CCIG Dialogues

We have gathered together discussions, blogs and collaborations under ‘dialogues’ because we thought the term ‘dialogue’ describes the core of this website most accurately. To dialogue means to converse with one or more people but it also has such a deep history that it indicates a literary as well as a philosophical genre. Yet, the kind of dialogue that we hope to see is not only literary or philosophical but critical. CCIG is a research centre whose members investigate the intersections of subjectivity and power. We are interested in how subjects come to make themselves and others. But such making involves acting upon each other in dialogical ways. To enter into a dialogue is not merely to enter into a conversation but to enter into a space where we open ourselves to each other. Being open means that we regard ourselves or each other not already made (i.e., closed) selves but selves that are made through the very dialogue we have entered. Being critical means to invest in the openness of the dialogue rather than finding ways to close it. To dialogue is a commitment to remain open and a commitment to let openness remain. As researchers on subjectivity and politics, we are committed to remain open but also to let openness amongst ourselves and others remain.

It is in this spirit that we hope we will enter into dialogue on various aspects of research we undertake on citizenship, identities and governance. Elsewhere on this website you will find how we define these essential concepts in CCIG and how we put them to work in our core research programmes on intimacies, securities, mobilities, families & relationships, and publics. We aim that these dialogues (discussions, blogs and collaborations) that the new CCIG website enables will supplement and strengthen our monthly forums that we hold in Walton Hall.

I invite all our CCIG colleagues and any others who might be interested in subjectivity and power to enter into dialogue each other and offer this website as a medium.