03/07/2026 15:00
- 19:30
HALL: Pola - School of Journalism
Contact:
Mccosker P.
Chair:
Mccosker P.
The ways we live and think in and about our world seem to be increasingly polarised into mutually exclusive oppositions. Our understanding of opposition and difference seems to have become crude and coarse: either/or trumps both/and. The zero-sum of inequality proliferates, displacing the differentiated unities of forms of equality.
This panel seeks to explore richer ways of conceiving opposition and difference, taking its impulse from a number of under-appreciated works including Romano Guardini's Der Gegensatz (1925) and Paul Roubiczek's Thinking in Opposites (1952), as well as Nicholas of Cusa's coincidentia oppositorum. What are the ways of thinking through opposition and difference we can (re)source from the humanities and social sciences: how can we imagine our way beyond simplistic polarisations?
We invite papers which consider ways of thinking about opposition (or difference) in fresh and variegated ways, from whatever discipline. While links to the thinking of Cusanus, Guardini, or Roubiczek are welcomed, they are not necessary. The papers may be historical and/or constructive.
This session is linked to the research project on 'Theologies of Catholicity' based at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, and co-led with colleagues from KU Leuven and St Andrew's University.
