[ecrea] CfP Guest Issue Parallax Journal - Walter Benjamin's "Barbarism", Technology and Contemporary Media Ecology

CfP - /Parallax/ Journal (University of Leeds, UK) - Upcmoning Special 
Issue: /Barbarisms/. Walter Benjamin's concept of Barbarism in 
connection with Technology and Contemporary Media Ecology


Guest editors:


Daniel Mourenza, /Aston University/ ((d.mourenza-urbina /at/ aston.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(d.mourenza-urbina /at/ aston.ac.uk)>)
Elizabeth Stainforth, /University of Leeds/ ((e.m.stainforth /at/ leeds.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(e.m.stainforth /at/ leeds.ac.uk)>)
Stefano Calzati, /City University of Hong Kong 
/((scalzati /at/ um.cityu.edu.hk) <mailto:(scalzati /at/ um.cityu.edu.hk)>)**


Deadline for abstracts to be sent to three editors (max 400 words):*6th 
of January 2017* (notification of acceptance: by *31st of January*); 
Deadline for approved articles (max 6000 words): *1st of May 2017*


"In the wake of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg expressed the 
dilemma of humankind as the choice between ‘socialism or barbarism’. 
Walter Benjamin re-framed this dilemma in his 1933 essay, ‘Experience 
and Poverty’, calling for ‘a positive concept of barbarism’ 
(/Barbarentum/). He argued that large-scale developments in technology 
had led to a poverty of experience and culture, in which short, 
immediate experiences (/Erlebnisse/) could no longer be incorporated 
into long, vital experience (/Erfahrung/). However, instead of lamenting 
this loss, he suggested that it provided an opportunity to break with 
the continuum of civilization by rethinking the role of the past in the 
present and the function of technology without the burden of tradition. 
At the same time, Benjamin drew attention to such figures as Paul 
Scheerbart, Adolf Loos, Paul Klee and Bertolt Brecht for their 
incorporation of technology into the human body. In the creations of 
these ‘positive barbarians’, Benjamin glimpsed an alternative to 
‘capitalist-imperialist’ uses of technology.

This positive concept of barbarism, rooted in a critique-appreciation 
/both/ of inherited cultural tradition /and/ of technological modernity, 
in some ways anticipates current posthumanist debates about the 
immanence of technology to the human. Attentive, thus, to Benjamin’s 
explicitly ambivalent rehabilitation of barbarism, this issue of 
/parallax /invites contributions that explore the contemporary politics 
of technology.

Today, the double threat of cultural excess and atrophy is intensified 
in the vast accumulation of electronic data. The development of 
networked database technology and the standardization of information has 
led to new state and private sector regimes of quantification. In this 
context, the surveillance and privacy implications of data gathering 
have been increasingly highlighted. For instance, social networks 
endorse principles of participation and sociality-as-sharing, yet often 
remain inscribed within systems that betray their emancipatory promises, 
tracking and mapping users’ interactions. How, then, to rethink the 
relationship between technology and humanity? Does technology lead to a 
surfeit or a poverty of experience? How could Benjamin’s double 
understanding of barbarism and/in civilisation offer new perspectives on 
these urgent questions?"


Possible topics include:**

- Critical media histories

- Studies of the posthuman

- Media ecologies

- Digital culture and utopia

- Postcolonial media cultures

- Contemporary politics of technology


For further information:

Daniel Mourenza, /Aston University/ ((d.mourenza-urbina /at/ aston.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(d.mourenza-urbina /at/ aston.ac.uk)>)
Elizabeth Stainforth, /University of Leeds/ ((e.m.stainforth /at/ leeds.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(e.m.stainforth /at/ leeds.ac.uk)>)
Stefano Calzati, /City University of Hong Kong 
/((scalzati /at/ um.cityu.edu.hk) <mailto:(scalzati /at/ um.cityu.edu.hk)>)


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