Abstract
I am all ready to go. My first time at the Philosophy and Social Theory conference in Prague. I am going to present some ideas from my dissertation. My talk, 20 minutes maximum, is finished, my suitcase packed. I am at the airport, my flight leaves in an hour. All that is left is to buy a newspaper for the flight. When I go to pay, it suddenly hits me: the place in my wallet where my bank card should be is empty. In fact, my wallet is almost completely empty. Suddenly I am feeling hot. How could that be? The money and my card must be in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing when I went to get money yesterday. What now? I cannot go back to the apartment, I would miss my flight. I don’t have a credit card that I could use to withdraw money. I look around: no one I know. Maybe I don’t even need money to get to the conference. I could try dodging the fare on the bus from the airport. Afterwards I would have to explain to the woman letting me my room in Prague that I would pay the rent later. And then I would have to get to the conference in the afternoon without a bus ticket. So that I don’t miss my presentation. The thought makes me slightly queasy. I try to calm myself with the thought that it is almost a decade since the Iron Curtain came down. The Czech Republic is now a democracy, like Germany – though of course that says nothing about the practices of bus drivers and inspectors. Especially since fare-dodging is not allowed in Germany either. I walk to the gate.
Safely in my seat, for want of a newspaper I decide to have another look at my presentation. Reading the opening lines has a soothing effect. Somehow I will make it to the conference venue today. The flight attendant hands me a mineral water, my neighbor asks for the inevitable tomato juice. I continue reading – and come to a grinding halt. I have to revise this. There’s a hole in the argument you could drive a bus through. How could I have missed it? I start writing new passages, cross others out. Impossible! I move paragraphs around on the paper, mark the passages with numbers so that I won’t lose the thread when delivering it. The words begin dancing before my eyes. I can’t read my own handwriting. I feel dizzy. My paper is stored on a floppy disk in my bag – just to be on the safe side. But there won’t be any opportunity to revise the text, let alone to print it out. And anyway, maybe in the former East they use ‘Word Perfect’ instead of ‘Microsoft Word’? Though the experts and computer freaks swear by ‘Word Perfect’. But in any case the two programs are incompatible. I try to memorize the order of my argument. Futile! Maybe it’s fate, which I don’t believe in otherwise, that I won’t be able to make it to the meeting without money and won’t be able to deliver my presentation. At least I’ll have a really ‘good reason’ why I didn’t show up in time for my panel. I couldn’t pay for my room and was caught dodging the bus fare in Prague. Lame, admittedly, but undeniably true. There will be some head-scratching, indulgent smiles and then the whole thing will be forgotten. I’m feeling better.
Then things go into overdrive. I meet a friend at the bus stop in Prague who is also going to the conference. She lends me some money. I leave my things at my room, we go to the Villa Lanna, I give my talk. Not everyone is persuaded that social human rights are something we should be really concerned about. But there are also some praise and constructive suggestions from the panellists and later over coffee on the spacious terrace. In general, the conversation ranges far beyond the presentations. There is a lot of discussion about Rawls and transnational democracy and about why there is so much discussion about Rawls and transnational democracy – especially for a meeting that is supposed to be about critical theory. It is great to have your talk behind you – eating and drinking with all the other younger and more senior academics. Most of them are from the United States and western Europe, but some are also from eastern Europe. But seniority, nationality and fame soon become secondary. The ‘celebrities’ take their place in this large, lively group of garrulous philosophers and social scientists – even late into the night, in the ‘Lávka’ disco, beside the Charles Bridge. ‘Forcing petrified relations to dance.’ There are women dancing half-naked in cages. But their liberation is just a matter of time. The conference needs only to dance long enough.