[Commlist] CfP: Forms of (More Than) Human Relationality

CfP: Forms of (More Than) Human Relationality, University of Amsterdam

Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) 2023 Workshop| June 28 – 
30, 2023 | Organized by Nadica Denić, Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp, and Eszter 
Szakács

The rejection of traditional forms of dualistic thinking has led to a 
turn to relationality in the humanities, giving rise to new ontologies 
that move beyond the subject-object distinction (e.g.: Haraway; Tsing; 
Barad; Latour; Braidotti; Morton). Critical scholars and artists have 
emphasized relationality as an alternative way to reconceptualize and 
visualize various forms of connectedness to the world and to (more than) 
human forms of life. However, “relationality”, as Judith Butler has 
recently reminded us in The Force of Non-violence, “is not by itself a 
good thing, a sign of connectedness, an ethical norm to be posited over 
and against destruction: rather, relationality is a vexed and ambivalent 
field in which the question of ethical obligation has to be worked out 
in light of a persistent and constitutive destructive potential.” An 
investment in different forms of relationality, be they artistic, 
social, or ecological in nature, is not an end in itself – it can, as 
some have argued, even reinforce the hegemonic and exclusionary concept 
of the human (Rangan). Many valuable perspectives emerged as responses 
to the call for ethico-political examination of relationality, and they 
have explored non-violence, willfulness, care, wholeness, opacity, and 
ambiguity in light of relationality, to name a few (Butler; Puig de la 
Bellacasa; Moiloa; Glissant; Fuery). Keeping in mind these perspectives, 
we might ask: How can we evaluate the potential of ethico-political 
accounts grounded in relational ontologies or frameworks? This ASCA 
workshop encourages participants to explore the broader theme of 
“relationality” as an aesthetic, ethical or political response to the 
present moment defined by multiple forms of precarity. Accordingly, we 
invite participants to attend to both the destructive and sustainable 
relationalities lived and imagined among (more than) human forms of 
life. Our aim is to encourage relational thinking that expands critical, 
artistic, and political horizons and provides a more complex account of 
the constitutive inter- and intra-relationality that binds things, 
humans, and non-humans to the world and to each other. We invite broad 
inquiries that question the ethico-political signification of 
relationality from artistic, social, and ecological perspectives – on a 
conceptual level as well as a form of methodology and practice.

Possible questions and lines of inquiry might include:

How can relational frameworks help imagine new ethical connections to 
humans and/or non-humans without overlooking destructive or violent 
aspects of relationality?
What kind of ecological ethico-political commitments emerge from a 
relational ontology (thinking in terms of network, assemblage, kinship)?
How does aesthetics mediate relationality?
What kind of ethical relations are enabled/obstructed by a certain 
aesthetics?
How do transparency or opacity as modes of representation affect 
aesthetic mediation of relationality?
How do cultural objects and artistic practices enact relationality?
How does relationality inform different ways of organizing, including 
(initiating) infrastructures?
How can relationality be thought through and enacted across opposing 
(geo)political paradigms and contexts?
How can a relational framework help understand different forms of ethnic 
and racial embodiment?
In what ways can relationality be a method for connecting, e.g. between 
the “Global North” and the “Global South,” in sensitive, non-hierarchal, 
and complex modes that bypass the representational ethos resulting in 
the simplification/decontextualization/reappropriation of origins and 
“sources” for the use of the more powerful?
Confirmed keynotes
Pooja Rangan (Amherst College)
Kathrin Thiele (Utrecht University)
Patricia MacCormack (ARU Cambridge)

General information
ASCA Workshop 2023 is a three-day in-person event taking place in 
Amsterdam, Netherlands (within the “Universiteitskwartier”). Please note 
that we cannot accommodate virtual presentations.

How to apply?
We welcome individual applications in the form of academic and artistic 
research. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a short bio. 
Presentations should be up to 20 minutes in length. If you are 
considering a different presentation format, please get in touch with us 
and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

Events such as workshops, roundtables or seminars are also welcome. 
Please submit a proposal that includes a title, a short description (300 
words) and a list of participants.

All applications should be submitted by March 31, 2023 to 
(ascaworkshop2023 /at/ gmail.com). We will notify the applicants about 
selection by April 14, 2023.

Attendance
There are no registration fees. Conference attendance is free of charge 
for presenters and for general public. We cannot offer reimbursement for 
travel and accommodation for the participants; however, if your 
circumstances prevent you from joining the conference, please write us 
an e-mail explaining your situation.

For the latest updates, please see: 
https://asca.uva.nl/programme/workshops/more-than-human-relationality/more-than-human-relationality.html 
<https://asca.uva.nl/programme/workshops/more-than-human-relationality/more-than-human-relationality.html>
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