[ecrea] Conference on Radical Negativity - Call for Papers

Radical Negativity: Interrogating productive possibilities for negative 
states of being

Friday 13 June 2014
Goldsmiths, University of London
Conference Keynote: Lisa Blackman, Professor in Media and 
Communications, Goldsmiths

Supported by the Centre for Feminist Research, Department of Media and 
Communications, and the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths.

Website: http://radicalnegativity.com

Proposals are due by Friday 14 February 2014

More recent feminist and queer scholarship has begun to productively 
address the dark aspects of human subjectivity perceived to have a 
detrimental impact on the self-constituting practices of the positive 
self, such as shame, trauma, unhappiness, loss, pain, and melancholia, 
and reconceptualise them not only as integral to the process of subject 
formation, but critical and productive affective states in which to 
engage political action.



This interdisciplinary conference addresses the ways in which feminist 
and queer research may be informed by embracing philosophical 
oppositions, the ‘negative double’ of the positive value. The conference 
will interrogate what can be learned from interventions focused on the 
interconnections between the negative and human agency, and how such a 
frame can inform ideas of feminist and queer practice.



Borrowing from Eve Sedgwick, this conference proposes that forms of the 
negative are “not distinctly ‘toxic’ parts of a group or individual 
identity that can be excised; they are instead integral to and residual 
in the processes by which identity itself is formed. They are available 
for the work of metamorphosis, reframing, refiguration, transfiguration, 
affective and symbolic loading and deformation (Sedgwick and Frank, 
2003, p.63).”



If, like Sedgwick, we take up this challenge to valorise negative states 
of being as key conditions both for the production of meaning and being 
and as organising principles of identity, then we hope explorations into 
such states may provide the potential to open up new possibilities for 
politics and connection.



We invite papers and panel proposals that explore how negative states 
and conditions of being such as unhappiness, irresponsibility, 
passivity, vulnerability, failure, shame, hesitancy, pain, 
dispossession, rage, madness and depression may provide loci from which 
action and political engagement can arise.



Submission Guidelines



Please submit paper abstracts of 300-500 words along with a short 
biography of 100 words.

Panel proposals should include a 300-word description along with 
accompanying paper abstracts for the panel of 300-500 words. Please 
provide a short 100-word biography for each presenter.


Email submissions to: (radicalnegativity /at/ gmail.com) by Friday 14 February 
2014.




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