[Commlist] Call for papers: Digital Intimacies 5

We'd like to invite you to submit an abstract to the fifth Digital 
Intimacies symposium, to be held at Monash University from 9-11 December 
2019.

Our two esteemed keynote speakers will be Prof Bronwyn Carlson (whose 
work and keynote we have profiled on digint19.tumblr.com 
<http://digint19.tumblr.com>) and Prof Mark Andrejevic. Details on 
Mark's keynote will be announced shortly, but rest assured both keynotes 
are bound to be excellent and will address different aspects of this 
year's theme - *Digital Intimacies 5: Structures, Cultures, Power*.

We hope you will consider joining us. Please send us your abstracts or 
panel ideas, and also circulate this CFP to anyone you think may be 
interested.

Very best,

Emily van der Nagel (on behalf of Brady Robards, Akane Kanai, and Ben 
Lyall).



In its fifth year, Digital Intimacies continues to bring scholars of 
digital culture together across disciplines including media and 
communication, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology and gender studies.

According to Andreassen et al (2017), digital intimacies, as a now 
burgeoning field of research, has grown out of two traditions. One is 
characterised by the work of Kenneth Plummer, characterising intimacy as 
part of the trajectory of late modernity, de-traditionalisation, and 
complexification in human relationships; the other is driven by the work 
of Lauren Berlant, who questions intimacy as an already public 
discourse, with a normative dimension attached to investments in 
heterosexuality, conventionality and desires for recognition. Other 
voices have attempted to respond to the analytical agendas of both these 
traditions, suggesting we need to become more safely public, breaking 
open conventional cloaks of ‘privacy’ and redefining the intimate as an 
expanded space of care (Dobson, Carah and Robards 2018; Chun 2016).

In the ‘economies of visibility’ (Banet-Weiser 2018) that permeate 
digital networks and beyond, what are the relationalities that an 
expanded ‘intimacy’ requires and instantiates? What are the 
transformations needed to shift from the ambient ‘intimacy’ of 
hyper-connected environments to practices of ‘care’? Is being intimate 
with others always a form of ‘being there for others’? How is the 
everyday connectedness of digital architectures and rhythms linked to 
experiences of contingency and flexibility in increasingly time-poor, 
precarious, and complex lives? In what instances, to butcher Foucault’s 
words, might ‘intimacy’ be a trap?

This year, we call for papers that consider the politics of intimacy, 
and the ways in which intimacy shapes and is shaped by cultures, 
structures, and power in differing contexts.

We welcome papers exploring topics including but not restricted to:

  * Digital intimacies and care / social reproduction
  * Unequal intimacies
  * Intimacies and power relations
  * Intimacies and listening
  * Intimacies, surveillance, and automation
  * Digital intimacies and emotional capitalism
  * Intimacies of digital political movements ranging from feminism to
    the far right
  * Digital intimacies and whiteness/Eurocentrism

We are calling for individual paper presentations of 15-20 minutes, 
along with pre-formulated panels of four members who each give a five 
minute introductory presentation, then engage each other and the 
audience in a discussion that finds connections between their research.

By June 6, please send 250 word abstracts for individual papers, and up 
to 500 word proposals for panels, to (digint19 /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(digint19 /at/ gmail.com)>. Decisions will be returned by the end of June.

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