[Commlist] cfp: Boredom, (In)action, War and Warriors

*Boredom, (In)action, War and Warriors*

*27 & 28 August 2020, Amsterdam*

*Confirmed Keynote speaker: Professor Mark Kingwell, University of 
Torrento *

Boredom has often been defined as idleness, slowness, doing nothing, 
doing something over and over again, and waiting (Smith 1981, Daren 
1999, Mæland & Brunstad 2009, Bergstein 2009, Prozak 2017). These 
definitions suggest that boredom is an experience that does not generate 
meanings and ideas by itself about itself. Boredom remains constantly 
relevant to sociocultural and political spheres only through its 
opposite. It is portrayed as the empty bubble, or the vacuum 
of functionality that gains relevance only through what it is not. 
Nietzsche (1974, 108) explains, “Boredom is that disagreeable ‘windless 
calm’ of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds.” He 
highlights boredom only through what it comes after it. However, we 
would like to suggest boredom encourages and stimulates thoughts, 
meanings, and ideas, snapping almost ‘magically’ out of itself. In 
another words,/boredom is the way in and out of boredom/. These 
approaches to boredom overlook the affective quality of boredom and its 
political capacities, because they only locate boredom through lack, 
absence and nothingness. This lack, absence and nothingness largely 
refers to inaction and disappearance of action. We identify this 
implicit dichotomy of ‘action versus inaction, and addressing inaction 
as the absence of action as a major theoretical and analytical glitch in 
understanding boredom. The action/inaction dichotomy overlooks 
how boredom becomes political and affective through the bodies and 
collectives that choose to do nothing, remain inactive and slip into the 
split between agency and subjectivity (Protevi 2011).

By acknowledging the action/inaction dichotomy and problematizing its 
link with boredom, we would like to ask how militarized bodies and 
weaponized subjectivities actually experience inaction and boredom? How 
do military personnel or nonstate-armed actors experience, explain and 
utter inaction? What is the other side of inaction and boredom for them? 
Does inaction and boredom influence their worldviews, their combat 
performances, and the perceptions of violence? Finally, how do boredom 
and inaction produce a vision of future and post-deployment?

We invite papers that address:

  * • Boredom, inaction and violence
  * • Boredom, inaction and creative aggression
  * • Boredom, inaction and transgressive play
  * • Boredom and inaction as political affect
  * • Boredom and inaction in policing
  * • Boredom and inaction in peace and peacekeeping
  * • Boredom and inaction in combat/battlefield
  * • Post-deployment boredom and inactivity
  * • Moralities of inaction and combat
  * • Temporalities of boredom and inaction
  * • Bored bodies in/actions
  * • Religious experience of boredom and inaction

We are especially interested in papers that are empirically oriented and 
based in ethnographic study of military, policing, militancy, and 
militarized bodies. We look forward to those from anthropology, 
sociology, human geography, cultural studies, history, political 
science, media scholars, communication studies and related disciplines.

The*two-days workshop*will open up an interdisciplinary platform to 
think about boredom and inaction while meeting other like-minded 
academics. We expect the invited participants to submit their papers 
(max 5000 words) in advance and the papers will be distributed to others 
and the discussants in order to foster further debates.

The organizers intend to publish the accepted papers either as special 
issue or an edited volume. The accepted papers will be treated as 
drafts, which participants should revise after feedbacks from others. 
The revised papers will be peer reviewed. The editors will decide to 
accept or reject them._ Those interested to present and participate 
should send us an abstract  of maximum 400 words along with 100 words 
bio note to__Dr. Eva van Roekel ((eva.van.roekel /at/ vu.nl) 
<mailto:(eva.van.roekel /at/ vu.nl)>) and*before March 30, 2020.*_

*Organizers:*

Dr. Younes Saramifar, Social & Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit 
Amsterdam and Humboldt University of Berlin

Dr. Eva van Roekel, Social & Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit 
Amsterdam

*Contact Info: *

*Dr. Eva van Roekel (eva.van.roekel /at/ vu.nl) 
<mailto:(eva.van.roekel /at/ vu.nl)>*;*Dr. Younes Saramifar (y.saramifar /at/ vu.nl) 
<mailto:(y.saramifar /at/ vu.nl)>*

*Contact Email: *

(eva.van.roekel /at/ vu.nl) <mailto:(eva.van.roekel /at/ vu.nl)>

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