Critical Media Literacy Conference

Tyrion Lannister

CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY CONFERENCE

Call for Papers
Second Annual Critical Media Literacy Conference
March 22, 2014
8:00AM-4:00PM
Bone Student Center at Illinois State University
Normal, IL

Submit your proposal today!

Why Critical Media Literacy in the 21st Century?

Today, media culture is one of the most dominant forces in society. It contributes to how we define our sense of self and drives our understanding of the ‘Other.’ Media also perpetuates symbols, myths, and serves as a resource for generating a common culture. This multidisciplinary conference is designed to aid current educational leaders, future teachers, youth, and other concerned citizens in their understanding of the mass media and its impact on the events that shape our daily lives. Promoting critical media literacy is essential to excavating social inequalities and fostering participatory democracy during the 21st century.

We enthusiastically call for paper proposals that urgently and critically redefine, redirect, and recreate notions of knowledge, truth, and justice through (and with) critical media literacy and pedagogy. Paper proposals might address topics such as (but not limited to) the following:

• What are specific ways in which the corporate and political elite uses the mass media to promulgate their ideologies and practices?
• How does the mass media perpetuate divisions amongst social groups across the globe?
• How can teacher educators prepare future teachers by using critical media studies in teacher preparation programs?
• How can educators, youth, and concerned citizens provide more genuine representations of global citizens through their own media products?
• How has media literacy successfully fostered K-20 students’ critical engagement with mass media?
• How have various technologies employed by corporate conglomerates in the mass media been used to foster critical understanding and solidarity across the globe, rather than to promote conformity and corporatism?
• How can various critical theories enrich our understanding of the mass media in the age of neoliberalism?
• What are some ways in which media literacy can be applied to the new demands and concerns of today’s digitized culture?
• How might library scientists go about training critical media librarians?

Strand 1: Library Sciences
Papers in this strand will explore the existing or potential connection between library science and critical media inquiry.

Strand 2: Educational Foundations
Papers in this strand will explore interpretive, normative, and critical approaches to examining media. Papers that address critical pedagogy in online spaces are also highly desirable.

Strand 3: School of Communication
Papers in this strand will explore the relationships between communication scholarship and pedagogy and critical media literacy. Papers that examine the connections between communication, civic engagement, and media literacy are especially encouraged.

Strand 4: The Borg Center For Reading and Literacy
Papers in this strand will explore questions and and issues related to shifting definitions of literacy, critical media literacy, and potential new intersections of inquiry.

Key Dates
Call for papers opens: October 1, 2013
Proposal due date: January 7, 2014
Notification of accepted papers: February 1, 2014

Special Conference Registration Rates
Faculty: $90.00 (early bird rate until January 15, 2014). Then $110.00 from 1/16/14 to 3/10/2014.
Student: $45.00 (early bird rate until January 15, 2014). Then $60.00 from 1/16/14 to 3/10/2014.

Registration Options
On-line: Use your credit card to register at: www.conferences.illinoisstate.edu/CMLC
By Phone: (800) 877-1478 or (309) 438-2160, 8:00am-4:30pm, Monday-Friday using credit card payment
By Mail: Complete registration form and send with payment to:

CMLC
Illinois State University
Conference Services
Campus Box 8610
Normal, IL 61790-8610

By Fax: Fax completed registration form with credit card payment or P.O. to (309) 438-5364

Travel Lodging and Accommodations
Airport
Driving directions
Hotels

Keynote Address
William (Bill) Reynolds, Ed.D., teaches Education Foundations and Curriculum Studies at Georgia Southern University will be this year’s keynote. His talk is entitled, “The Monstrous Other: Exploring the Intersections of Youth Culture, Critical Media Literacy and Commodification in a Monster Making World.”

Published Proceedings
All papers will be published in the conference proceedings and will be open-access. A statement authorizing this publication is included in the submission agreement.

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Only Connect …

Books

ONLY CONNECT …

A Call for Chapters for an upcoming book … feel free to be creative with the formats!

The book is:

Only Connect … discovery pathways, library explorations, and the information adventure

A collection of information discovery journeys.
Andrew Walsh & Emma Coonan
A call for chapter submissions for an anarcho-narrative book about Information Discovery Journeys.
Full details on http://innovativelibraries.org.uk/onlyconnect/

Learning is about creating relationships between entities and establishing a narrative that makes sense of the world

Research is about juxtaposing entities that were previously unrelated

The book will consist of a series of narratives connected by the over arching theme of information discovery journeys. The authors of the individual chapters are free to decide the most appropriate structure to tell these stories about information discovery, whether that is traditional textual formats, more free form text (e.g. transcripts of social media interactions; poetry; illustrative fictional prose), through images, video, or whatever media seems appropriate to the author.

The text will be electronic by default, available freely under CC license (see note http://innovativelibraries.org.uk/index.php/onlyconnect/#Note). Print on demand versions will be made available if deemed appropriate when editing the finished text.

Contributors will be selected by the editors after submitting a proposal to the call for papers. Final submissions will be subject to the lightest possible editing, in conjunction with the author, to insure the integrity of the original submission is maintained.

Please send a title and short description (around 200 words) of the chapter you propose to the editors at: infojourneys@innovativelibraries.org.uk <mailto:infojourneys@innovativelibraries.org.uk>

Include the topics you would cover, the structure your chapter would take and any special format or structure your contribution would require. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Timescales:
Call for Papers ends 1st March
First Drafts due 1st June
Book published Autumn 2013

Bypassing established publisher routes means that our ‘unbook’ can be:
*         Creative Commons licensed, giving contributors recognition and making the material immediately free and sharable online
*         Multimedia – contributors pick their preferred format: prose, video, images, Storify’d tweets, graphs, data … (print-on-demand an option for textual parts, linking to additional non-textual material via an app such as Aurasma. Details of this to be confirmed at a later date.)
*         Free of the writing conventions imposed by traditional publishers – contributors can retain their own voice, choose the length of their contribution, use whatever format they prefer

Note on licensing: We will ask authors / contributors to sign a simple agreement to allow us rights to publish their contribution and to permit others to use the contents of the book under CC licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Contributors will retain copyright over their work.
Regards
Andrew
Andrew Walsh MSc MCLIP FHEA
Academic Librarian, University Teaching Fellow, National Teaching Fellow
Music, Humanities, Media, Education and Professional Development.
Information Literacy Practitioner of the Year, 2012

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

 

Communication, Crisis, Critique and Change

Dialectics

COMMUNICATION, CRISIS, CRITIQUE AND CHANGE

Call for Abstracts by Research Network 18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research: Communication, Crisis, Critique and Change

Coordinator: Christian Fuchs christian.fuchs@ut.at
Communication, Crisis, Critique and Change
http://www.esa11thconference.eu/call-for-papers/research-networks/RN18
https://www.facebook.com/events/450441271689391/

Abstracts should not exceed 1750 characters (including spaces, approximately 250 words). Each paper session will have the duration of 1.5 hours. Normally sessions will include 4 papers.

For submission, please use the form that shows up when clicking on the links next to the session titles onhttp://www.esa11thconference.eu/call-for-papers/research-networks/RN18

Abstracts can only be submitted online no later than 1st of February 2013 to the submission platform hosted on the conference website. Abstracts sent by email cannot be accepted.

ESA RN18 focuses in its conference stream on the discussion of how crisis, critque and societal changes shape the study of media, communication & society today. The overall questions we want to address are:
* Which crises (including the fnancial and economic crisis of capitalism, global wars and conflicts, ecological crisis, the crisis of democracy, legitimation crisis, etc) are we experiencing today and how do they influence media and communication in contemporary society?
* What are the major changes of society, the media, and communication that we are experiencing today?
* What forms of political critique (political movements) and academic critique (critical studies, critical media sociology, critical theory, etc) are emerging today and are needed for interpreting and changing media, communication and society?

ESA RN18 is calling for both general submissions on “Communicaton, Crisis, Critique and Change” that address these questions as wellas more specific submissions that address a number of specific session topics. For detailed session descriptions, please see: http://www.esa11thconference.eu/call-for-papers/research-networks/RN18

01RN18. Capitalism, Communication, Crisis & Critique Today
This session focuses on how to critically study the connection of capitalism and communication in times of crisis.

02RN18. Communication, Crisis and Change in Europe
This session focuses on media and communicaton in Europe in times of crisis and change. We are especially interested in presentations that cover Europe as a whole and go beyond single-country studies

03RN18. Knowledge Labour in the Media and Communication Industries in Times of Crisis

04RN18. Critical Social Theory and the Media: Studying Media, Communication and Society Critically

05RN18. Sociology of Communications and Media Research (open)

06JS18. RN18 Joint session with RN06 Critical Political Economy
Critical Political Economy of the Media and Communication in Times of Capitalist Crisis and Change
(Chairs: Ian Bruff & Christian Fuchs)

18JS29. RN18 Joint session with RN29 Social Theory
Social Theory and Media Sociology Today
(Chairs: George Pleios and Csaba Szalo)

 

First published: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/call-for-abstracts-by-research-network-18-sociology-of-communications-and-media-research-communication-crisis-critique-and-change.-esa-conference-turin-28-31-august-2013

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

Glenn Rikowski’s paper, Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society has been published at Heathwood Press as a Monthly Guest Article for September 2012, online at:

http://www.heathwoodpress.com/monthly-guest-article-august-critical-pedagogy-and-the-constitution-of-capitalist-society-by-glenn-rikowski/

 

Heathwood Press: http://www.heathwoodpress.com 

 

The Individuality Pr♥test: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transcontinental/the-individuality-prtest

I Love Transcontinental: http://ihearttranscontinental.blogspot.co.uk/

Communication, Crisis, and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism

 

Sociology

COMMUNICATION, CRISIS, AND CRITIQUE IN CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM

Communication, Crisis, and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism
Conference of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research

October 18-20, 2012.

University of the Basque Country, Bilbao

Details: http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/ESA_RN18_CfP2012.pdf

Keynote Talk: Professor Peter Golding (Northumbria University,UK) – Why a Sociologist should take Communications and Media Seriously

Abstract
In the presentation of this paper, Peter Golding will reflect on why the study of communications and media demands the insights and methods of sociology, and why RN18 therefore is an appropriate network within the European Sociological Association. He will present reflections on how such key sociological concerns as inequality, identity, power, and change are at the heart of the questions we should be posing in addressing the nature and role of the media as institutions and communications as a social process. The paper will also address how far changes in the technologies of media and communications alter, or should alter, our approach to generating research and insight in this field.
Peter Golding is pro-vice chancellor of research & innovation at Northumbria University, founder and honorary chair of ESA RN18.

Call for Submissions and Participation
We are living in times of global capitalist crisis that require rethinking the ways we organize society, communication, the media, and our lives. The current crisis seems to a certain degree be different compared to previous ones, among other reasons due to the role of mediated communication and information in establishing/changing economic, political, and social relations as well as the crisis itself. The crisis can also be seen as crisis of what has been called consumer capitalism or informational capitalism. More precisely it has resulted on the one hand in a hyper-neoliberal intensification of neo-conservative policies and on the other hand in the emergence of new popular movements that are critical of the commodification of everything and demand the strengthening of society’s commons. The second movement has in the social sciences been accompanied by a renewed interest in critical studies, the critique and analysis of class and capitalism, and critical political economy. The overall goal of this conference is to foster scholarly presentations, networking, and exchange on the question of which transitions media and communication and media sociology are undergoing in contemporary society. The conference particularly welcomes contributions that are inspired by sociological theories, critical studies, and various strands and traditions of the critical study of media & society.

Questions that can be covered by presentations include, but are not limited to:

* What is a crisis? What forms of crisis are there? How do they relate to capitalism and communication?

* How have the media presented the crisis? Which similarities and differences in crisis reporting are there between different media (television, press, and new media) or between media in different countries?

* How has the crisis affected various media and cultural industries? What is the role of changing media technology in the economic crisis? How has the media economy changed since the start of the crisis in 2008? How have advertising investments, profits, market values, etc developed in the media economy since the start of the crisis? How has the global expansion of media industries been reshaped by the crisis and what is the future of global media and news agencies? What changes can be traced in the production of news and other media content? Are there changes in the nature of media products?

* What is the role of media and communication technologies in the financialization, acceleration, and globalization of the capitalist economy? How can a post-crisis media economy look like? How has advertising favoured a climate of private consumer debt?

* What are the ideological implications of the crisis for mediascapes? Which ideological discourses do companies, CEOs, managers, or neoliberal politicians use for justifying their interests, lay-offs, high bonuses, inequalities, etc and how are these discourses represented by the media or in strategic company reports? How are hyper-neoliberal crisis policy responses (“socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor” in the form of bank bail outs and budget cuts in areas like welfare, education, social security, health care, etc) ideologically justified and how do the media represent such ideologies? What is the role of finance capital in the media and cultural industries? Which hegemonic, alternative, or contradictory interpretations and reception practices of media content that relates to the crisis are there? Which ideologies and myths underlie the capitalist crisis?

* What is the role of media, communication, critical journalism, and alternative media in contemporary uproars, riots, rebellions, social movements, protests, demonstrations, and revolutions?

* How do identities and mediated identities change in times of crisis? How should one think about the relationship of economy and culture in light of the capitalist crisis? What is the relationship of class and identities and of politics of redistribution and recognition today? How do we have to rethink and reshape the relation between political economy and cultural studies in the light of capitalist crisis in order to adequately study the media and communication?

* How is the public sphere changing in the light of the global crisis? What are perspectives for politics, participation, and democracy today and how do these perspectives relate to the media and communication? Is the role of media in democracy changing? If so, how? Are media a distinct player in politics? If the established media form an estate of power in democracy, do we today new a new estate of power? If so, how could it look like?

* What are the causes, realities, and consequences of the commodification of the communication commons? What are alternatives to the commodification of the communication commons? How can one strengthen and create public media and commons-based forms of communication? What are the relationships and differences between the commodity logic, the gift logic, and the logic of public goods and how do these logics shape the media?

* How do contemporary societal trends, such as integration, diversity and conflicts in Europe and the world, transnationalism and networking, digitization, informatization, globalization, glocalization, prosumption, neoliberalism, privatization and commodification, migration, racism, changing gender relations, consumer and advertising culture, warfare, terrorism, the new imperialism, surveillance, social movement protests, global societal risks, the strengthening of right-wing extremist and fascist movements, or the anti-corporate movement and other movements, shape media and communication and how do media and communication in turn shape society in times of crisis and transition?

* What are the tasks, roles, responsibilities, and identities of the sociology of media and communication in a society that is facing deep crisis? What is the actual or potential role of critique, ethics, struggles, counter-power, resistance, protest, civil society, and social movements in contemporary societies and contemporary communications?

* What are the major trends that shape contemporary society and how are these trends related to mediated communication and knowledge production? In what society do we live? What society do we desire to have? What forms of media and communication do we find in contemporary society? What forms of media and communication do we desire and how must society change in order to achieve these goals?

* What are the major trends in respect to crisis, communication, and critique in Europe? What are the major trends in respect to crisis, communication, and critique in other parts of the world?

* How do different companies and organizations make use of different information transmission technologies? What is the role of high speed financial flows and associated transmission networks in the finance industry? How (in)visible are these flows?

Submission

An abstract of 200-250 words should be sent to Dr. Romina Surugiu, University of Bucharest, at the following e-mail address: bilbao.conference@yahoo.com. Please insert the words Bilbao in the subject. The deadline for abstract submission is May 31st 2012. 

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

New Communications and Demonstrations

Sociology

NEW COMMUNICATIONS AND DEMONSTRATIONS

How are demonstrations represented in the mass media?  How do activists use new media to organise and communicate protest? What benefits do Social Media provide? 

The BSA Media Study Group and the University of Leicester are proud to announce a symposium called ‘New Communications and Demonstrations’. This event will showcase a plethora of valuable research in this field and invite discussions and comments on this topic.

A full programme for the day and online registration are now available at: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/specialisms/Media.htm

 

‘New Communications and Demonstrations’

Wednesday 13th July 2011, 10.30am – 4.30pm

Attenborough Building, University of Leicester

Directions: http://www2.le.ac.uk/maps

 

Symposium fees (Places are limited, so sign up early!)

£25 BSA members and Postgraduates

£35 for non-members

 

For more details about the study group please visit: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/specialisms/Media.htm

Please direct any administrative enquiries to the BSA office at events@britsoc.org.uk and any academic enquires to Dr. Julian Matthews jpm29@leicester.ac.uk  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

On Hauntology / Capitalist Realism – Two Talks by Mark Fisher

Ghosts

ON HAUNTOLOGY \ CAPITALIST REALISM – TWO TALKS BY MARK FISHER

THE COLLOQUIUM FOR UNPOPULAR CULTURE AND NYU’S ASIAN/ PACIFIC/ AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM present:

TWO TALKS BY MARK FISHER

What are grey vampires and how do they retard the insurrectionary potential of digital  discourse?  How does Derrida’s notion of hauntology contribute to an understanding of dubstep artist Burial?  Is ‘Basic Instinct 2’, routinely derided as a cine-atrocity, a Lacanian reworking of Ballard, Baudrillard and Bataille in service of the creation of a ‘phantasmatic, cybergothic London’?  What is interpassivity and in what ways has it come to define the corporatized incarceration of modern academia?

Over the last decade, Mark Fisher has established a reputation as one of the exhilarating cultural theorists in Britain.  A co-founder of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) at Warwick University ­and described by Simon Reynolds as the academic equivalent of Apocalypse Now’s Colonel Kurtz ­ he brings together psychoanalysis, political analysis and speculative fiction to create an extraordinary body of rogue scholarship, a theory-rush with few parallels.

Fisher is the author of ‘Capitalist Realism’, the editor of ‘The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson’ (both Zer0 Books, 2009), and writes regularly for Sight and Sound, Film Quarterly, The Wire and Frieze, as well as maintaining a well-known blog at http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org.  He teaches at the University of East London, Goldsmiths, University of London, and the City Literary Institute.

The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture and NYU’s Asian/ Pacific/ American Studies program are pleased to be hosting Fisher’s first talks inAmerica.

See ‘ The Metaphysics of Crackle’, at: http://pontone.pl/pontones-special-guest-mix-k-punk-the-metaphysics-of-crackle/

***

MARK FISHER, THESE ARE NON-TIMES AS WELL AS NON-PLACES: REFLECTIONS ON HAUNTOLOGY
 
WHEN: Wednesday 4 May 2011, 6:30pm
WHERE: Room 471, 20 Cooper Square [East 5th and Bowery]
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

”Through their generic and transient qualities ­ workstations devoid of personal effects, relations with colleagues as fleeting as those with passengers on a commuter journey ­ many workplaces now resemble non-places, either literally, as in the case of a hotel, corporate coffee chain or out-of-town supermarket, or symbolically, in the form of temporary assignments for faceless employers (dis)located in anonymous buildings, where the worker-commuter then follows the same global timetables, navigates the same software applications and experiences the same sense of placelessness, the feeling of being mere data in the mainframe.”

So writes Ivor Southwood in his analysis of precarious labour, ‘Non-Stop Inertia’ (2011). In the last decade, the proliferation of corporate non-places has been accompanied by the spread of cyberspace-time, or Itime, a distributed or unpunctuated temporality. It’s no coincidence that, as this unmarked time increasingly came to dominate cultural and psychic space, Derrida’s concept hauntology (re)emerged as the name for a paradoxical zeitgeist.  In ‘Specters of Marx’, Derrida argued that the hauntological was characterised by ‘a time out of joint’, and this broken time has been expressed in cultural objects that return to a wounded or distorted version of the past in flight from a waning sense of the present. Sometimes accused of nostalgia, the most powerful examples of hauntological culture actually show that nostalgia is no longer possible.

In conditions where pastiche has become normalised, the question has to be: nostalgia compared to what? James Bridle has recently argued that ‘the opposite of hauntology … [is] to demand the radically new’, but hauntology in fact operates as a kind of thwarted preservation of such demands in conditions where – for the moment at least – they cannot be met. Whereas cyberspace-time tends towards the generation of cultural moments that are as interchangeable as transnational franchise outlets, hauntology involves the staining of particular places with time – albeit a time that is out of joint. In this lecture, Fisher will explore the hauntological culture of the last few years in relation to the question of place, using examples from music (Burial, The Caretaker, Ekoplekz, Richard Skelton), film (Chris Petit, Patrick Keiller) and fiction (Alan Garner, David Peace).

—

MARK FISHER, DEPACIFICATION PROGRAM: FROM CAPITALIST REALISM TO POST-CAPITALISM

WHEN: Thursday 5 May 2011, 6:30pm
WHERE: Room 471, 20 Cooper Square [East 5th and Bowery]
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

”It would be best, perhaps, to think of an alternate world – better to say the alternate world, our alternate world – as one contiguous with ours but without any connections or access to it. Then, from time to time, like a diseased eyeball in which disturbing flashes of light are perceived or like those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world suddenly break into this one, we are reminded that Utopia exists and that other systems, other spaces, are still possible” (Fredric Jameson, ‘Valences of the Dialectic’).

In his 2009 book ‘Capitalist Realism’, Mark Fisher started to explore some of the affective, psychological and political consequences of the deeply entrenched belief that there is no alternative to capitalism. After 1989, capital seemed to enjoy full spectrum dominance of both global space and the unconscious. Every imaginable future was capitalist.  What has been mistaken for post-political apathy, Fisher argued, was a pervasive sense of reflexive impotence in the face of a neoliberal ideological program which sought to subordinate all of culture to the imperatives of business. The subject of post-Fordist capitalism is no passive dupe; this subject actively participates in an ‘interpassive’ corporate culture which solicits our involvement and encourages us to ‘join the debate’.

As Fisher argues in the book, education has been at the forefront of this process, with teachers and lecturers locked into managerialist self-surveillance, and students induced into the role of consumers.

In the eighteen months since ‘Capitalist Realism’ was published, the neoliberal program has been seriously compromised, but capitalist realism has intensified – with austerity programs pushed through on the basis that it is unthinkable that capitalism should be allowed to fail. At the same time, this new, more desperate form of capitalist realism has also faced unexpected challenges from a militancy growing in Europe, the Middle East and even in the heartlands of neoliberalism such as the UK and the US. Now that history has started up again, and Jameson’s ‘baroque sunbursts’ flare brighter than they have for a generation, we can begin to pose questions that had receded into the unimaginable during the high pomp of neoliberal triumphalism: what might a post-capitalism look like,
and how can we get there?

Fisher will argue that the Left will only succeed if it can reclaim modernity from a neoliberal Right that has lost control of it. This entails understanding how the current possibilities for agency are contoured and constrained by the machinery of what Deleuze and Foucault called the Control Society, including cyberspace, the media landscape, psychic pathologies and pharmacology – failures to act are not failures of will, and all the will in the world will not eliminate capitalism. It also entails recognising that neoliberalism’s global hegemony arose from capturing desires which it could not satisfy. A genuinely new Left must be shaped by those desires, and not be lulled, once again, by the logics of failed revolts.

—

Queries: ss162@nyu.edu

***END***

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

New Blog on Social Network Unionism

Mute

NEW BLOG ON SOCIAL NETWORK UNIONISM

Social Network Unionism Blog: http://snuproject.wordpress.com/

About the SNU Project

Social Network Unionism Project is not only about the rise in the recent developments in P2P technology, the phenomenon called Web 2.0, and conceptualising the transformatory impact of these technical developments on unions at national and international levels, and labour movement in general. Besides defining the concept of SNU, by looking closely to the existing practices within and without established unions and labour organisations, the project also aims at promoting a new type of working class organisation that takes online and real world social, peer to peer networking principles into the core of its existence.

The idea is based on the premise that the development in the mentioned communication and media technology since 2004 onwards has created new organisational capacities for networks. There are already astonishing experiments taking place in the field, from whose successes and failures we can learn and upon them we can build new models; not only to grow in members and fight back stronger but also to form wider alliances and start building new social, economic and political norms and cultures bottom up.

Based on these insights our objective is to explore further on the potential of SNU concept, in terms of reaching out the unorganisible, activating organised rank and file, making direct democracy a reality, and bridging as much transformatory social forces as possible through this blog. We hope to such concept and effort would contribute to the global process of union revitalization and may be further to the general emancipation of labour from ‘work’, as feed for the greed for private profit and power.

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Centre for the Study of Education and Work – Update 3rd April 2011

Student Rebellion

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 3rd APRIL 2011

EVENTS

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR PRIOR LEARNING ASSESSMENT (CAPLA) FALL FOCUS WORKSHOP AND AGM

November 13 -15, 2011
One King West Hotel
Toronto, Ontario

The significance of our conference venue at One King West (formerly the Dominion Bank Building) has provided the inspiration to consider the recognition of prior learning (RPL) as an investment in the future. Recognizing prior learning (RPL) pays big dividends for people, communities, organizations and countries. Managing one’s own knowledge assets is vital in an ever-changing labour market. Cashing in on what people know and can do is important to employers and to the future prosperity of Canadians and newcomers.

Sponsorship: CAPLA is looking for individuals and organizations who are able to provide financial support to assist with the costs associated with this important event. Please contact us at 1-613-860-1747 or capla@agendamanagers.com to hear more.

Attention Presenters! We are looking for innovative practices, current research, new trends, international programs and service delivery models that contribute to our understanding and overall effectiveness of prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) and qualification recognition (QR). If you would like to be a presenter, please send a 100 word description to the Conference Secretariat at CAPLA@agendamanagers.com or call 1-877-731-1333 or 1-902-422-1886 by April 30.

Conference registration fees start at $379. Additional details and program updates can be found on the CAPLA website at http://www.capla.ca or by calling the Conference Secretariat at 1-877-731-1333.

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READNEX POETRY SQUAD, PRESENTED BY BARRIO NUEVO

April 15, 2011
9 pm
Blue Moon Pub
725 Queen St. East, Toronto

Description: “Since the emergence, disappearance, and resurgence of The Last Poets, no other group of young stanza-kickers have come about and made a significant impact in the music world. Thankfully the ReadNex Poetry Squad has decided to fill this void.”

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MINING AND RESISTANCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA: CANADIAN CORPORATIONS AT WAR AGAINST RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

April 10
2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
OISE, 252 Bloor Street West, Room 5150
Toronto
No Registration. Everyone welcome.

Presenters: Juan Carlos Jimenez, Megan Cotton-Kinch, organizers in the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network.

Canadian mining companies are continuing to contaminate water, poison land and tear apart communities in Central America. In El Salvador, the government has ruled that metal mining would fatally pollute the rivers needed for agriculture, but the country itself is now being sued for $77 million under a free trade agreement. In Guatemala, Mayan communities are fighting back through community-controlled referendums, but face the imposition of martial law. In Honduras, the Canadian government was one of the first to legitimize a bloody military coup, which replaced a left-leaning government with one more friendly to mining interests.

Organizers from Mining Injustice Solidarity Network will present on how Canada is complicit in intimidation, assassinations, anti-environmental lawsuits and military coups and how we in Canada can join in solidarity with the struggle for justice.

Readings: http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/corporate-rights-over-human-rights-canadian-mining-central-america

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q20YxkM-CGI

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BOOK LAUNCH – MEDIA MEDIOCRITY: HOW THE TELEVISION MAKES US STOOPID!

April 16, 2011
4:00pm – 6:00pm
Another Story Bookshop
315 Roncesvalles Ave
Toronto, ON

Meteorologist, TV/film producer, university lecturer, writer, broadcaster and general media expert, Richard Zurawski is coming to the store to lead a discussion about how the media is failing to keep us informed.

Why do so many people still deny the “hypothesis” of global climate change? All but a few rogue scientists agree that we have a crisis on our hands, but all we get from TV and news media are debates in the form of sound bites… Why are we denying the voices of those experts in favor of politicians and pundits? So get up off the couch and let’s have a discussion (with an expert) face to
face!

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REBEL FILMS – MADE IN DAGENHAM

Friday, April 8
7 p.m.
OISE, 252 Bloor St. West, Room 2-212
St. George Subway Station
Everyone welcome. $4 donation requested.

Made in Dagenham 2010, 113 minutes. In 1968, the Ford auto factory in Dagenham was one of the largest single private employers in the United Kingdom. In addition to the thousands of male employees, there are also 187 underpaid women machinists who primarily assemble the car seat upholstery in poor working conditions. Dissatisfied, the women fight for a better deal. However, Rita O’Grady learns that there is a larger issue in this dispute: that women are paid an appalling fraction of the men’s wages for the same work across the board on the sole basis of their sex. Refusing to tolerate this inequality any longer, O’Grady leads a strike by her fellow machinists for equal pay for equal work. What follows would test the patience of all involved in a grinding labour and political struggle that ultimately would advance the cause of women’s rights around the world. Marie Clarke Walker, Canadian Labour Congress Executive V.P., will lead off a discussion on the film.

Please visit: http://www.socialistaction-canada.blogspot.com or call 416 – 535-8779.

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SOCIAL ECONOMY CENTRE – MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCES IN NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS CERTIFICATE

With Kunle Akingbola (University of Toronto / Toronto Rehab)

Human resources are not only the core asset of community organizations; such organizations cannot replace their human capital with investment in physical capital. Coupled with the pressure to be efficient and strategic, maximizing human capital is essential to achieving organizations goals. This
certificate program is designed to strengthen human resource management and leadership competencies by helping managers to acquire tools and resources to enhance leadership skills, manage organizational change and gain knowledge around effective compensation.

* Change Management – April 21
* Compensation and Benefits – May 27

9:30 am-4:00 pm
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West, Toronto (St. George subway station)
         
Cost: $140 + HST.  A limited number of spaces are available to students at a discounted rate. Discount for those registering for more than one workshop, or for more than one person registering from the same organization.

To Register: Access the online registration form at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FY65KMM or contact Lisa White at secworkshops@gmail.com, or 416-978-0022.

Kunle Akingola is a Human Resources Manager/Consultant and Adjunct Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto with extensive experience in both the non-profit and corporate sector

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NEWS & VIEWS

RACE, CLASS STRUGGLE AND ORGANIZED LABOUR IN THE “AGE OF WISCONSIN”

By Ajamu Nangwaya, Linchpin

…The racialized section of the United States’ working-class has been bearing the brunt of the racist, sexist and capitalist battering of the welfare state structures since the 1980s without much sympathy from their white working-class counterparts…But predominantly-white Wisconsin is up in arms when the chicken comes home to roost in their own backyard! Martin Luther King was quite right when he declared, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We can only hope that white workers come to realize that white supremacist beliefs and practices only weaken the working-class – to the advantage of the small capitalist elite.

Read more: http://linchpin.ca/content/left/Race-class-struggle-organized-labour-%E2%80%9CAge-Wisconsin%E2%80%9D

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BILL 150: ATTACK ON PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS

By Herman Rosenfeld, BASICSnews

By the end of March, the Ontario Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty will have passed Bill 150. It declares the TTC to be an essential service and denies Toronto public transit workers – members of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union (ATU) Local 113 – the right to strike.

The attack on the transit workers was one of the first things that the newly elected right-wing populist Mayor of Toronto did this winter. Building on the memory of a short transit stoppage and the municipal workers strike from a couple of summers ago, Ford saw this as part of his plans to demonize public sector workers as a way of isolating all unions and weakening the collective gains of working people.

Read more: http://basicsnews.ca/?p=2918

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INVITATION TO JOIN LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCHERS OF ONTARIO (LARO)

The Latin American Researchers of Ontario (LARO), a recently formed non-profit association, is extending a warm invitation to individuals and organizations to join its membership and collective work.

The organization aims to promote research on Latin America and Latin Americans in Ontario. It hopes to provide an inclusive and interdisciplinary space for individuals who share an interest in the production and dissemination of written, oral, visual, and other knowledge and who define themselves and/or their work as Latin American.

In an effort to challenge elitist tendencies, the organization seeks give priority and visibility to grassroots research and to question prevalent forms of inequality.

Members will have the opportunity to share their work, knowledge, experiences and ideas with other members and constructively learn from each other. As a new organization, LARO is open to the incorporation of new ideas, visions, and projects.

For more information, we invite you to visit our website: http://www.latinamericanresearchers.com/

If you wish to become a LARO member and/or receive information from us, please click the link below to our contact page and send us your contact information, including your research interest, and let us know if you would like your name to appear in the public members’ list: http://www.latinamericanresearchers.com/contact.html.

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A PRIMER ON CLASS STRUGGLE

By Michael Schwalbe, Common Dreams

When we study Marx in my graduate social theory course, it never fails that at least one student will say (approximately), “Class struggle didn’t escalate in the way Marx expected. In modern capitalist societies class struggle has disappeared. So isn’t it clear that Marx was wrong and his ideas are of little value today?”

Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/31-4

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MAKING IT COUNT – CCPA’S (CANADIAN CENTRE FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES) FEDERAL ELECTION BLOG

The CCPA has launched a federal election blog to bring you expert analysis on the issues that will—or should—define the election.

Making It Count features timely commentary from CCPA staff and research associates, who will be weighing in everything from the economy and federal finances to the social and environmental challenges facing our country.

Read more: http://federalelectionblog.ca/

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(END)
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ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):

Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin

The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education.

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

—END—

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

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Corporate Takeovers, Internet Challenges: Does Journalism Have a Future?

Bonuses for Some

CORPORATE TAKEOVERS, INTERNET CHALLENGES: DOES JOURNALISM HAVE A FUTURE?

SERGE HALIMI

Wednesday 2 March, 6:30pm
SOAS, Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre
Free entrance, no booking, first come first seated

SERGE HALIMI is the Director of Le Monde diplomatique. After a Ph.D in political science at UC Berkeley, he has authored several books on topics ranging from an historical overview of the French Left in power to an analysis of how neoliberalism has prevailed worldwide. A specialist in American politics and society, he is also known for his critique of the links between media and business. His muckraking exposé against French journalists, Les Nouveaux chiens de garde (The New Watchdogs), has been one of the best-selling essays of the last fifteen years in France. Published into twenty seven languages in over fifty countries, Le Monde diplomatique has a global circulation of 2.4 million copies.

‘THE GLOBALISATION LECTURES’
Organised by the Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

Convenor: Professor Gilbert Achcar, 2010-2011

Coming Events in the Department of Development Studies: http://www.soas.ac.uk/development/events/

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Post/Autonomia – Call for Papers

Autonomia

POST/AUTONOMIA – CALL FOR PAPERS

Post/autonomia – Call for Papers

Amsterdam, 19-22 May 2011

University of Amsterdam/SMART Project Space

Keynote speakers include:

Franco Berardi (‘Bifo’)

Vittorio Morfino

Stevphen Shukaitis (to be confirmed)

Immaterial labour; multitude; the communism of capital; commons; precarity; biopolitics: autonomist thought has undoubtedly provided contemporary critical theory with some of its major concepts and/or allowed for an important reconsidering of these. Most importantly, autonomist thought has been at the forefront of thinking the crucial shifts in contemporary capitalism and its effects in both the social and cultural sphere. Autonomism’s impact on current critical theory in both European and American academia can therefore hardly be underestimated. Moreover, today we witness a resurgence of autonomist models of activism and thought in social movements in for example Italy, Greece, the UK and California.

‘What can ‘post/autonomia’ mean today?’ therefore is one of the pivotal questions in contemporary critical theory and activism. Rather than packaging it as ‘Italian Theory’, we would like to explore the international dissemination of autonomous thought and activism today and their possible futures; in particular we would like to explore critical engagements and uses of autonomist ideas that shape what we might call post/autonomia. It is precisely the dynamics, tensions and ruptures between autonomia and its possible futures (or ‘posts’) that we would like to investigate. What are the effects of autonomia, as a thought and a movement, in a variety of domains: from critical theory to cinema, from activism to academic practice?

Crucial questions raised by the notion of post/autonomia are:

* How did autonomist thought move from what was in fact a specific local context to the global activist and intellectual sphere?

* What are the possible connections between (post)autonomia and other contemporary conceptualizations of ‘communism’?

* What is the role of (post)autonomist thinking in current efforts to reassemble and reconstitute the militant left?

* What are possible connections/convergences between (post)autonomism and post-situationism, anarchism or the green movement?

* How can post/autonomia be situated in the aftermath or even afterlife of the ‘no global’ moment?    * How is post/autonomia taking shape in diverse cultural and artistic interventions?

* What is the significance of autonomist thought in non-western/global contexts (e.g. the debates concerning precarious labour in China)?

* How does the current the interest in autonomism and its relevance relate to political discourses concerning the ‘heritage’ of 68/77 and their alleged ‘liquidation’ (by Berlusconi/Sarkozy); to what extent does it encourage or block these debates?

* What elements of autonomism remain unaddressed today (e.g. the feminist heritage)?

* What particular nexus between theory/militant practice takes shape in post/autonomia (e.g. in media activism and precarity-movements)?

* What new perspectives/connections can be created: e.g. post/autonomia and queer, the metropolis, bioeconomy, etc. etc.

The conference will provide a platform for addressing these and other important questions. Papers may address the following topics (but are by no means bound to these):

Post/autonomia and:

–       contemporary activism

–       conceptualizations of bio-politics

–       the neo-liberal state

–       precarity

–       media activism

–       academic activism and new student movements (L’Onda che viene etc)

–       post-situationism

–       queer autonomy

–       feminism

–       the work of individual theorists (e.g. Negri, Virno, Berardi, Guattari, Lazzerato, Marazzi etc)

–       semiocapitalism

–       artistic and cultural activism

–       political/cultural memories of autonomia

–       the metropolis and the social factory today

–       the new communism

–       transversality

–       new spinozisms

–       (the lessons of) Genoa 2001

–       strategies of resistance

–       populism

–       the law, the state of exception and legitimacy

We welcome both academic and practice-oriented contributions in English. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send abstracts (350 words) before March 15 to postautonomia@gmail.com. For further information, please contact postautonomia@gmail.com.

This conference is the first of a series within the project Precarity and Post-autonomia: the Global Heritage funded by NWO (Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research).

Organizing committee:

–       Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA)

–       Joost de Bloois, University of Amsterdam

–       Silvia Contarini, Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre La Défence

–       Monica Jansen, Utrecht University

–       Federico Luisetti, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA)

–       Frans-Willem Korsten, Leiden University/Erasmus University Rotterdam

–       Gianluca Turricchia, University of Amsterdam

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Capitalist Crisis, Communication and Culture

Capitalism

CAPITALIST CRISIS, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE

 tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society

Vol. 8. No. 2: Special Issue on Capitalist Crisis, Communication & Culture
Edited by Christian Fuchs, Matthias Schafranek, David Hakken, Marcus Breen
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/current

Suggested citation: Fuchs, Christian, Matthias Schafranek, David Hakken and Marcus Breen. Eds. 2010. Special issue on “Capitalist crisis, communication & culture“. tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 8 (2): 193-309.

“Capitalism […] is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point” (Slavoj Žižek).

What is the role of communication in the general situation of capitalist crisis?
The global economic downturn is an indicator of a new worldwide capitalist crisis. The main focus of most public debates as well as of economic and policy analyses is the role of finance capital and the housing market in creating the crisis, less attention is given to the role of communication technologies, the media, and culture in the world economic crisis. The task of this special issue of tripleC is to present analyses of the role of ICTs, the media, and culture in the current crisis of capitalism. The seven papers focus on the causes, development, and effects of the crisis. Each paper relates one or more of these dimensions to ICTs, the media, or culture.

Capitalist Crisis, Communication, & Culture – Introduction to the Special Issue of tripleC
Christian Fuchs, Matthias Schafranek, David Hakken and Marcus
Breen (Special Issue Editors)
pp 193-204
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/228/189

Computing and the Current Crisis:
The Significant Role of New Information Technologies in Our Socio-Economic Meltdown
David Hakken
pp 205-220
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/161/193

The Virtual Debt Factory: Towards an Analysis of Debt and Abstraction in the American Credit Crisis
Vincent R. Manzerolle
pp 221-236
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/149/192

Calculating the Unknown. Rationalities of Operational Risk in Financial Institutions
Matthias Werner and Hajo Greif
pp 237-250
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/184/194

Crisis, What Crisis? The Media: Business and Journalism in Times of Crisis
Rosario de Mateo, Laura Bergés, Anna Garnatxe*
pp 251-274
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/212/195

Anglo-American Credit Scoring and Consumer Debt in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis of 2007 as Models for Other Countries?
Thomas Ruddy
pp 275-284
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/176/198

Crise, Genre et TIC : Recette pour une Dés-Union Pronon- cée. L’Exemple de l’Afrique du Sud (in French)
Joelle Palmieri
pp 285-309
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/141/197

– – –
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Christian Fuchs
Unified Theory of Information Research Group
christian.fuchs@uti.at
Personal Website: http://fuchs.uti.at
NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog
Research Group: http://www.uti.at
Editor of
tripleC – Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation | Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
http://www.triple-c.at
Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge.
http://fuchs.uti.at/?page_id=40

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Capitalism

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com/

Studies in Evil Media

Evil Media

STUDIES IN EVIL MEDIA

 

University of East London School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Centre for Cultural Studies Research present:

Studies in Evil Media

October 7th 2009, 14:00-17:00, University of East London, Docklands Campus (Cyprus DLR – the station is literally at the campus), Room EB.3.19 (third floor, main building, turn left on entering the main square from station)

All Welcome

Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths: Author of Media Ecologies) & Andrew Goffey (Middlesex University: Translator of Isabelle Stengers’ Capitalist Sorcery)

Evil Media

Evil Media updates Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ for the era of networked digital media and corporate governance. Addressing a range of objects, practices, techniques and knowledges traditionally excluded from the purview of media studies, it explores the sophistry that is quite literally embodied by the sophisticated technologies of the knowledge economy. ‘Evil’ explicitly references the antagonistic ethical and moral quality that an epoch gorging itself on progress has sought unsuccessfully to banish; and so Evil Media offers a useful prospectus of the ruses, subterfuges, deception, manipulation and trickery which media technics make possible and effective.  By adopting a perspective which counters the idealistic, liberal, assumptions encoded within the notion of representation or facilitation and enabling, it aims to re-situate the study of media within a framework which includes forms of media that are ‘below the radar’ of most contemporary theory and actively occluded by the framework of representation.  Here, media do not so much tell us about things, but are themselves things that exhibit behaviours.

Tony Sampson (University of East London: Author of Virality:Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks) – New Media Hypnosis

Drawing on the microsociology of Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), and a number of other “Tardean scholars”, this presentation approaches the idea that new media landscapes function increasingly as a mode of hypnotic mass persuasion. Significantly, this is not a sociological perspective that concerns itself with rational, self-contained individuals, or indeed society as a whole, but rather responds to what one viral marketer (following a decidedly similar trajectory to Tarde) recently referred to as ‘the invisible currents that run between and among consumers’. These ‘invisible currents’, affective contagions (Thrift, 2007), or the radiation of imitation-suggestibility, as Tarde termed it, work at the intersections between attention inattention, cognition/noncognition, social/biological domains and consciousness/unconsciousness. The talk focuses on examples taken from the new science of networks,epidemiology, HCI, emotional design, affective computing, eye tracking technology, neuromarketing and evil media studies.

Respondent: Paul Gormley
(University of East London: Author of The New Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary American Cinema).

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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