[Commlist] CFP Political Imagination

Political Imagination: Rethinking Our Vocabulary
Lexical Workshop: September 29-30, 2021
Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University

Call for Papers

Political imagination is a concept that can be traced to a 200- year 
tradition of political thought and has returned to the public discourse 
in recent years in the context of theoretical artistic and activist 
conversations. In this workshop we seek to join this conversation by 
developing lexical concepts to explore Political Imagination and 
Imagination as Politics. Theories of decolonization, 
environmental justice discourses and activist groups around the world as 
Extinction Rebellion, Standing Rock, the Arab Spring and Black Lives 
Matter use a political imagination rhetoric not only to 
criticize, challenge and oppose political realities but also to offer 
alternatives for them. At the same time, artists, writers and filmmakers 
are producing more and more cultural artifacts that engage 
with questions of futurism, alternative pasts, dystopias and imaginaries.

Political Imagination international workshop seeks to bring these 
discourses together to answer the question: what is Political 
Imagination, what role do images (understood here in a wider sense) have 
in generating political imaginations? How is it mediated? What kind of 
political imaginations could arise from a non- Western understanding of 
politics and imaginations? What is the relationship between 
political imaginations of the past and the possibility to imagine 
different futures? And furthermore, what can we say about political 
imagination here and now?

The lexical workshop attempts to investigate and develop political 
concepts related to political
imagination from new and original perspectives. These may include, but 
are not limited to:
 Classic concepts such as judgement, memory and thinking
 Practices as activism, feminism, resistance and civil disobedience
 Diasporic cultures as Africanfuturism, Arabfuturism and Ethnofuturism
 Technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence
 Affects as belonging, trauma or melancholy
 Arts such as science fiction and fantasy literature and artistic 
productions such as video art
and performances that present different political imaginations.

Political Imagination will be a part of Lexicon for Political Theory 
project. The aim of this project is to create an open political lexicon 
that examines the foundational concepts of national and 
neo-liberal political thought expanding the horizons for democratic 
deliberation. The boundaries of the political in this workshop are not 
predetermined, but rather, we hope, will arise from the compilation 
of entries and the conceptual network that will be developed between them.
Each paper should be dedicated to one concept. The paper should take 
note of the history of the concept and express awareness of its 
historicity, but it should also go further and present a systematic 
and innovative answer to the question "what is X?", meaning, what is it 
that the concept refers to or envisions. Authors are welcomed to invent 
new concepts or to suggest different understandings to existing ones. 
Presentation and critical discussion of the concept may be anchored in 
one specific theory or may move freely between several related or 
competing theories, as long as the focus is one single concept and the 
reality it refers to.

The principles of the lexicon project are detailed at: 
http://mafteakh.tau.ac.il/en/pdf/MafteakhE01- 
<http://mafteakh.tau.ac.il/en/pdf/MafteakhE01-> Preface.pdf

The conference will be held in English online on September 29-30, 2021
Deadline for Submitting Abstracts: July 15th (300 words).

Please direct any questions or concerns to Norma Musih: 
(norma.musih /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(norma.musih /at/ gmail.com)>

Please send the abstracts to: (politicalexicon /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(politicalexicon /at/ gmail.com)>

Following the conference, authors will be invited to submit papers for 
publication in the online peer reviewed Journal Mafteakh (Hebrew). An 
English edited volume is being considered to be published in a book format.

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