POLITICS AND POETICS
Call for Papers, Presentations and Performances:
Politics and Poetics
The third symposium of the Leverhulme International Research Network ‘Imaginaries of the Future’
Queen’s University, Belfast, 19-21 January 2016.
What does it mean to think of politics as a poetics, and to do so through the prism of the expectant, the anticipatory, the Not-Yet, and the futural? The third symposium of the ‘Imaginaries of the Future’ International Research Network seeks to investigate the ways in which futures are both imagined and governed, projected, deferred and deterred, through different disciplinary formations, and to explore the effects of competing ways of conceiving futurity.
The ‘hope project’ at the heart of utopianism pursues a future transformed through collective agency, and develops an anticipatory register in which visions of competing futures are mobilized to orient such collective political agency. Conversely, in what ways are creative practices of agency obstructed, and how are visions of ‘the future’ deployed in reactive, prohibitory ways? How does the utopian anticipatory compare with other categories of futurity, such as precaution or pre-emption, risk or threat? How, then, can we theorize the ambivalence of the anticipatory, modes of capture and recuperation?
Symposium participants may interrogate utopianism itself, exploring the poetics of utopian desire, affect, and agency vis-à-vis the politics of contestation, challenge, and transformation. We may also consider the specificity of politics and poetics, and the relations of connectivity between these approaches. Is politics necessarily reducible to calculative and instrumental modes of grasping the future? Is poetics more attuned to the epistemological and ontological uncertainty of the future, to what has not and might not happen? Or, is there a politics to poetics, and a poetics to politics? How can engagement with poetics help map forms of relationality and connection, and what is the role of affect, emotion, memory in creating connections and preconditions for political agency? What might be the political valence of aesthetic and sensual categories of experience — touch, proximity, intimacy, harmony and dissonance? How might technological and cybernetic invention advance both human agential capacity, as well as contribute to a critique of the anthropocentrism of both politics and poetics? And can we think of ethics (say, the Levinasian encounter with the Other, or perhaps the Spinozist endeavour to enhance capacity, agency, connectivity, and joy) as a missing third term between poetics and politics?
We welcome proposals of 250-300 words in length from across the arts and humanities (and beyond) for papers, presentations or performances of up to 20 minutes in length. Please send all proposals to both s.mcmanus@qub.ac.uk and nathaniel.coleman@ncl.ac.uk
Utopia
Bursaries
Five travel bursaries, two of up to £1000, and three of up to £350, will be awarded through open competition to individuals who promise to make a significant contribution to the work of the Network. The larger bursaries are intended for applicants traveling a significant distance to attend the symposium. We welcome submissions from all career stages including PhD researchers. Bursary recipients will be expected to contribute a piece of writing and/or embedded media to the Network blog, and will be invited to submit work to be considered for publication opportunities arising from the symposium.
To apply for a bursary, please send a CV along with your proposal to both s.mcmanus@qub.ac.uk and nathaniel.coleman@ncl.ac.uk by 30 October 2015
Dr Susan McManus
Lecturer in Political Theory
Politics, International Studies and Philosophy QUB.
Even Bigger Data
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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs
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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski
Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com
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Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski 