HCAS Anniversary Symposium: Artifice and Its Insecurities

Across social and historical contexts, claims to artificiality often breed mistrust. To be “natural” is almost always a virtue, while things deemed “artificial,” from the sweeteners and dyes in processed foods to crypto-currencies, more commonly provoke suspicion. Through its panels and presentations, this symposium asks: What is it about artifice that sparks such concern and ambivalence? And, if artifice produces a unique set of insecurities, by what techniques have social actors sought to shore up the authority of decidedly “artificial” constructions?

In asking these questions, the symposium seeks to contribute to historical studies of epistemology and authority. The philosophical elaboration of artifice as a distinct kind of agency emerged in the early modern period in Europe, during a time when nascent colonialism and religious conflict undermined a once hegemonic Christian cosmopolitics. When confronted both with stories from the Americas and also sectarian warfare across Europe, claims to a natural or divine order were newly contestable. In this milieu, thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes pointed to artifice as a new principle and justification for institutions. Where others saw polity as an outgrowth of natural law or divine right, Hobbes argued that the state itself was an “artificial man,” crafted by humans to serve common ends. Such “artifice” gave license to a new understanding of politics and history. But, it also unleashed a line of questioning that remains with us into the present: if our knowledge and institutions are not ordained by nature or god, how are they authorized and secured?

The symposium assembles an interdisciplinary group of scholars to offer complementary perspectives on the problem and power of artifice. By design, we will bring intellectual, legal, and cultural historians, literary scholars, political theorists, and anthropologists into dialogue. Case studies will span eras and geographies. Organizing the discussion, however, are four core themes: ontologies, affordances, ambivalences, and fixes.

The symposium is organized by HCAS Alumni Andrew Graan and Tim Stuart-Buttle at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

10:00 Welcome by HCAS Director

10:15 Opening Remarks by Symposium Organizers (Tim Stuart-Buttle and Andrew Graan)

10:45 Coffee/Tea Break

11:15 Session 1: Panel on “Ontologies” 

12:45 Lunch Break

13:45 Session 2: Panel on “Affordances” 

15:15 Coffee/Tea Break

15:45 Session 3: Keynote Address by Charlotte Epstein 

17:15 Reception

10:00 Session 4: Keynote Address by Pasi Väliaho 

11:30 Lunch Break

12:30 Session 5: Panel on “Ambivalences.” 

14:00 Coffee/Tea Break

14:30 Session 6: Panel on “Fixes.” 

16:00 Concluding Discussion