Alternative Culture Now:The Politics of Culture in the Present Conjuncture

Alternative Culture

ALTERNATIVE CULTURE NOW: THE POLITICS OF CULTURE AT THE PRESENT CONJUNCTURE

 

Call for Proposals:

‘Alternative Culture Now: The Politics of Culture at the Present Conjuncture’
Conference and Event
Budapest, Hungary
April 8-10, 2010

Proposal Deadline: January 25, 2010

How do things stand with respect to the fate of the alternative? Branded and normativized, incorporated into a whole ensemble of mainstream discourses, and no longer the threat it once posed to capitalist and communist states alike, the political and social force of the alternative seems to have faded away. And yet the dream of the alternative continues to inspire political and social movements, artists, theorists, and all kinds of creative practices. How might we begin to situate and think alternativity as a global phenomenon at this precise conjuncture in world history? What is alternative about culture today? And what might or can it become?

The alternative, of course, has always been phraseable in the singular and the plural. On the one hand, it is a phenomenon locked into local configurations, a multi-polar and non-totalizable practice of myriad deviation. Here, its ambit can be that of a family drama or workplace, a national concatenation, or the homogenizing logic of a dominant cultural medium or genre. The dreams it holds in reserve are vitally minor: the fissuring of a regime with a joke or dissidence, the freedom mobilized in small, almost imperceptible defections or reversals. The production of the alternative is in this sense the aggregate, spontaneous effort of innumerable cultural agents to resist every species of stasis and capture, every grammar and vernacular, every gestural hierarchy and total system.

At the same time, this molecular vision of the alternative, of a plurality of fissions and margins, has always been accompanied by attempts to think what it is in the tendency of a moment which suppresses cultural possibilities on a global level. This is a dream of a communication or inter-mediation between margins, a system of deviances which comprehensively address the conditions which negatively hypostatize the life of the virtual. Global patriarchy, violent state expansionisms, the inhibiting logics of capital, and the globalization of the English language can be envisioned as transnational, systematized normativities that threaten cultural specificity or possibility in a way that is never exhausted by its expression on the register of the local. Is there, in this sense, only one alternative: an alternative to which there is no alternative? This notion of a single alternative-a universal difference necessary to shelter the future lives of difference–immediately sets into motion its own paradoxical dialectics of alternativity, itself appearing to erase the thing it promises. How do we escape this vortex, or at least make its impasses productive?

Is one alternative more important than another? Can alternatives be exhausted or rendered obsolete? What kind of method could we develop to test the valences of alternatives? Can or should alternative culture polemically charge the space of its own marginality, or would this degenerate into an infinite sectarianism?

We understand “alternative culture” to include diverse forms of cultural expression and activity, which are connected by their shared goal of creating just, humane, and equitable human relations by means of their opposition to existing cultural, social, and political forms.

This conference encourages contributions from scholars, educators, artists, cultural workers, policy makers, journalists, and others involved in alternative culture and international cultural policies. We are especially interested in contributions addressing alternative culture in Central/Eastern Europe and countries/regions of the former Soviet Union.

Areas of inquiry for submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following general topics in relation to the politics of alternative culture today:

Aesthetics – Collectivity – post-Communist Culture – Creativity – Cultural Studies – Eastern Europe – Geography -Globalization – Higher Education – Media – Memory/Nostalgia – Music – New Media – ex-Socialist History – ex-Soviet Urban Spaces – Visual Culture

The “Alternative Culture Now: The Politics of Culture at the Present Conjuncture” conference will take place at the OSA Archivum in Budapest, Hungary, April 8-10, 2010. It is organized and sponsored by the International Alternative Culture Center, with the support of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology (Central European University) and the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies (University of Alberta). The conference format will be diverse, including paper presentations, panels, round-table exchanges, artistic performances, and exhibitions. We encourage individual and collaborative paper and panel proposals from across the disciplines and from artists and community members.

Paper Submissions should include: (1) contact information; (2) a 300-500 word abstract; and (3) a one page curriculum vitae or a brief bio.

Panel Proposals should include: (1) a cover sheet with contact information for chair and each panelist; (2) a one-page rationale explaining the relevance of the panel to the theme of the conference; (3) a 300 word abstract for each proposed paper; and (4) a one page curriculum vitae for each presenter.

Please submit individual paper proposals or full panel proposals via e-mail attachment by January 25, 2010 to 
alternativeculturenow@gmail.com with the subject line “Alternative Culture Now.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats. Submissions should be one document (i.e. include all required information in one attached document).

Website: http://www.alternativeculture.org

Conference Organizing Team: Sarah Blacker (University of Alberta, Canada), Jessie Labov (Ohio State, USA), Andrew Pendakis (University of Bonn, Germany), Justin Sully (McMaster University, Canada), Imre Szeman (University of Alberta, Canada), Maria Whiteman (University of Alberta, Canada), and Olga Zaslavskaya (OSA, Hungary)

Sarah Blacker
Department of English and Film Studies
3-5 Humanities Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6G 2E5

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Health, Embodiment and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies

Health

HEALTH, EMBODIMENT AND VISUAL CULTURE: ENGAGING PUBLICS AND PEDAGOGIES

 

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Conference: “Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies”

November 19-20, 2010
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Conference Co-Chairs:
Sarah Brophy, Associate Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
Janice Hladki, Associate Professor, School of the Arts, McMaster University

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 15, 2010

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore how visual cultural practices image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia Zimmermann’s call for “radical media democracies that animate contentious public spheres” (2000, p. xx). Our aim is to explore how health, disability, and the body are theorized, materialized, and politicized in forms of visual culture including photography, video art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and digital media. Accordingly, we invite proposals for individual papers and roundtables that consider how contemporary visual culture makes bodies political in ways that matter for the future of democracy. Proposals may draw on fields such as: visual culture, critical theory, disability studies, health studies, science studies, autobiography studies, indigenous studies, feminisms, queer studies, and globalization/transnationalism.

CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
*Rebecca Belmore,* internationally recognized Anishinabekwe artist, Vancouver (exhibitions of her performance, video, installation, and sculpture include: Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts);
*Lisa Cartwright,* Professor of Communication and Science Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego (/Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture/; /Moral Spectatorship: Technologies of Voice and Affect in Postwar Representations of the Child/)
*Robert McRuer,* Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC (/Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability/; /The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities/);
*Ato Quayson,* Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto (/Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation/; /Relocating Postcolonialism/).

The conference will also feature /Scrapes: Unruly Embodiments in Video Art,/ an exhibition curated by Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki, at the McMaster Museum of Art.

POSSIBLE THEMATICS:

1. Technologies
— medical technologies (e.g. medical imaging, drug therapies, prosthetics and other devices) and their implications for embodiment, subjectivity, community, kinship, and politics
— corporeality and the senses as sites/forms of knowledge-making
— biopolitics and surveillance
— the relationship between “old” and “new” technologies
— how technologies mediate social spaces of embodiment and interaction
— interrogations of the human and posthuman in medicine, science, and art

2. Cultural Production
— cultural pedagogy; the production of knowledge in sites of cultural production (e.g. galleries, festivals, classrooms, online, etc.)
— counter-publics (e.g. disability culture)
— indigenous modes of cultural production
— diasporic/transnational issues and practices
— new representational modes (e.g. digital arts, graphic memoir)
— documentary practices
— “doing politics in art” (Bennett)

3. Disability
— medical, scientific, and cultural discourses of disability
— performing and witnessing embodied difference
— interrogations of impairment
— genetics, reproduction, eugenics
— dis-ease and disorder
— “ability trouble” (McRuer)
— “radical crip images” (McRuer)

4. Affect
— explorations of “ugly feelings” (Ngai), “aesthetic nervousness” (Quayson), “moral spectatorship” (Cartwright), “empathic vision” (Bennett), and “seeing for” (Bal)
— relationships to medicalization, regulation, and surveillance
— affect as generative/productive in relation to concepts of ethical spectatorship and witnessing
— relationships between corporeality and theorizations of nature as dynamic and agentic (Barad, Grosz, Haraway)
— can we/should we move beyond the theories that posit /negative/ affect as a prime site for ethics?
— affect and global politics: representations of global mobilities, violence, war, terrorism

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL:
We kindly invite submissions from scholars, artists, health professionals, community members, and activists in all areas and disciplines. Concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes in length. Proposals for the following formats will be considered:
1) Individual papers: 15 minutes in length
2) Roundtables: 4-5 participants, including a designated moderator and a plan for facilitated discussion of ideas
All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Individual paper submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words
3) paper title and a 300-500 word abstract; the description of the paper’s content should be as specific as possible and indicate relevance to one or more of the conference thematics.
4) Details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VH S). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

Roundtable submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information for each participant
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words for each participant
3) roundtable title and a 500 word proposal. The proposal should both indicate the relevance of the roundtable to one or more of the conference thematics and outline the organization of the proposed discussion.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

All submissions should be sent via email attachment to
viscult@mcmaster.ca <mailto:viscult@mcmaster.ca> by January 15, 2010.
Please use the subject line “Proposal for Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats.

If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax proposals to arrive by January 15, 2010.
Address: Sarah Brophy & Janice Hladki: Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture Conference
c/o Department of English & Cultural Studies
Chester New Hall 321
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L9
Fax: 905-777-8316

ACCESSIBILITY:
Presenters are encouraged to explore ways to make physical, sensory, and intellectual access a fundamental part of their presentation. Suggestions include: large print (18 point font) copies of handouts, large-print copies of paper or panel outlines, and/or audio descriptions of any film or video clips and images. Presenters are also encouraged to consider open or closed captioning of films and video clips.

POST-CONFERENCE PUBLICATION PLANS:
Papers from the conference will be considered for a special issue of /The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies/.

CONFERENCE SPONSORSHIP:
Sponsored by the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (John Douglas Taylor Fund).

Sarah Brophy
Associate Professor
Department of English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
L8S 4L9
brophys@mcmaster.ca

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Eternity and Change

Eternity

ETERNITY AND CHANGE

 

International conference organised by Colloque international organisé par :
FILOZOFSKI INŠTITUT ZNANSTVENORAZISKOVALNI CENTER SAZU

Eternity and Change
Eternité et changement
Ljubljana, December 4 – 5, 2009

04.12.2009

9h – 13h 30
ZRC SAZU, room/salle : Atrij
Chair/Présidence : Oliver Feltham, The American University of Paris
9h 00 – 9h 15 Jelica Šumič-Riha, FI ZRC SAZU
Introduction/Ouverture du colloque
9h 15 – 10h 30 LORENZO CHIESA, Université de Kent
The Body of Structural Dialectic: A Comparative Reading of Badiou’s Lacan in Theory of the Subject and Logics of Worlds
10h 30 – 12h 00 GERNOT KAMECKE, Technische Universität Dresden
La vie comme nom de l’être ou: penser le monde, c’est de le transfomer
12h 00 – 13h 30 OZREN PUPOVAC, ICI Berlin
The Concept of the Object in Althusser

13h 30 – 14h 30 Pause/Lunch break

14h30 – 18h30
ZRC SAZU, room/salle : Atrij
Chair/Présidence : Gernot Kamecke, Technische Universität Dresden
14h 30 – 16h 00 BRUNO BESANA, ICI Berlin
Eternaliser le changement, changer l’éternité
16h 00 – 17h 30 OLIVER FELTHAM, The American University of Paris
Political Action in Locke and Hobbes: Politics versus Philosophy
17h 30 – 18h 40 RADO RIHA, FI ZRC SAZU
Sur le matérialisme de l’Idée

05.12.2009

9h 15 – 13h 30
ZRC SAZU, room/salle : Atrij
Chair/Présidence : Bruno Besana, ICI Berlin
9h 15 – 10h 30 FABIEN TARBY, Université Besançon
L’éternité paradoxale du sujet
10h 30 – 12h 00 JELICA ŠUMIČ-RIHA, FI ZRC SAZU
Another World is Possible or the Task of Philosophy in the
Wordless Times
12h 00 – 13h 30 PETER HALLWARD, Middlesex University
Marx, Hegel and the Point of Education

13h 30 – 14h 30 Lunch break/Pause

14h30 – 18h30
ZRC SAZU, room/salle : Atrij
Chair/Présidence : Peter Hallward, Middlesex University
14h 30 – 16h 00 FRANK RUDA, Freie Universität Berlin
Idealism without Idealism: for a Renewed Materialist Reading of the 11th Thesis
16h 00 – 17h 30 PATRICE MANIGLIER, University of Essex
Qu’est-ce qu’une vérité critique ?
17h 30 – 18h 40 ALBERTO TOSCANO, Goldsmiths University of London
Change, Crisis, Catastrophe: Keywords for a Disoriented Present

19h 00 – 21h 00
Cankarjev dom, Gallusova dvorana
Keynote lecture/Conférence
ALAIN BADIOU, Ecole Normale Supérieure
Universalité et éternité : les vérités comme multiplicities génériques (être) et comme corps subjectivés (apparaître)

Conference co-sponsorship by Avec le soutien financier de :
ARRS
ZRC SAZU
UNG

Conference organizer
Sous la responsabilité de :
Jelica Šumič-Riha, FI ZRC SAZU

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas : http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Culture As Resource: Cultural Practices and Policies After ’89

Culture

CULTURE AS RESOURCE: CULTURAL PRACTICES AND POLICIES AFTER ’89

 

Graduate Summer Course

Course Dates: 19 – 30 July, 2010
Location: Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary,
Detailed course description: http://www.summer.ceu.hu/culture

Course Director:
Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Department of English and Film Studies, Canada

Faculty:
– Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago, English and African American Studies, Chicago, USA
– Alexandra Kowalski, Central European University, Sociology and Social Anthropology, Budapest, Hungary
– Lisa Parks, University of California, Santa Barbara, Film Studies, Santa Barbara, USA
– Will Straw, McGill University, Art History and Communications Studies, Montreal, Canada
– Maria Whiteman, University of Alberta, Art and Design, Edmonton, Canada

Target group: Applications are invited from faculty members and doctoral students of institutions of higher learning and researchers with academic background in cultural studies, political theory, globalization studies and cultural policy. Undergraduates without a university degree will not be considered.

Language of instruction: English
Tuition fee: EUR 550. Financial aid is available.

Application deadline: February 15, 2010
Online application (from mid November):
http://www.sun.ceu.hu/03-application/howto_apply.php

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Roundtable on Marx’s Capital

Karl Marx

ROUNDTABLE ON MARX’S CAPITAL

Roundtable on Marx’s Capital

The SSPP is pleased to issue a CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS for a Roundtable on Marx’s Capital Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, February 24-27, 2011

Our second Roundtable will explore Volume One of Marx’s Capital (1867).  We chose this text because the resurgence in references to and mentions of Marx – provoked especially by the financial crisis, but presaged by the best-seller status of Hardt and Negri’s Empire and Marx’s surprising victory in the BBC’s “greatest philosopher” poll – has only served to highlight the fact that there have not been any new interpretive or theoretical approaches to this book since Althusser’s in the 1960s.

The question that faces us is this: Does the return of Marx mean that we have been thrust into the past, such that long “obsolete” approaches have a newfound currency, or does in mean, on the contrary, that Marx has something new to say to us, and that new approaches to his text are called for?

The guiding hypothesis of this Roundtable is that if new readings of Capital are called for, then it is new readers who will produce them.

Therefore, we are calling for applications from scholars interested in approaching Marx’s magnum opus with fresh eyes, willing to open it to the first page and read it through to the end without knowing what they might find. Applicants need not be experts in Marx or in Marxism.  Applicants must, however, specialize in some area of social or political philosophy.  Applicants must also be interested in teaching and learning from their fellows, and in nurturing wide-ranging and diverse inquiries into the history of political thought.

If selected for participation, applicants will deliver a written, roundtable-style presentation on a specific part or theme of the text.  Your approach to the text might be driven by historical or contemporary concerns, and it might issue from an interest in a theme or a figure (be it Aristotle or Foucault).  Whatever your approach, however, your presentation must centrally investigate some aspect of the text of Capital.  Spaces are very limited.

Applicants should send the following materials as email attachments (.doc/.rtf/.pdf) to papers@sspp.us  by September 15, 2010:

    • Curriculum Vitae
    • One page statement of interest in the Roundtable.  (Please include a discussion of the topics you would be willing to explore in a roundtable presentation.  Please also discuss the projected significance of participation for your research and/or teaching.)

Ben Fowkes’ translation of Capital (Viking/Penguin, 1976) is the official translation for the Roundtable, and should be used for page citations. However, applicants are strongly encouraged to review either the German text of Capital (the 2nd edition of 1873 is the basis for most widely available texts) or the French translation (J. Roy, 1872-5), which was the last edition Marx himself oversaw to publication; both of these are widely available on-line.

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process via email on or before October 15, 2010.  Participants will be asked to send a draft or outline of their presentation to papers@sspp.us by January 15, 2011 so that we can finalize the program.

In order to participate in the Roundtable (but not to apply or to be selected), you must be a member of the Society in good standing. You can become a member of the Society by following the membership link at: http://www.sspp.us

William S. Lewis
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair,
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA
(518) 580 5402

Board Member and Treasurer
Society for Social and Political Philosophy

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Kritikos Volume 6

Deadwing

KRITIKOS VOLUME 6

 

 Kritikos V.6, September-October-November-2009

Modernist Asylum Art and the Contemporary Consideration of Art…(g.coulter)

Kritikos TV: Kucinich and Nader on H.R. 3962…(n.ruiz)

http://intertheory.org/work.htm

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Corporate Power and Ownership in Contemporary Capitalism

 

 

 

 

It's Crisis Time!

CORPORATE POWER AND OWNERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I would like to announce the recent publication of my new book:

Corporate Power and Ownership in Contemporary Capitalism:
The Politics of Resistance and Domination (London: Routledge, 2009)

For more information see URL: http://www.routledge.com/9780415467889

Blurb:
Despite the influence corporations wield over all aspects of everyday life, there has been a remarkable absence of critical inquiry into the social constitution of this power. In analysing the complex relationship between corporate power and the widespread phenomenon of share ownership, this book seeks to map and define the nature of resistance and domination in contemporary capitalism.

Drawing on a Marxist-informed framework, this book reconnects the social constitution of corporate power and changing forms of shareholder activism. In contrast to other texts that deal with corporate governance, this study examines a diverse and comprehensive set of themes, from socially responsible investing to labour-led shareholder activism and its limitations. Through this ambitious and critical study, author Susanne Soederberg demonstrates how the corporate governance doctrine represents an inherent feature of neoliberal rule, effectively disembedding and depoliticising relations of domination and resistance from the wider power and paradoxes of capitalism.

Examining corporate governance and shareholder activism in a number of different contexts that include the United States and the global South, this important book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, international relations and development studies. It will also be of relevance to a wider range of disciplines including finance, economics, and business and management studies.

“Soederberg should be thanked for revealing the elephant in the room – that corporations, along with their governance, power, ownership and management, are profoundly political, yet undemocratic. Through careful analysis, wide-ranging research and elegant writing she deconstructs comforting myths and shows us the true and unsettling politics and impacts of corporations in the world today. A must read – and also a good read – for anyone seeking true understanding of current economic, social and environmental upheavals.” — Joel Bakan, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada, and author/filmmaker of The Corporation

“In a capitalism deep into its second major crisis in 75 years, Soederberg’s book is very welcome. It critically examines the real (as opposed to the ideologically glossed) mechanisms enabling the crisis-producing decisions of corporate boards of directors. She performs a valuable deconstruction of the mythologies of mainstream ‘corporate governance’ literature.” — Richard D. Wolff, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts and the New School University, New York

“This book presents a much-needed and powerful critique of the ‘corporate governance doctrine’ that was promoted both by the US state and by dominant capitalist interests in many societies to underpin the priority given to ‘shareholder value’, to take advantage of workers’ pension funds, and to direct labour and social movement challenges to corporate decisions into what Soederberg appropriately calls the ‘marketization of resistance’. As empirically rich as it is theoretically strong, this is another important contribution by one of the most creative political economy scholars writing today.’ — Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto

Cheers,
Susanne
Susanne Soederberg, DPhil
Canada Research Chair (Global Political Economy)
Associate Professor in Global Development Studies and Political Studies
Mackintosh-Corry, Room A-406
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 Canada
Tel: 613.533.6000 x 78391
Fax: 613.533.2986
Email: soederberg@queensu.ca
Homepage: http://www.queensu.ca/devs/faculty/ProfileSoederberg.html

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Historical Materialism Conference 2009: Pre-Registration and Abstracts

Historical Materialism

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE 2009: PRE-REGISTRATION AND ABSTRACTS

 

Pre-registration for the HM Conference will close at midnight
tomorrow: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/

Registration on the door will be possible on a first-come-first-served
basis.

The abstracts for the papers are now online: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Beyond the Crisis

Is Another Crisis!

BEYOND THE CRISIS

 

http://www.iippe.org

INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR PROMOTING POLITICAL ECONOMY (IIPPE)

and

GREEK SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

RETHYMNON, CRETE, SEPTEMBER 10-12, 2010

“BEYOND THE CRISIS”

Pre-amble: Following its three previous highly successful international research workshops for students in Crete, Naples and Ankara, the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) is now holding its FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, co-organised with the Greek Scientific Association of Political Economy, and open to application from all engaged in political economy. Summaries of papers for consideration for inclusion (maximum 1000 words) should be submitted by 31st of March 2010 to iippe@soas.ac.uk with subject heading IIPPE CONFERENCE 2010. Full papers are required to be made available by 30 June 2010 for pre-circulation to Conference participants. It will be possible to attend the Conference without submitting a paper but numbers will be limited. There will be some funding available for those who are unable to rely upon institutional support for participation, with special provision for research students.

Themes: Following the global crisis, the prospects of, and need for, progressive political economy are stronger than for many decades. Orthodox economics is in disarray, but with only a smattering of its own practitioners accepting this, generally by demanding more realism and the incorporation of a few more or less arbitrary behavioural principles. After the collapse of the post-war boom, the recession and slowdown that followed gave birth to extreme forms of monetarism followed by a mild reaction in terms of reliance upon market and institutional imperfections and weakened Keynesianism. The prospects for a radical rethink within orthodoxy and of tolerance to heterodoxy remain bleak. But it is still crucial to sustain critical commentary on orthodoxy’s continuing principles and innovations as a new generation of students and researchers are caught between conforming to its reduced and flawed content and the economic realities of the world around them. Political economy has begun to prosper in the wake of the crisis, not least with the rising popularity of Minsky for example. It is imperative that the strengths and weaknesses of the diverse, often insightful, analyses of the nature, causes and consequences of the financial crisis be debated and fully engaged across competing paradigms and emphases. Nor is the crisis confined to economic effects and causes alone. Interdisciplinary approaches are essential to address the nature of, and prospects for, neo-liberalism, the shifting character of the “new world order”, US hegemony and the rise of China, and the economic and the social and cultural restructuring that have both preceded and will follow upon the crisis. This offers opportunities to engage with activists in understanding the impact and incidence of the crisis and in formulating alternatives and strategies in response to it.

The Conference welcomes proposals for papers that address one or more of these issues or any other issue within political economy. IIPPE working groups are entitled to organise a panel. But we also welcome proposals for panels independently of working groups on well-defined themes, with three or four contributions and contributors specified in advance. These must be submitted, ideally with paper summaries by March 31st, 2010, although earlier submissions have greater chance of acceptance as the Conference programme is filled out.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The Question of Subalternity

Spivak

THE QUESTION OF SUBALTERNITY

 

A two-day seminar with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at CENDEAC (Murcia, South Eastern Spain)  

1st and 2nd December // 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: The Question of Subalternity

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will lead an intensive seminar at CENDEAC on the 1st and 2nd December 2009. It will be a unique opportunity to engage with Spivak’s thought, through a detailed analysis of some of her most influential texts. 

The seminar will discuss the history and usefulness of the elusive concept of the subaltern based on questions emerging from three texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak available in Spanish translation: “Can the subaltern speak?”, “Subaltern Studies: deconstructing historiography” and “Displacement and the Discourse of Woman”. The two sessions will be entitled: “The Subaltern: Use and Abuse” and “Women, Subalternity, and Strategic Essentialism”.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Toronto and London and Oberlin College. She has published, Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976); Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993); In Other Worlds (1987); Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Death of a Discipline(2003), Other Asias (2007). And the forthcoming An Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization. She has also translated from Bengali, Mahasweta Devi: Imaginary Maps (1994); Breast Stories (1997), Old Women (1999); Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2002) and Ramproshad Sen’s (eighteenth century Bengali mystic): Song for Kali (2000). The texts “Translation As Culture” (2005), “Translating into English” (2005), and “Rethinking Comparativism” (2009) reflect her concern for the task of the translator.  “Righting Wrongs” (2001), and “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” (2004) give a sense of her dedication to supplementing vanguardism. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1983) has become a controversial classic.

Information and enrolment:

Attendance is free unless a certificate is required, in which case fees will be 30€ standard, 15€ for the unemployed, full-time students and OAPs, and free to Friends of CENDEAC. 

Language of the Seminar: English with simultaneous translation into Spanish. 

CENDEAC is accessible for wheelchair users and people with diminished mobility. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide on request a transcript of papers for users with impaired hearing. Auditorium Capacity: 140 people

For more information, including assistance with travel and accommodation, please visit our website: http://www.cendeac.net or contact yhernandez[at]cendeac.net

CENDEAC
Pabellón 5
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería
C/ Madre Elisea Oliver Molina, s/n
30002-Murcia (España)
Tel.: +34 868 914 769
Fax: +34 868 914 149

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

German University Students on Strike

German Students Strike

GERMAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ON STRIKE

 

Links to German student protests that are ongoing:

http://www.euronews.net/2009/11/17/german-university-strike-spreads/

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4901195,00.html

Thanks to Patrick Ainley for sending me these links.

Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Wanstead Flats

Wanstead Flats

WANSTEAD FLATS

 

Last weekend, Ruth Rikowski and I went for a walk on Wanstead Flats. We took some pictures with our new(ish) digital camera. Ruth has written a short article about our walk and what we observed, and included some pictures, on her blog ‘Serendipitous Moments’.

You can view the article and pictures at: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/2009/11/wanstead-flats.html

Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/

Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk