What is a World Question? Before and in COVID-19

PAPERS FROM THE SEMINAR Selected and introduced by Terry Smith

If there is one question that haunts every other question being asked today, it might be this: How do we move from the current state of affairs in which the contemporaneity of divisive difference prevails to a world in which we work together to construct the kinds of coeval communality that are necessary—and, hopefully, will become sufficient—for our survival? From this premise, the seminar explored several modes of world questioning operative today within and between disciplines with a view to assessing their contribution to the formulation of a differentiated and open mode of world questioning that might be widely shared. Its trajectory was both disrupted and confirmed by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic part way through the semester.

This posting contains a detailed account of the work of the seminar by its convenor Terry Smith, “World Questioning in Pittsburgh: Reflections on a Seminar,” which introduces papers by eight participants, each posted as separate files, four with related figure files:

“Some Thoughts: A COVID-19 Diary” by Isaiah Bertagnolli (with a figure file); “Tracing a Nation by Candlelight” by Nikhil Titus; “Notes on Living with the Disaster” by Silpa Mukherjee; “Worlding contemporaneity in Argentina” by María Llorens (with a figure file); “World Listening: Decoloniality, Tianren heyi, and Ethnomusicology in China” by Shuo Yang’ “Post-Truth Rhetoric and Modern World Picturing” by Max Dosser (with a figure file); “Thinking an Opposite World Through Facebook’s VR Vision” by Gabriel Guedes; and “James Castle’s Art of World Picturing” by Brooke Wyatt (with a figure file).

The Syllabus document, revised in response to the COVID-19 protocols, is also posted.