[ecrea] Conference: CfP PANEL Regimenting The Public Sphere - the politics of visibility (2nd international Conference on Sociolinguistics)

status: CfP Call for papers
conference
CfP PANEL Regimenting The Public Sphere - the politics of visibility 
(2nd international Conference on Sociolinguistics)
06.09.2018-08.09.2018
Budapest

The category of visibility constitutes a key dimension of the public 
sphere, up to the extent that the public sphere can be characterized as 
constituted in/by struggles over visibility. At the threshold of 
visibility, one often encounters power struggles over what aspects of 
social and cultural practices deserve a public stage, and what aspects 
should be relegated to the private sphere (or made invisible 
altogether). For the upcoming 2nd International Conference on 
Sociolinguistics (http://ics2.elte.hu/), we would like to bring together 
scholars from various backgrounds and invite them to reflect on these 
struggles​ ​over​ ​visibility, which​ ​are​ ​at​ ​the​ ​heart​ ​of​ 
​many​ ​ongoing​ ​attempts​ ​to​ ​(re-)shape​ ​and​ ​(re)structure​ the 
public​ ​sphere in our contemporary societies.​ We are interested in 
empirical investigations that look into such struggles over visibility 
from various angles, and in a variety of  online and offline settings. 
We welcome contributions that document and investigate actual practices 
of regimenting/reclaiming the public sphere (ethnography, linguistic 
landscaping), as well as work that examines the macro-discursive 
structures (discourse analysis) and/or the situated communicative events 
(conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics) through/in which 
such regimenting/reclaiming is discursively negotiated.
A first kind of struggle over visibility, with a strong presence in the 
current sociopolitical climate, can be referred to as “the politics of 
erasure.” This politics comprises various attempts, usually initiated by 
local municipal authorities, to regiment activities and practices not 
because they constitute a crime or would endanger members of the public, 
but because they are perceived as “polluting the public space” and/or 
“scaring members of the public.” Items to be removed from the public 
sphere, or to be “pushed back” beyond the boundaries of public 
perception, include cultural practices (e.g., wearing a burkini, a 
headscarf, etc.) and linguistic practices (e.g., foreign language 
advertisements and other expressions of multilingualism), as well as 
certain forms of economic activity (e.g., begging, busking etc.). Often, 
such attempts to regiment the public sphere are targeting practices 
and/or activities that have a linguistic, a social and an economic 
component.  Think, for example, of restrictions on 
“appearance-degrading” businesses, which are often also migrant-owned: 
night shops, shisha bars, internet shops, video stores, etc. The 
politics of erasure is grounded in a vision of “appropriateness” that 
re-signifies everyday activities as indexing wider socio-political 
problems, and hence as undesirable (a clear example would be the 
transformation of the headscarf into an index of religious conflict and 
non-integration). It brands its own way of “seeing” the public space as 
the only legitimate one, and hence as the only one that should be 
allowed to inscribe itself into the materiality of public everyday life. 
Paradoxically, this process leads to a heightened visibility of the 
phenomena that are considered illegitimate.
At the other end of the continuum, one finds various attempts to 
“reclaim” the public sphere, such as the various struggles waged by 
minority group activists to decenter “oppressive” representations and 
practices associated with the colonial past. In doing so, these 
activists negotiate alternative ways of seeing/experiencing the public 
sphere, decentering the hegemonic gaze that problematizes expressions of 
diversity and making visible the historical patterns of insubordination 
on which it is founded. Other activists pursue a more proactive 
strategy, opening up the public sphere to alternative orders of 
indexicality through physically “altering” the material organization of 
the public space, either transiently or permanently. This can be done 
within existing regulatory frameworks, as exemplified by the various 
struggles for the recognition of alternative lifestyles and minority 
communities (e.g., through amendments to the public calendar). On other 
occasions, however, thi
 s may take the form of transgressive re-territorializations that 
problematize the very notion of the public realm, ranging from guerilla 
gardening, over Occupy-style appropriations of squares and plazas, to 
the tactics and practices of the so-called “black bloc”.
Looking at the public sphere through the lens of visibility allows us to 
explore interconnections between public space, as a feature of the 
material organization of the physical landscapes in which we live our 
lives, and the public sphere as a discursive phenomenon. In addition to 
an actual space, the public sphere is also a spatial metaphor for a set 
of discursive practices and shared meanings through which we imagine 
ourselves to be part of a wider network of mutual 
accessibility/reflexive accountability. Of particular importance are the 
various technologically mediated channels that mediate the dissemination 
of these discursive practices: mass media, social media platforms, etc. 
The resulting mediatized debates are a major site were struggles over 
the regimentation public sphere are fought. On other occasions, however, 
these mediating channels become themselves caught up in struggles over 
visibility, as attempts to decenter oppressive representations often 
specifically target medi
 a content. Focusing on the category of visibility allows us to explore 
how these different realms, ranging from physical to digital space, 
mutually mediate one another, without treating one or the other as 
somehow more “foundational.”
These initial musings aside, we are of course very much interested in 
what you have to say on these struggles over visibility. As indicated, 
we wish to bring together scholars from diverse backgrounds. If you 
would like to join the panel, please send an abstract of no more than 
300 words to (jan_zienkowski /at/ yahoo.com) or (sigurd.a.dhondt /at/ jyu.fi) on 
January 1, 2018 by the latest.

Contact person: Jan Zienkowski
email: (Jan_Zienkowski /at/ yahoo.com)


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