[Commlist] Im@go n. 14: Call for Papers

Call for paper**(im@go, n. 14, December 2019)

*The political imaginary***

Editors: Mariavita Cambria / Milena Meo / Neil Turnbull**

It has become a commonplace in recent discussions in relation to the 
state of contemporary politics to observe that in the current period we 
are witnessing a crisis of politics, at least as it has been 
traditionally conceived. This, as Zygmunt Bauman pointed, out, is 
because the new global economy has wrought a separation of power from 
politics, such that the only role left for the political agent is to 
maintain a direct rule over /social representations/.

Clearly, such a shift suggests that our understanding of politics is now 
forced to make its way back to politics’ ancient connection with the 
imaginary, with Platonic dreams of kings and tyrants, to the extent that 
political actors today need meet the new challenge of how to ‘do’ 
politics in a way that acknowledges its increasingly mythological, 
image-based and ‘aestheticised’ nature.  There is now a clear and 
growing sense that political power resides in the images, the 
promotional styles, the use of new linguistic genres and environments 
and the mediated 'affects' of political actors.

The imaginary thus becomes central to the production of the space of the 
political itself: it addresses the self-constitution of the political 
more directly. The idea here is that there is an imaginary dimension to 
/all/ politics. This renaissance of an imaginal world imposes a new mode 
of thought, crossed by images, pervaded with the symbolic, the imaginary 
and the immaterial.

This insight poses a series of important questions: how is the political 
field imagined today, how is the political agency imagined across a wide 
range of contexts? How might politics be re-imagined and 
re-conceptualized? What does the political mean when it has become 
disconnected from traditional conceptions of truth and become 
increasingly connected to the posed and poetic nature of everyday life?

This special issue will address these questions via an interdisciplinary 
examination of what we believe to be an emergent social formation at the 
beginning of the 21^st century. Other questions that might be explored 
include:

  * ·Ancient and modern political imaginaries
  * ·Imaginaries of re-politicisation
  * ·The rhetoric of new politics
  * ·The politics of affect
  * ·Charisma and the political imaginary;
  * ·Legitimacy and legitimationof political power.
  * ·Populism as a new political mood based on the activation of
    feelings and “affect”
  * ·The rise of aestheticised form of 'tribal politics' and a
    communitarian politics of feeling
  * ·the political itself based around 'the management of feeling/affect'
  * ·Ethnic mobilisation and identity politics
  * ·The rhetoric of the new politics - its use of 'us' and 'them' - and
    the employment of more visual and clearly theatrical modes of
    performance.
  * ·Language and new political genres and web environments
  * ·Critical Discourse Analysis and political representation
  * ·Benjamin, critical theory and the dialectical imagination
  * ·The features of “new” leadership: ‘cults of personality’; the
    culture of celebrity; the ‘mad leader’ and his/her position in the
    social imaginaries of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.
  * ·The role of mediation and impression management in democratic
    politics (image consultants, campaign management, spin doctors)

Proposal may be submitted in Italian, English and French and sent 
simultaneously to: (rivistaimago /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(rivistaimago /at/ gmail.com)>; (neil.turnbull /at/ ntu.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(neil.turnbull /at/ ntu.ac.uk)>; (mcambria /at/ unime.it) 
<mailto:(mcambria /at/ unime.it)>and (milena.meo /at/ unime.it) 
<mailto:(milena.meo /at/ unime.it)>.

Proposal for papers should be no more than 350 words and should contain:

-abstract title, author’s or authors’ names and full institutional 
affiliations;

-contact email address of the first author

-five key words

-a brief bibliography (no more than 5 references)

Deadline for the submission of abstracts: *September, 2^nd , 2019*

Notification of abstract acceptance: *September 16^th , 2019***

Preliminary papers to the editors: *October, 21^st , 2019*

Revised peer-reviews papers to the editors: *November, 25^th , 2019*

Publication: *December 2019*

---------------
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/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------