Postgraduate "Work In Progress" Seminar
Postgraduate Work-In-Progress SeminarA weekly seminar for Philosophy postgraduates to present their in-progress work, followed by a well-spirited trip to the pub for food and drinks. Useful InfoThe WIP provides a risk-free and supportive space for postgraduates to present their work and receive feedback from other graduates and faculty.
Attendance optional but highly recommended. All postgraduates are welcome to present or attend -- whether MA, MPhil, PhD, Visitors, etc. 馃搮 Format
馃 Should I present? ("I have nothing to present; I hate public speaking; etc.")
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NEXT TALKIgnacio Pe帽a Caroca (PhD) Consent Thursday 07/05/2026 5pm - 6:15pm S1.50 ORGANISERS |
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PG Work in Progress Seminar
Sailee Khurjekar will present her paper Defining Obscenity: Awkward Art and Perverse Pleasures.
Abstract:
The idea of the obscene is capacious, encompassing a range of emotions that pertain to one鈥檚 disgust, repugnance, shock, allure, and offense towards its objects. Obscenity refers to art, behaviour, or language that have the power to trigger or prompt these emotions. Obscenity appears to unite a claim about the qualities of an object and a range of appropriate felt responses. When we say an object is obscene, we tend to mean it has debased qualities that merit offense, repugnance, and disgust. I want to tease out the most perspicuous way to set out what makes something obscene and how it maps onto artworks. The first step of the philosophical project examines paradigm cases of obscenity to show what features are markers of the obscene; and the second step of the philosophical project examines the phenomenology of the obscene. I centre my discussion around two artworks: Hokusai鈥檚 The Dream of the Fisherman鈥檚 Wife (1814) and Rick Gibson鈥檚 Foetus Earrings (1987).
Trigger Warning: The themes and the content of the artworks that are discussed are unusual, sensitive, and often downright perverse. The material concerns bestiality, sexual violence, paedophilia, symphorophilia, and people鈥檚 attraction to the representations of these things. I have tried to handle these issues as sensitively as possible.