[ecrea] CFP: The 5th International Rethinking Humanities and Social Science Conference (September 26-8, 2014, University of Zadar)

The 5th International Rethinking Humanities and Social Science 
Conference (September 26-8, 2014, University of Zadar).

We are pleased to announce that the 5th International Rethinking 
Humanities and Social Science Conference is to be held at the University 
of Zadar, Croatia, from September 26-28, 2014.

Since 2010 the conference has offered an invaluable opportunity to meet, 
exchange ideas and debate on current topics in humanities and social 
sciences. This year’s conference focuses on questions of the possibility 
of new utopian faith beyond nation, state, capital, the world market and 
world citizenship based on the economy of (global) sovereignty.

Keynote speaker: Simon Critchley (The New School for Social Research, 
New York)

Roundtable: Eric Santner (Department of Germanic Studies, University of 
Chicago), Fred Botting (English Literature and Creative Writing, 
Kingstone University),  Laura Mulvey (Department of Film, Media and 
Cultural Studies, University of London), Mark Devenney (Politics and 
Philosophy, University of Brighton).

Guest artist: Brandon Labelle (Bergen Academy of Art)

CFP: Utopia and political theology today

The Book of Revelations describes the Holy City, a New Jerusalem with 
transparent glassy streets and pearly walls – a city so heavenly that, 
“The nations will walk by its light” (Revelation 22.24). All nations, 
the poor, outcasts, all races, all human forms, will dwell forever 
within the Light of the Lord. In The City of God Saint Augustine 
developed this Heavenly City as an idealised polis, as an eternal haven 
of joy above and beyond the material world of the dying Roman Empire. 
“An eternal haven of joy”, a “light for all human forms” signals the 
emotional dimension of the utopian promise for the oppressed, the 
noncountable, the marginalized, the different, the singular. Today, 
after the catastrophic failure of the communist projects at the end of 
the last century and the global domination of liberal democracy, perhaps 
more than ever we miss this emotional side of the utopian faith. Perhaps 
this is the reason for the recent theological revival and the unusual 
upturn in interest in political theology.

The utopian side of political theology today calls us to reexamine and 
rethink what it means to be a human self and what selves might be 
together.  How are contemporary politics, art and culture contaminated 
by different forms of the sacred? How is dominant liberal discourse and 
the myth of modernity as a pure secular form of politics interiorized 
and maintained? How does the discourse of ‘crisis’ connect to 
submissions of the oppressed and production of the sense of a ‘damaged 
future’? Does any emancipatory project require what Simon Critchley 
calls both a counterfactual faith and utopian faith in radical social 
imagination as a performative alternative to biocapitalism?

We invite papers that address these questions through critical 
examination of the ways utopian faith has been envisaged in literature, 
film, performance, art, politics, philosophy…. We hope that the 
participation of scholars from different fields and disciplines of 
humanities and social sciences will create new avenues for 
critically-oriented scholarship and collaboration.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

·      the political promise of the performative (political deployments 
of performativity in art, performances, individual actions, movements, 
protests….etc.)
·      the survival of different forms of utopias in dystopias – e.g., 
in new forms of life often represented as monsters (zombies….)
·      the utopian faith in images, or in the possibility to ‘liberate’ 
images across gender/class/race division….
·      the utopian promise of plural performativity and the politics of 
memoralization
·      the affects of belonging and discourses on the good life and 
collective well-being
·      sound and sonic utopianism
·      revisiting the "classics" of political theology (Benjamin, 
Schmitt, Kantorowicz, etc.)
·      the challenge of capital to emancipatory politics
·      time and temporality of (political) change
·      the meaning of "messianic" in late capitalism
·      Etc.

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers (no more than 200 words + 
keywords) to (rhss.conference /at/ gmail.com) by June 1st 2014.
Abstracts should be in Word or RTF formats and include the following:
a)     author(s) – name and surname
b)    affiliation
c)     e-mail address
d)    keywords

Selected conference papers will be published.
Conference Fees
Early Bird (by July 31): 80 Euros?
Registration (by August 31): 100 Euros?

Additional Information
The conference will take place at the University of Zadar, Croatia 
(www.unizd.hr).
Additional information about travel arrangements, accommodation and 
other practical details will be posted soon on the conference website 
(http://www.rhss-conference.com) or you can contact the organizers 
directly at (rhss.conference /at/ gmail.com)
Please check out our Facebook page -https://www.facebook.com/RHSSZadar
Please forward this message to your colleagues. We look forward to 
seeing you in Zadar in September.



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