[Commlist] Lateral Forum CFP: Performance Between Post-Truths

      Performance Between Post-Truths

https://csalateral.org/upcoming/#performance-between-post-truths 
<https://csalateral.org/upcoming/#performance-between-post-truths>

In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries named “post-truth” its word of the year, 
marking a shift towards skepticism of facts and scientific institutions 
alongside the rising influence of emotion and opinion in shaping public 
knowledge. In the decade since, we have witnessed the further erosion of 
consensus truth as multiple constructions of the “real” proliferate 
throughout divergent media ecosystems, accelerated by emerging 
technologies and polarizing political orientations towards race, gender, 
class, and sexuality.

This /Lateral /forum seeks to address this ongoing epistemic rupture of 
persistent post-truths by engaging performance as an analytic lens and 
world-making practice that traverses the aesthetic and the everyday, 
blurring boundaries between artifice and authenticity. The power of 
performance in a post-truth environment lies in its capacity to elicit 
genuine feelings and sensations in audiences through its production of 
alternative worlds, making it central to the construction, maintenance, 
and contestation of authority and veracity through repetition, 
iteration, and enactment—i.e., the performative constitution of the 
real. Rather than attempt to restore a singular standard of consensus 
truth or adjudicate fact from fiction, our forum asks: how might 
performance explain the mechanisms by which competing realities are 
produced, maintained, and disrupted?

Our inquiry emphasizes the intersection of performance and cultural 
studies, especially the interrogation of power, meaning, and identity 
across both everyday practice and mediated representation. While 
Lawrence Grossberg warns of the political implications of 
post-Enlightenment theory and the decentering of the human perspective, 
machine thinking—driven by the massive investment of finance 
capitalism—increasingly approximates human communication with AI 
chatbots simulating empathy, deepfakes cultivating authenticity, and 
large language models performing expertise. Such developments invite 
renewed attention to a Baudrillardian hyperreality in which simulations 
precede and structure the real, as Ioana Jucan’s theorization of 
(dis)simulation machines and performative objects demonstrates. 
Meanwhile, marginalized, pathologized, and otherwise alternative 
ontologies and epistemologies—including Indigenous cosmologies, occult 
traditions, more-than-human worlds, and what Renee DiResta describes as 
“bespoke realities”—continue to proliferate, challenging appeals to a 
hegemonic reality by illuminating the cultural performance of truth as 
well as the contingency of all knowledge regimes. New materialist 
ontologies and pluriversal thinking remain essential to understanding 
and intervening in a post-truth environment where truth, logic, and 
rationality cease to operate as shared anchors of knowledge.

Our forum invites contributions from scholars, journalists, artists, 
educators, and activists. We seek academic articles that explore 
performance as an analytic and object of study; artistic responses that 
highlight visual and performance material as responses to our forum’s 
key questions; pedagogical treatises on contending with post-truths in 
diverse educational environments; and on-the-ground reporting from 
community members and organizers on how post-truths are lived and 
experienced. We specifically encourage contributions that are 
media-rich, such as those featuring performance documentation, visual 
essays, or audio recordings that can be featured on /Lateral/’s website. 
Possible submission topics include but are not limited to:

  * Generative AI and its production of affective experience (e.g., AI
    “boyfriends” and “therapists”)
  * Deepfakes, social media filters, and other image-manipulation 
techniques
  * Ritual performance, divination practices, and non-Western ontologies
  * Technological interventions in the fields of theater and dance
  * Prediction markets and performances of speculation
  * Consumer product “dupes” and histories of product artifice
  * “Post-truths” relative to race, gender, sexuality, and
    disability—how might the proliferation of different realities also
    (re-)construct categories of difference?
  * Teaching about post-truths as literacy skill and practice, both
    within and beyond university classrooms

Authors should submit a 300–500 word abstract and all inquiries to 
co-editors Daniel Dilliplane ((daniel.dilliplane /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(daniel.dilliplane /at/ gmail.com)>) and Miya Shaffer 
((miya.shaffer /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(miya.shaffer /at/ gmail.com)>) with 
“Performance Between Post-Truths” as the subject line. *Abstracts are 
due Monday, March 16, 2026.* Accepted proposals will be invited to 
develop a 3,000–6,000-word article for inclusion in the forum. All 
articles are subject to an editorial review and double-blind peer review 
before guaranteed acceptance into the forum.


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------