[Commlist] CFP Electricdreams III - Conflicts and Margins: Imagining Otherness ... through Speculative Fiction

CFP Electricdreams - Between fiction and society III
"Conflicts and Margins: Imagining Otherness, Ecocatastrophes, Perpetual 
War, Technological Imbalance, and Systemic Injustice through Speculative 
Fiction"

Call for papers for an international in-person three-day conference on 
speculative fiction, science fiction and fantasy fiction to be held in 
Milan, Italy, October 9-10-11, 2024. The conference is organized and 
hosted by IULM University of Milan, in collaboration with Complutense 
University of Madrid and the HISTOPIA research group.
Fields of interest: literature, cinema, TV series, comics, 
games/videogames, new media, performative arts, cultural studies.

The international conference Electricdreams - Between Fiction and 
Society III invites a discussion on how speculative fiction, science 
fiction, and fantasy fiction focus on the tropes of conflict and 
marginality across different media. According to von Clausewitz “war is 
(...) an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” The idea of 
conflict is not just inherently military, it can also be broadened to 
personal and societal relations of power, including forms of opposition 
and domination between different entities and groups. Conflicts lead to 
marginalization, bias, control, ecocatastrophes, technological 
imbalance, and systemic injustice. At the same time, conflicts also 
originate during processes of resistance and transformation: margins can 
be the liminal space where individuals emerge or distance themselves 
from the system and regain some degree of freedom and agency.

“The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself”, de 
Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex because “the self” needs to “categorize 
and classify” interactions and subjects to build its identity. And, as 
Bauman affirmed, “to classify means to set apart, to segregate. It means 
first to postulate that the world consists of discrete and distinctive 
entities; then to postulate that each entity has a group of similar or 
adjacent entities with which it belongs, and with which – together – it 
is opposed to some other entities; and then to make the postulated real 
by linking differential patterns of action to different classes of 
entities”. Biopolitical power relations model social and private bodies 
not only through homologation but also through opposition. According to 
Foucault, individuals can be considered a “useful force” when they 
provide a body that is, at the same time, productive and subjugated and 
that fits homogeneously into the social, economic, ethical, sexual, and 
political standards of society, despite the persistent presence of 
internal hierarchies.
Non-aligned, rebellious, and marginalized bodies become a danger, an 
element of trauma, a justification for spatial, linguistic, and 
psychophysical control and repression. Fear, hate, prejudices, and 
stereotypes fuel a dystopian and debasing treatment of “others”: the 
monstrous transformation of otherness in the collective imagination 
leads to unbearable conflicts and to the dehumanization of the subjects 
that colonial, racial, patriarchal, environmental, and capitalist 
policies negatively depict as discordant, different, marginalized. 
Countless and dramatic pages of human history remind us of this 
tendency: Colonialism and Imperialism, wartime genocides, slavery, 
Apartheid, systemic racism, anti-immigration policies, women and 
LGBTQIA+ limitation of civil rights (including reproductive rights), an 
aggressive use of and a predatory relationship with technologies, 
ecocatastrophes and apocalyptic conflicts for survival in depleted 
natural environments. As Magneto says in the recent animated series 
X-Men ’97: “In history’s sad song, there is a refrain. Believe 
differently, love differently, be of different sex or skin, and be 
punished. We sing this song to one another.”

Utopian promises of peace, justice, and progress have influenced 
speculative fiction, but the 21st century has continued to witness 
complex and dramatic series of traumatic events affecting both our 
collective imagination and the fictionalization of a perpetual-conflict 
state where the marginalization of the Other is the ground for a clash 
involving multiple factions and entities. When society is infected, 
culture often recognizes, exacerbates, and denounces the infection, 
promoting empathy, knowledge, and consciousness, and helping to shed 
light on “illnesses”.

Literature, film, TV series, comics, video games, new narrative media, 
performative arts, and  popular culture have often given voice to the 
voiceless, the underdogs, minorities. Conflicts and margins stand at the 
core of literary speculative fiction, i.e. the galactic wars between 
powerful houses in Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles, with the 
marginalized people of the planet Arrakis acting as balance. But the 
link between conflicts and margins is a trope also present in many other 
media: CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3, where the conflict between Mind 
Flayers and Githyankis across the worlds is at the center of the 
marginalization of the main characters, with their parasitic tadpole 
trying to mutate them into their enemies; films like Ex-Machina, where 
the exploiting relations between human and posthuman, as well as between 
men and women, are explored; YA speculative fictions like The Hunger 
Games and Divergent, where the conflict is between districts and 
factions with their orders and marginalized groups; dystopian novels 
like Agustina Baxterrica’s Cadáver Exquisito (Tender is the Flesh), 
where hegemonic capitalism and systemic injustice lead to intensive 
(poor) human livestock  farming; comics like X-Men, where the violence 
against otherness and the repercussions of discriminatory actions on 
society is depicted through the mutant metaphor; films like Gattaca or 
video-games like Orwell where the conflict is visualized as an elusive 
technique in which hegemony forces could employ technology to draw a 
border among the recognised and the excluded.  In choreographies such as 
The Trilogy (The Millennarium, Aeon, and Sulphur) or in performances 
such as Una Isla, humans and machines endeavor to establish a dialogue 
and a point of convergence on stage, which transforms into a dystopian 
landscape. Avatars, robots, and humans challenge each other, vying to 
assert their supremacy in a dynamic display of capabilities and values. 
This interplay often causes a glitch, disrupting the seamless 
integration of their interactions and highlighting the underlying 
tensions between technology and humanity. The 4.0 human experiences a 
profound conflict with the biological limits of their body, striving to 
overcome these organic restrictions through technological and scientific 
advancements, as argued by Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti. This clash 
reflects the tension between the physical reality of the human body and 
the aspirations towards a post-human condition, as described by N. 
Katherine Hayles, which is also mirrored in contemporary performing arts.

How have we imagined the reasons and the agents behind conflicts, what 
is the role of the margins and marginalized categories in the conflicts, 
what are the scenarios for a possible resolution of conflicts? We hope 
that the analysis of speculative fiction could help us promote peace, 
inclusion, redistribution of power, intersectional empowerment, empathy, 
and hope, helping in visualizing a different society and an empowered 
mode of interaction with the Otherness.

Proposals may cover the following themes, although they are not limited 
to them:
- The conflicts between socio-political and technological entities 
and/or individual bodies;
- The traumatic embodiments of otherness (gender, LGBTQIA+, queerness, 
ethnicity, disability, nationality, religion, ideology);
- The postcolonial and neocolonial critiques of dominant/Western canons;
- The climate in/justice and climate change;
- The conflict between human and post-human agents;
- The encounter with non-human entities and the issue involving 
communication and miscommunication;
- The opposition between anthropic and other species or the natural 
environment for the survival;
- The utopian/dystopian possibilities of margins, spaces, and geographies;
- The idea of borders as spaces of conflict and the opposition between 
clear divisions and the possibility to engage with the Other;
- Imagining worlds, societies, and the life of living beings after the 
conflict;
- Possible ways of being at the margins - i.e. the choice of opposing 
society, the determination of living outside society, …;

The conference will be held in English and in-person. We will be happy 
to consider proposals from researchers and scholars at any level of 
career advancement. You may send proposals containing an abstract 
(maximum 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation, a brief biographical 
note (maximum 100 words), and affiliation and contact information to 
(electricdreams.conference /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(electricdreams.conference /at/ gmail.com)> by July 30, 2024. Whole 
panel proposals consisting of three/four talks are also welcome: please 
include a brief introduction about the theme of the proposed panel, 
along with an abstract and a brief biography of each participant.

Important dates
Abstract submission deadline: July 30, 2024
Notification of acceptance: August 23, 2024
Confirmation of participation: by September 3, 2024

The international conference will be held in-person on October 9-10-11, 
2024 at IULM University in Milan (Italy), as part of the 
"Sognielettrici"/Electricdreams International Film Festival (October 
7-12, 2024).
Conference registration: 40 €
Social dinner (optional): 20 €
(Payments will not be refundable)


Scientific committee
Gianni Canova (IULM University)
Manuela Ceretta (University of Turin)
Elisabetta Di Minico (Complutense University of Madrid, UNA4CAREER)
Ester Fuoco (IULM University)
Stefano Locati (IULM University)
Francisco José Martínez Mesa (Complutense University of Madrid, HISTOPIA)
Anna Pasolini (University of Milan)
Juan Pro Ruiz (CSIC - Spanish National Research Council, HISTOPIA)
Federico Selvini (IULM University)
Nicoletta Vallorani (University of Milan)

Contact information: Stefano Locati ((stefano.locati /at/ iulm.it) 
<mailto:(stefano.locati /at/ iulm.it)>), Elisabetta Di Minico ((elidimin /at/ ucm.es) 
<mailto:(elidimin /at/ ucm.es)>), and Federico Selvini 
((federico.selvini /at/ iulm.it) <mailto:(federico.selvini /at/ iulm.it)>).

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