[Commlist] CFP Soapbox 6.0: On the Uses of Absence

CALL FOR PAPERS

Soapbox 6.0: On the Uses of Absence

-- peer-reviewed; open to critical and artistic work; submission 
deadline: June 10; extended proposals --

Can we speak of a turn to absence? Across the contemporary academic 
conjuncture, theory is reapproaching the absent in all its varying 
fleshly and rhetorical forms, revalorizing ‘absence’ itself as a 
critical matter. Enduring scholarly investments in re-presenting and 
re-presencing the absented body (from the archive and media, from power 
and institutions, from theory and writing) have become supplemented in 
current critical work by an affirmative interest in /staying with 
absence as such/. We are thinking of Rizvana Bradley’s recent aesthetic 
analyses of the forms and shapes of the black body as the absence in 
ontology; of Lee Edelman’s insistence on and reappreciation of queerness 
as the inevitable, generative absence at the heart of the symbolic; we 
are thinking of the optimism attached to absence in trans studies’ 
reappropriation of and investment in techniques of destruction (Marquis 
Bey) and destitution (Jack Halberstam). The figure and body of the 
absent has started to matter similarly outside the academic. Absenteeism 
in the workplace and in university rooms are on the rise; not showing 
up, not producing or delivering, being absent, and withdrawal - acts 
such as these formalize and mobilize absence, relocate it at the heart 
of myriad resistances against exploitation, appropriation, assimilation, 
and normativity.

For its seventh issue, Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis invites 
(young) researchers, (established) scholars and creatives alike to 
submit work on the uses and aesthetics of absence in and outside of 
theory today. It is our point of departure that absence fails every time 
to be purely nothing. In all of the scenes and settings described above 
and below, absence is given a shape, meaning, form; it is put in 
writing, where it has a function, a flavor, and a politics - absence 
rarely looks the same. Staying with absence rather than straying from 
it, we invite responses to questions such as: What are the shapes and 
forms of absence that inflect and structure the contemporary theoretical 
debate? Where does absence turn up, where doesn’t it? How is absence 
mobilized politically, to what ends and with which results? In your 
fields or for your objects, how does absence matter, make matter? How is 
absence formalized (anti-)(re)productively? How is (some) form 
absent(ed)? What are the uses of absence, what can they be, and what 
have they been, for better and for worse? Finally, how to think the 
contradiction and the provocation of a contemporary aesthetics of absence?

To read the full CFP, visit: 
www.soapboxjournal.net/page/call-for-papers-6-0-on-the-uses-of-absence 
<http://www.soapboxjournal.net/page/call-for-papers-6-0-on-the-uses-of-absence>

THE DETAILS

Soapbox Journal is a peer-reviewed graduate journal for 
Cultural Analysis based in Amsterdam that operates online and in-print.

We are inviting extended proposals in MLA formatting and referencing 
style to be submitted to (submissions /at/ soapboxjournal.net) 
<mailto:(submissions /at/ soapboxjournal.net)> by June 10th, 2024. Each 
proposal must include an abstract of 300-500 words and a brief outline 
of the content and its order (up to 200 words, can be in 
bullet-points!). The outline is meant to give an indication of the 
intended structuring and weighing of the various elements of your text; 
we understand and expect that this will change again during drafting and 
editing. Submissions should be sent as a file attachment to the email, 
and the content of the file should be anonymised.

We will try to send out conditional acceptance emails by June 21st. Upon 
acceptance, the authors of the academic essays will be asked to submit a 
4000-6000 word full draft by September 2nd. The editing and publishing 
process will span the next academic year (September 2024 - February 2025).

Soapbox Journal does not charge author publication fees.

works referenced and suggested:

Berlant, Lauren, and Lee Edelman. /Sex, or the Unbearable/. Duke 
University Press, 2014, Durham and London.
Bersani, Leo. “Is the Rectum a Grave?” /October/, vol. 43, 1987, pp. 
197–222. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3397574 
<https://doi.org/10.2307/3397574>.
Bersani, Leo and Ulysse Dutoit. /Arts of Impoverishment: Beckett, 
Rothko, Resnais/. Harvard University Press, 1993, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bey, Marquis. /Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender/. Duke 
University, 2022, Durham.
Bradley, Rizvana. /Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of 
Form/. Stanford University Press, 2023, Stanford.
Brinkema, Eugenie. /Life-Destroying Diagrams/. Duke University Press, 
2022, Durham.
Caseria, Robert L., Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz and 
Tim Dean. “The Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory.” /PMLA/, vol. 121, no. 
3, May 2006, pp. 819-828.
Edelman, Lee. /No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive/. Duke 
University Press, 2004, Durham.
Edelman, Lee. /Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing/. Duke 
University Press, 2022, Durham.
Halberstam, Jack. /The Queer Art of  Failure/. Duke University Press, 
2011, Durham.
[and new and forthcoming work on “destitution”]
Wilderson III, Frank B. /Afropessimism/. Liveright Publishing 
Corporation, 2020, New York.

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