[ecrea] CFP - New Radical Subjectivities: Re-thinking Agency for the 21st Century

>New Radical Subjectivities: Re-thinking Agency for the 21st Century
>
>The University of Nottingham, UK
>Friday, September 19th, 2008
>
>Keynote Speaker ­ Professor Peter Hallward (Middlesex University)
>
>Peter Hallward is the author of Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing
>between the Singular and the Specific (Manchester, 2001), Badiou: A
>Subject to Truth (Minnesota, 2003), Out of this World: Deleuze and the
>Philosophy of Creation (Verso, 2006), and most recently, Damming the
>Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (Verso, 2007).
>
>This one day conference for postgraduate students and early career
>researchers explores recent articulations of subjectivity and
>political agency in critical theory and cultural studies. The
>continued ascent of neo-liberalism and economic globalisation, along
>with postmodern and poststructuralist theorising around subjectivity,
>potentially sets a dangerously de-politicised subject against the
>expanding forces and inequalities of contemporary capitalism.
>
>Over the last twenty-five years, theoretical writings on the left have
>stressed the need to locate subject positions beyond the reductionism
>of an orthodox Marxism, and the disabling extremes of liberal
>anti-essentialism. Concepts which continue to posit some form of
>subjective agency have attempted to respond to the human issues at
>stake in contemporary political formations without compromising a
>theoretical commitment to a discursively produced subject. From
>Gayatri Spivak's 'strategic essentialism' and Laclau and Mouffe's
>'radical democracy' to more recent articulations such as Hardt and
>Negri's 'multitude' and the Lacanian and post-Lacanian thought of
>Slavoj }i~ek and Alain Badiou, these writers all stress the continuing
>importance of leftist theories of the subject that can provide a
>theoretical antidote to the excesses of relativist pluralism and
>identity politics.
>
>Such thinkers as Fredric Jameson and Susan Buck-Morss therefore stress
>the importance of posing agency at a trans-individual and collective
>level. These positions emphasise the importance of opposition and
>agonism in any radical politics, rather than consensual or 'third way'
>liberalism. Collective identities therefore continue to offer a
>crucial grounding for Leftist (re)considerations of subjectivity as a
>necessary form of agency for radical change, even if these groupings
>prove to be only ever strategic or temporary.
>
>We invite papers from researchers working in critical theory, cultural
>studies, literature, film, the visual arts, history, politics and the
>social sciences which explore, but are not limited to, the following
>questions:
>
>- Is the subject still the locus for a radical left politics?
>- What forms of radical or oppositional agency are now emerging?
>- What roles can class, gender and ethnicity play for new subjectivities?
>- Does the left need to go beyond opposition and resistance towards
>the construction of new 'subjective' political spaces?
>- What aesthetic or cultural forms are currently engaging with and
>creating new subjective or collective agencies?
>- What contributions can Lacanian and post-Lacanian thought make to
>contemporary political subjectivity?
>- Are theories of subjectivity currently responding adequately to
>developments in a globalized resistance, such as the
>anti-globalization movement, the resurgence of the left in Latin
>America, and religious fundamentalisms?
>- Do changes in social production initiated by economic and cultural
>globalization offer a new potential for collective emancipation, or
>are they only ever complicit with a hegemonic global capitalism?
>- Do digital technologies offer new ways for rethinking agency?
>- What is the role of Utopia in new political formations?
>
>Abstracts of 200-250 words should be submitted by e-mail as a Word
>attachment to (newradicalsubjectivities /at/ gmail.com) by 30th May 2008 and
>should include name, affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper and 4
>keywords.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nico Carpentier (Phd)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
&
Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis
Boulevard du Jardin Botanique 43  - B-1000 Brussel - Belgium
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsored links ;)
----------------------------
NEW BOOKS OUT
Understanding Alternative Media
by Olga Bailey, Bart Cammaerts, Nico Carpentier
(December 2007)
http://mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0335222102.html
----------------------------
Participation and Media Production. Critical Reflections on Content Creation.
Edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen
(January 2008)
<http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Participation-and-Media-Production--Critical-Reflections-on-Content-Creation1-84718-453-7.htm>http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Participation-and-Media-Production--Critical-Reflections-on-Content-Creation1-84718-453-7.htm 

----------------------------
European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------------------
ECREA's Second European Communication Conference
Barcelona, 25-28 November 2008
http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, send an email message to (majordomo /at/ listserv.vub.ac.be)
with in the body of the message (NOT in the subject): unsubscribe ecrea
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Université Libre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: (ecrea /at/ ulb.ac.be)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------