[Commlist] CfP Soapbox 2.1: Contamination

Call for papers – /Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis/ 2.1 
“Contamination”

See the complete call on our website: 
https://soapboxjournal.com/2019/12/16/call-for-papers-2-1-contamination/ 
<https://u2077382.ct.sendgrid.net/wf/click?upn=-2BgxG7c8ogkD4d9H7PO6vN4eTej3-2FK4BUC4HRzH37AbdwA5MtOvrMjuxe8QxKvsqm8Cy-2FODAWbsMAHzZ-2BHjUuc7IJoikxvopsT-2Fb-2Bs764ySkV-2BMAtxO2ZRHMoZp-2Bo-2BRi3_1HLBsCS1PlIMxxEgPBHolM7WCGZbg-2B19OzF2ZZLPur7KJLKGcfMD3LCIjsTkOyz9JMyuNypVVTvrpAXZq2iAVU-2FVtrpye2wkw9UXQr7qeEB6HeQqrEdt4A3eQGrBy-2BhL-2FJ7HwY-2FnQJOYbW5PXYkHf0YFE98RB9qu0kgW781AaYObhU-2BFNoKfH-2BALrOjhhC0c4elIMMudQU07DNMd-2BQPk-2FczW5VNp63Hj7QT6VNHXPlJxMpulmfHO55-2FORwNOlIdC>

For the third issue of Soapbox, an open access graduate journal for 
cultural analysis, we invite submissions that critically engage with the 
concept of ‘contamination.’ With this theme, we encourage papers that 
think contamination differently from its rigid conceptualisations and 
prefigured connotations, as a concept that travels over neat categories, 
harbouring the potential of undoing borders, or linking together 
supposedly separate and stagnant beings.

The scope and consequences of globalised capitalist production afford us 
to consider that we live in a state of ubiquitous contamination. If not, 
as Alexis Shotwell argues, that “we have never been pure” (2016). From 
micro plastics to heavy metals, and radioactive compounds, the 
accumulation of strange molecules in the atmosphere, waters, and land is 
inevitably changing our climate, landscapes, and ontologies. Without 
underestimating the real damage caused by environmental pollution, 
epidemics, and nuclear waste it seems that quarantine is not an option.

Yielding towards a more productive and open approach, Anna Tsing 
proposes “contamination as collaboration,” or “transformation through 
encounter” (2015). How, then, could thinking with contamination 
reconfigure conditions of knowing and being? What is at stake, for 
actors (human and nonhuman) and objects alike, in troubling our 
understanding of contamination? Who gets to decide what is defined as 
‘toxic’ or ‘impure’ and what is designated as ‘clean’?

We invite students, PhD candidates, and young researchers of media and 
communication studies and from across the humanities to submit proposals 
that discuss ‘contamination’ directed towards, but not limited to, the 
following themes:

– Contamination in a biopolitical regime: hygiene and sterility as 
normative forces
– Molecular unruliness: para-legal agency of bacteria, microbes, and spores
– Infectious bodies: porousness and permeability, devious sexuality, 
phantasies of infection
– Algorithmic or digital contamination (SPAM, computer viruses, 
crowdsourcing)
– Uncontained, intrusive, and ‘abnormal’ subjects and subjectivity
– Infiltration and sabotage: contamination as a political subversive 
strategy
– Contamination and failure: corrupted files, collapsing (eco-)systems
– ‘Sublime’ landscapes: nuclear aesthetics, waste
– Immunity and sickness: epidemics, contagion, protection
– Affect (for instance, noise and chaos theory) & emotions (for 
instance, contagious happiness, sadness, laughter)
– (Im-)purity: matters of the sacred and profane; nature/culture and 
similar dichotomies
– Spreading of language or communication practices
– Contagious relationality in the form of crowds, mobs, protest, and 
state violence
– Nationalism, identity, colonialism, and questions of assimilation

Please submit your abstract (max 300 words) to (soapboxjournal /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(soapboxjournal /at/ gmail.com)> <(soapboxjournal /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(soapboxjournal /at/ gmail.com)>> <(soapboxjournal /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(soapboxjournal /at/ gmail.com)>> by February 3. The full papers 
(3000-5000words) are due March 2. Feel free to contact us if you have 
any questions. No article processing fees will be charged.

We also welcome submissions to our website, where a variety of styles 
and formats is encouraged. Please get in touch to pitch new ideas or 
existing projects for us to feature there.


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