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

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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