[ecrea] CFP: The political economy of contemporary cultural production: text and context

Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies

Call for Papers

Special Issue:

The political economy of contemporary cultural production:
a focus on the breach between text and context



Guest editors: Irina Turner, Bayreuth University; Dr. Rémi Tchokothe, 
Bayreuth University



Most contemporary cultural production, for instance music, film, 
advertisement, literature, journalism, TV, comedy or photography, is at 
some stage and in some form mediated through and recontextualized in the 
internet. Techniques like remixing, reshuffling and virality detach 
products from their original creators and owners and question the notion 
of originality and ownership per se. Authorship is now a common effort 
enabling multiple formerly passive recipients to become participating 
ProdUsers (Bruns 2007).

These techniques and trends are also transmitted into cultural products 
of the analogue world; e.g., into theatre productions, cartoons, or fine 
arts, and hence influence our world perceptions ubiquitously, i.e. 
online and offline. The multimodality and simultaneousness of cultural 
production turns readers and recipients of cultural texts into 
hyper-connected consumers. Text is here understood in its broadest 
sense, namely as any form of "readable" output.

Hyper-connectedness and internet-enabled recontextualization-chains 
fascinate through their ability to create constant innovation and 
seemingly self-automated recreation. Nevertheless, this makes many 
cultural products appear to be removed from their original source, to 
have anarchically and democratically emerged from somewhere unknown, and 
to exist in empty space. While the notion of "personal experience" as a 
vehicle for credibility and authenticity is the most important online 
currency, intriguingly and seemingly contradictive, virtuality blurs 
roots and sources to and from people and institutions and so disguises 
agendas and power relations.

Recent (internet) media analyses of cultural products have celebrated 
the innovation and anarchic liberation from restricting conventions of 
culture production brought about by intertextuality, have focused on 
intra-textual dynamics of the meaning-making process, on processes of 
recontextualization and on audience effects. However, it seems to be 
neglected that even the internet has a history and that (online) 
cultural products are made by real people with an agenda and social 
situatedness.

This special issue aims at balancing out this perceived dominant frame 
in analyses, and invites papers that critically focus on the beginnings 
and contexts of cultural products, i.e. their political economy, and aim 
to trace the individual history of emergence. While an isolated 
description of investors and agents might not bring much insight into 
the interpretation of the product per se, a good starting point for 
analysis is the breach between text and context and the friction point 
of the product to its enabling environment; which called in-between 
space by Homi Bhabha.

While previous issues of Critical Arts problematising culture as a 
product have focused on (neo)colonial discourse and global capitalism 
(16/1, 2002), on the question of copyright and intellectual property 
(20/1, 2006), or Cultural Economy in South Africa in particular (guest 
editor Narunsky-Laden: 24/1, 2010), this issue seeks contributions that 
specifically shed light on dynamics of cultural productions in the 
online world and their contextual relations to the offline world.

Though the internet is the dominating medium driving the feeling of 
disconnected floating, the contributions may also address offline 
cultural products that carry features typical for the internet such as 
hyper-connectedness, simultaneous multimodality, multiple and 
non-elitist authorship and constant recreation of intertextuality.

Areas of interest for this issue seeking original contributions are:

·         Historical traces and contemporary examples of internet 
culture and its specific products

·         Enabling economic and political parameters of media and 
cultural production

·         Case studies of meaning-structures in cultural products with a 
focus on (dis-)continuities and breaches

·         Enabling or devitalizing cultural policies in specific settings



Papers can address for example:

1. The question of where (dis-)continuities in the history of the 
product become visible.

2. In what way discontinuities are connected to a social reality that is 
made of people with agenda and ideology.

3. Practices of intertextuality, multicontextuality, multimediality and 
multimodality -  critically examined.



Deadlines:

Submission of abstracts with five key words and short bio: 15 April 2014

Author notification of abstract acceptance:  15 May 2014

Submission of final papers: 30 July 2014

Publication Date: August 2015



Critical Arts Home Page:

http://ccms.ukzn.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=151&Itemid=87

eJournals Archive (1980-1992):

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/

Notes for Authors:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/rcrcauth.asp

Enquiries and requests for additional information about this issue can 
be directed to the editors: (irina.turner /at/ uni-bayreuth.de); 
(remi.tchokothe /at/ uni-bayreuth.de)



Critical Arts is indexed on ISI, IBSS, Scopus, MLA and many other 
indexes, and is SAPSE-registered.





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