[ecrea] CFP: Margins of Cybernetics / Marges de la cybernétique

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*CFP: **Margins of Cybernetics / **Marges de la cybernétique*
<http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/announcement/view/213>
A special issue of the /Canadian Journal of Communication/
(cjc-online.ca <http://cjc-online.ca>)

Guest Editors: Philippe Theophanidis, Ghislain Thibault and Dominique Trudel

/// Une version française de l’appel est disponible sur le site du /CJC/
<http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/announcement/view/213> ///

Following the Second World War the project of cybernetics attracted
unprecedented worldwide interest and led to several crucial
technological and intellectual developments. The institutionalization of
communication studies in particular is inseparable from the growing
interest in the cybernetics concepts of information and communication as
well as from a preoccupation for the technological advancements in the
post-war era. Several scholars and historians have explored the
relationship between the emergence of cybernetics and communication
studies as a field while others have shed light on the genesis of
cybernetics and the major intellectual figures of the movement (Breton &
Proulx, 2006; Hayles 1999; Heims, 1991; Pickering, 2010; Winkin 1981).

If communication studies succeeded in its institutionalization during
the second half of the 20th century, the story is quite different for
cybernetics. By the late 1950s, the enthusiasm for cybernetic projects
fizzles out in both North America and Europe (Breton, 1984; Le Roux,
2009). Nevertheless, the central concepts developed by cyberneticists
(communication, mechanization, control, information, feedback) will
remain at the heart of the preoccupation with new information and
communication technologies. The cybernetics concepts, metaphors, and
media largely transcended the boundaries of the initial project and were
mobilized in a plurality of fields of study, theories, discourses, and
artistic practices whose relationship with cybernetics often remain
implicit.

Situating itself at “the margins of cybernetics," this special issue of
the /Canadian Journal of Communication/ is an invitation to revisit and
extend the common genealogy of cybernetics and communication studies. In
particular, contributors are invited to pursue the exploration of minor,
forgotten, discarded or experimental intellectual or artistic projects
that developed at the “margins” of cybernetics. Possible topics to be
addressed in the issue include:

+ The institutional and historical relationship between cybernetics and
communication studies;

+ The development and history of cybernetic media;

+ The history of "intellectual adventurers" (Breton and Proulx, 2006)
whose work appropriated the cybernetic concepts, technology or theories
in innovative ways;

+ The history and reception of cybernetics in geographical areas
neglected by the existing historiography (including Canada);

+ The proximity between theories about machines and media theories;

+ The transnational and transdisciplinary history of cybernetics;

+ The remediation of the cybernetic metaphors, models, and concepts by
other disciplines.

Contributors should send a 500 word abstract to Dominique Trudel
(dominique[dot]trudel[at]umontreal[dot]ca) before January 15, 2016.
Authors are requested to include a summary of the proposed article, a
working title for their article, and a short bio-note.

The guest editors will review the abstracts and invite submission of
full-length papers (7,000 – 9,000 words) for blind peer-review.
Manuscripts must be submitted no later than May 31, 2016. The
publication of the special issue is planned for Spring 2017.
_Bibliographie/References_

Breton, Philippe. (1984). La cybernétique et les ingénieurs, dans les
années cinquante. Culture technique, 12, 155-161.

Breton, Philippe & Proulx, Serge. (2006). L’explosion de la
communication à l’aube du XXIe siècle. Paris, FR: La Découverte.

Hayles, N. Katherine. (1999). How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in
Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, Illinois: University
of Chicago Press.

Heims, Steve Joshua. (1991). The Cybernetics Group. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Le Roux, Ronan. (2009). L’impossible constitution d'une théorie générale
des machines? La cybernétique dans la France des années 1950. Revue de
Synthèse, 130(1), 5-36.

Pickering, Andrew. (2010). The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another
Future. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Winkin, Yves. (1981). La nouvelle communication. Paris, FR: Seuil.






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