
University is its first international academic meeting.