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[ecrea] CFP: Disconnections, Omissions, Discontinuities and Absences: the terms of volatility in transnational cinema

Mon Apr 23 06:43:26 GMT 2018





Call for Paper/s:
Transnational Cinemas: special issue
Guest co-editors Monia Acciari (De Montfort University) and Sarah Barrow (University of East Anglia) seek 1 more paper to complete their forthcoming special issue for the journal Transnational Cinemas responding to the theme outlined below: “Disconnections, Omissions, Discontinuities and Absences: the terms of volatility in transnational cinema” Within the last decade, transnationalism has become a concept that engages increasingly with understandings of “multiple ties” and of intersections of people or institutions across borders of nation-states (Vertovec 2009). Moreover, transnationalism has been widely studied within the realm of ‘long-distance connections’, which might be understood as formed of a system of relations, assimilations and exchanges that have the capacity to establish novel creative connections and critical thinking. Social and cultural connectivity across-borders (Robinson 2006) is another recognised dimension of transnationalism and it is acknowledged that the complexity of such connections has affected quite profoundly the practice, theory and history of cinema(s). For example, while Vertovec talks about transnationalism as referring to a “sustained cross-borders relationship, patterns and exchange, affiliation and social formations spanning nation states” (2009: 2), Giulianotti and Robertson write that “it entails social interconnection and interweaving of individuals and groups across diverse geo-political terrain” (2007: 76). For them, and many others, transnationalism is a form of connectivity that positions it within the fields of social relations. However, several more recent approaches to connectivity have provided invaluable frameworks to help us rethink and question this terrain of study: most importantly, they ask what exactly it is that we connect with, and what do we lose and/or gain by these acts and processes of connecting? This perspective recalls the critical work by John Tomlinson in Globalisation and Culture of 1995 when he foresaw the need to take a more nuanced approach to the implications of heightened interconnectivity brought about in part by intense technological advancements. Part of this challenge has been addressed by commentators such as Sean Cubitt, who problematizes the idea of connectivity by stating that “we might have universal connections by trade, but often this is a connection which is also a disconnection from the old locale. Networks of identity and lifestyle, peers and professions, trading partners and fandom overwrite social connections of locality. Connections” he notes, “always entail disconnections” (2016). This theoretical premise provides the stimulus to return to and rethink some of the terms of critical transnationalism outlined by, for example, Higbee and Lim in 2010, in particular the instability of multiple belongingness and the ambiguity of multiple positioning, by looking at how transnationalism and its intrinsic nature of connecting supersedes localities and localism. In this light, this special issue seeks to address some of the terms and issues that are raised by the notion of transnational cinematographic (dis)connections (see also Appadurai 1996; Fung 2013), and to capitalize on the productive intersection of ideas and debates that have begun to emerge in this area. By addressing transnational disconnection across film and television histories and practices, this special issue also sets out to reveal and discuss more “amphibious creative processes”. Hamid Dabashi, working within the realm of post orientalist studies, defines an amphibious condition as “an entity at home in two or more places [...] rooted in the global reality that includes both here and there” (2009: 230) suggesting the necessity of thinking about ideas of connection and disconnection within the transnational frame. The idea of amphibious conditions carries with it the ambiguity of ‘multiple positioning’, and the necessity of rethinking the implications of such journeying from one nation to another. Within this context it is argued that transnational cinema draws on the mobilization that is intrinsic to border-crossing journeys to structure novel cinematic ecosystems that produce remixes, expansions, adaptations and multifaceted variants from an original, while also producing tensions, absences, omissions and discontinuities. It also of course allows us to probe further the notion of the “exile” and exilic practice which, according to Hannah Arendt writing in 1944, ‘once had an undertone of almost sacred awe, [and] now provokes the idea of something simultaneously suspicious and unfortunate,’ and to draw on the thinking of Hamid Naficy around ‘accented cinema’ (2001). The authors of this special issue seek to investigate narratives of interruption and disentanglement from ‘origins’ to articulate and further problematize the ‘multiple ties’ that inform transnationalism. We ask here how disconnections, omissions, discontinuities and absences occur and how they are manifested in transnational cinema histories and practices. We also ask how these terms might work and be understood differently across multiple world cinematic contexts. Via case studies, this special issue broadly rethinks the benefits and challenges posed by transnational traffic and dispersion at the expense of the more local dimensions.
Deadlines
Monday 14 May – submission of title, 200 word abstract and 50 word bio (with link to web profile as optional)
We will notify acceptance/s or otherwise by 21 May
Thursday 23 August – submission of completed article (6000 words in total)
Please note that this final deadline cannot slip as we are committed to delivering the final manuscript by 1st October. Any queries and submissions should be directed to Monia - (monia.acciari /at/ dmu.ac.uk) and Sarah – (sarah.barrow /at/ uea.ac.uk)

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