[Commlist] CFP Political Imagination: Materiality, Politics and Pedagogy

Call for papers:


Political Imagination: Materiality, Politics and Pedagogy

International conference in Själö Island in the Turku Archipelago, Finland

10-12 June 2022

Keynote speakers:

Rhiannon Firth, University College London

Eeva Luhtakallio, University of Helsinki

This conference addresses political imagination and its material, 
political and pedagogical dimensions. It explores the manifestations of 
political imagination and utopian thought, including the ways in which 
political alternatives are imagined, performed and lived out today in a 
host of places and spaces. We approach political imagination as a driver 
of social change and a practice of transformative politics and social 
critique. Political imagination is a generative force that is inherently 
intersubjective, affective, material and social. It can animate and 
mobilise diverse political projects, agents and effects. By envisaging 
alternatives to the existing social order, political imagination can 
enable social dreaming and destabilise conventional ways of thinking 
that tend to restrict us to a narrow repertoire of political 
possibilities. Material arrangements, such as architecture, technologies 
and material objects, shape the ways in which we can imagine and make 
alternative futures happen. Political imagination is also a skill that 
needs to be taught, stimulated and cultivated, highlighting the 
centrality of pedagogy in the practice of imagination.

The unsustainability of our current social formation has become 
glaringly clear, not least by the pressing climate emergency, and there 
is an acute need to envisage alternative ways of organising our common 
life. Our current conjuncture is often characterised as post-political, 
anti-utopian and thoroughly dominated by forces of neoliberalism that 
make it difficult to articulate alternatives and organise resistance. 
This interpretation, however, risks obscuring much of the subversion 
that takes place in diverse nooks and crannies of society. Resistance, 
contestation and struggle are not only brewing and bubbling under the 
post-political lid, but also increasingly rolling into the streets and 
squares, gardens and kitchens, art galleries and theatres, and 
workplaces and media. In lieu of or in parallel with political 
disenchantment, we are witnessing an upsurge in acts and gestures that 
challenge the capitalist factory settings of economic growth, waged 
work, limitless consumption, and persistent gendered, classed and 
racialised forms of oppression and exploitation, and envisage and 
prefigure post-capitalist futures.

The conference sets out to map and advance our understanding of these 
diverse acts and gestures of transformative politics, along with the 
complexities and ambiguities they involve. It seeks to facilitate 
discussion about conceptual, methodological and empirical aspects of 
political imagination and utopian thought as a vital part of 
transformative politics and social change, and strengthen our collective 
capacity to imagine better futures. It invites participants to explore, 
debate and articulate visions, ideals and struggles for alternative 
social formations.

Please email abstracts of 250 words, together with a max. 150-word 
biographical note, including name, institutional affiliation and 
position, phone number and postal and email addresses, to: 
(polimaconference /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(polimaconference /at/ gmail.com)>

Abstract deadline: 15 March, 2022. Participants will receive 
notifications of acceptance by 30 March 2022.

The number of participants will be limited to 50.

Conference fee: 300 EUR (200 EUR for PhD students), includes 
accommodation, breakfast, lunches, dinners and refreshments for the 
duration of the conference.

For further information, please contact the organizing committee: 
(polimaconference /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(polimaconference /at/ gmail.com)>

The workshop is organized by the research project “Political Imagination 
and Alternative Futures (POLIMA)”, https://polima.fi/ <https://polima.fi/>

The organizing committee: Suvi Salmenniemi, Inna Perheentupa, Pilvi 
Porkola, Salome Tuomaala-Özdemir and Hanna Ylöstalo.

Health and safety of our conference guests is important for us. The 
conference will be held in accordance with current guidelines on 
COVID-19 by the Finnish government. We will keep you posted on these 
guidelines and travel instructions.

More information: https://polima.fi/conference-2022/ 
<https://polima.fi/conference-2022/>

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