[ecrea] CFP: The Limits of Responsibility (Massey University, New Zealand, 3-5 Dec. 2012)

The Limits of Responsibility: Histories, Species, Politics

With apologies for cross-posting: please consider sending in an abstract 
for this interdisciplinary conference.

The conference will be followed by a Masterclass with Prof. Susannah 
Radstone at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand on December 7, 2012.

Presentations by Skype will be considered for overseas contributors.

Jenny Lawn
(j.m.lawn /at/ massey.ac.nz)

        ------------------------------------

        Venue and date

        Massey University, Manawatu Campus, Palmerston North, New 
Zealand, 3-5 December 2012

        Keynote speakers

        Prof. Susannah Radstone, School of Arts and Digital Industries, 
University of East London

        Prof. Michael Belgrave, School of Humanities, Massey University

        Dr Walescka Pino-Ojeda, Director of the New Zealand Centre for 
Latin American Studies, University of Auckland

        Abstracts due

        19 October 2012

        The limits of responsibility : Histories, species, politics

        Responsibility is a key concept invoked in many contemporary 
forums, popular and academic.  A wide range of discourses, both in 
cultural criticism and in public life, define the ethical and civil 
responsibilities of the citizen and the human subject.  Notions of 
apology, reconciliation, reparation and collective trauma all hold 
citizens to be responsible for forms of violence and oppression in their 
personal lives and national histories – and responsive to the often 
challenging claims of others.  Beyond this, discourses about human and 
animal rights demand responsibility for, or to, the lived, experiential 
being of those outside the boundaries of national, ethnic or species 
identity and seek to establish relations of care for others, including 
non-human creatures.  Similarly, political responsibility now extends 
beyond immediate communities of interest based in nation, region or 
belief to include those who are defined differently from normative 
values in terms of age, gender, sexuality or disability.  Whether this 
reflects an amplification of the idea of a self’s or nation’s sense of 
responsibility for its ‘others’ or a shift towards an ethical 
realisation of necessary responsiveness to that which is deemed other, 
remains in question.

        Responsibility is also key to the work of major contemporary 
theorists as divergent as Agamben, Levinas, Derrida and Ricoeur.  
Contemporary Western society and culture might now be celebrated for its 
responsiveness to ethical and political multiplicity.  But these recent 
cultural ‘advances’ may also be seen as complicit – along with the 
technocratic state, corporate managerialism and therapeutic cultures 
(including mass media) – with a tendency to  control and direct human 
relationships, emotions, memory and physical well-being.  How should 
responsibility be understood: with respect to the limits and borders 
established and policed by the state and corporate capitalism, or, more 
benignly, by discourses of apology and reconciliation or animal rights?  
Who or what decides on the caesura that defines the threshold between 
human and non-human, citizen and non-citizen, victim and terrorist, and 
those that are included in or excluded from public commemoration, 
repudiation or erasure? How can cultural criticism be responsible for, 
or responsive to, the articulation of these limits and borders and their 
social, political and historical impact?

        We particularly welcome proposals that address the following 
issues:

        ·         Amnesty

        ·         Animal rights

        ·         Bare life

        ·         Civil society

        ·         Commemoration

        ·         Cultural trauma

        ·         Forgiveness

        ·         Human rights

        ·         Individual responsibility

        ·         National affect

        ·         Political apology

        ·         Politics of memory

        ·         Postcolonial identities

        ·         Post-settlement politics

        ·         Reconciliation

        ·         Reparation

        ·         Sacrifice

        ·         Shame

        ·         Terror

        ·         Walled states

        ·         Welfare reform



        The conference convenors invite abstracts of no more than 300 
words and a short bio to be sent to Allen Meek at (A.Meek /at/ massey.ac.nz) 
and copied to Jenny Lawn at (J.M.Lawn /at/ massey.ac.nz) with “CONFERENCE” in 
the subject line by 19 OCTOBER, 2012.

        Further information and enrolment information is available on 
the conference website at:

        
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/learning/departments/school-english-media-studies/conference-2012-the-limits-of-responsibility/conference-2012-the-limits-of_responsibility.cfm




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