Archive for 2022

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[Commlist] Digital Intimacies conference, Relational Futures CFP - abstracts due 30 June

Fri Jun 24 09:23:23 GMT 2022




This year’s Digital Intimacies conference is being hosted by The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/D1tdCoV1kpfX5z4WnI1_Rhx?domain=globalindigenousfutures.com/>on December 1st and 2nd at Macquarie University on the Wallumattagal Campus, North Ryde, Sydney. The theme is Relational Futures.

Can digital technologies hold us, bring us home or bring us back to ourselves? These questions are inspired by Indigenous speculative fictions and particularly, anthologies edited by Mykaela Saunders and Grace L Dillon. In the Overture to This All Come Back Now, Mykaela Sanders connects the works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers to a genre that Anishanaabe scholar Grace L Dillon calls ‘Biskaabiiyang – Returning to Ourselves’. Saunders and Dillon’s works speak to the possibilities beyond colonialism and the themes that circulate, including “family and other kin, Old People and ancestors, the destruction of land and water, the archive, technology, language, law, ghosts, hauntings, warm and deep belonging, and despairing alienation” (Saunders 2021, p. 14).

Colonial categories and dichotomies separate out envisioning and storytelling from intellectual and political work towards social and societal reform – treating one as fictional and the other as factual. Simultaneously, Saunders (2021, p. 9) points out, settlers recycle the fantasy of endless consumption of finite resources. Critical thought that centres relationships and connections, or relationality (Graham 2014), complicates this. Relational thinking asks us to change – our ideas, our values, our behaviours, our actions – to improve our connections with others. Digital technologies are not beyond but of us. They are dreamed up, designed and used by humans to connect. They are made of and powered by resources extracted from stolen lands, from mines staffed by but very rarely owned by colonised peoples.

Digital technologies can and do change, often rapidly. How might they change if good relationships between humans, and between humans and the rest of universe, were their sole purpose? Is it possible to create and use digital technologies in radical ways that prevent and address harm, and build towards equitable and just futures? Are online cultures towards this vision? What of increasing digital surveillance and policing, and digital consumption of identities? What can we learn from marginalised communities who are already resisting carceral technologies? These are the questions we hold in mind when think of relational futures.

You can see more information here:

https://www.globalindigenousfutures.com/digital-intimacies-call-for-papers <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/q9nVCp81lrtzq8D62tDMImL?domain=globalindigenousfutures.com>

Please send a 250 word abstract and short presenter bios (toCGIF /at/ mq.edu.au) <mailto:(CGIF /at/ mq.edu.au)>by June 30th (*next week!*) – Successful papers will be notified by July 15th.


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