Realism Bites

Speculative Realism

REALISM BITES

Eighth Biannual Graduate Student Conference of the German Program

Department of German and Romance Languages and Literature at the Johns Hopkins University

Realism Bites: Disruptive Realisms in Modernity

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Elisabeth Strowick, Johns Hopkins University

Prof. Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota

November 6- 7, 2015
The Johns Hopkins University

 

All the fissures and rents which are inherent in the historical situation must be drawn into the form-giving process and cannot nor should be disguised by compositional means.

(György Lukács, The Theory of the Novel)

 

The term realism has been associated with multiple artistic practices, styles and movements from nineteenth-century bourgeois realism to socialist realism, surrealism, Italian neorealism, magical realism, and postmodern hyperrealism. Its repetitions and invocations express a commitment to and a struggle for reality, rearticulating the political, social and epistemological functions and meanings of art. As a form of “Darstellung der Wirklichkeit,” it carries the tension of a set of oppositions: the reality that is and the reality that ought to be; an objective and verisimilar reproduction and a poetic constitution of reality; a conventional mode and personal expression of reality.

György Lukács emphasized the necessity for a “critical realism,” one that is determined by a critical perception and mediation of social contradictions, rather than their naïve reproduction. The notion of unity, so important for the Lukácsian concept of ‘critical realism,’ refers not only to the realist novel’s capacity to reveal the totality of social relations, but also to its depiction of the individual’s striving to reach totality as a mode of being. Even though, Lukács considered the novel as the primary form for the critical depiction of the modern conditio humana, the question can be raised whether “critical realism” functions more as an epistemo-critical concept than as a rigid genre definition. Since Lukács, many scholars and artists have called into question his notion of totality and human agency, and contested h is definition of art as a representational medium that reveals a social totality. Should we, as Fredric Jameson has suggested, hold on to a concept of totality, when discussing current “problems of realism?” How do the various forms of realism relate to what Lukács – justifiably or not – has identified as the pseudo-objectivity of Naturalism, on the one hand, and extreme subjectivism, on the other? Can one actualize critical realisms for a critique of representation? And in what way do contemporary reassessments and actualizations of realisms repeat or reverse traditional dichotomies, such as those between idealism and realism, nominalism and realism, realism and modernism?

 

This call for paper invites submissions from a wide variety of disciplines that discuss competing aesthetic strategies. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.

Please submit abstracts (300-500 words) with your name and affiliation to Esther Edelmann and Christiane Ketteler at realismbitesgermangrads@gmail.com by August 13, 2015.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Realism repeated: Realism after Modernism
• Avant-garde “realities”
• Antinomies and instabilities within classical realisms
• The reception of realisms and its historical conditions
• Realisms, political movements and alliances
• Speculative Realism and the constitution and emergence of objects
• Excessive Realism or new possibilities of perceptions of objects
• Productive realisms or the emergence of new orders
• Realisms (false) friends: Reportage, Travelogue, and Documentary
• The Real and the Reality Principle
• Capitalist Realism and the limits and problems in representing global capitalism and its alternatives
• Theories and Projects of Mapping
• Hyperrealism and the Desert of the Real / The Spectacle of Reality
• Abject Realisms and the abjected within Realism
• Realism and the Dissolutions of boundaries between the arts
• Realism, Nominalism, Idealism, (New) Materialism
• Realism, Romanticism, Symbolism
• Post/Colonial Realisms
• Feminist Realism
• Realism and the Problem of Exemplarity
• “Wirklichkeit als das Wirkende”

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-german-graduate-conference-realism-bites-nov-6-7-2015-jhu-baltimore

 

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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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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Transversal Practices: Matter, Ecology, and Relationality

Transversality

TRANSVERSAL PRACTICES: MATTER, ECOLOGY, AND RELATIONALITY

EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS

VI Conference on New Materialism

27–29 September 2015

The Victorian College of the Arts

The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.

 

Extension on Call for Papers

New deadline – 16 February 2015

Abstracts for academic papers, creative proposals and experimental and/or experiential laboratorium are invited from scholars/writers/artists/scientists. Please submit a 250-word abstract or proposal with a title, keywords and technical requirements along with a short 100 word biography via the Newmats2015 website template.

Submit your abstracts online at: http://www.newmats2015.net

 

Confirmed Keynotes:

A/Professor Erin Manning, SenseLab, Concordia University, Canada

Professor Hayden Lorimer, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Professor Brian Martin, Deakin University, Australia

 

Transversal Practices focuses on how things, subjects, collectives, politics and disciplines are in the making; how they take-form and transform in relation to other elements, both human and nonhuman. Transversal Practices are concerned with ecologies where intensities of movement are aligned with and embrace hands-on attitude and artistic, scientific, ethnographical, philosophical and activist praxis.

We offer three keywords to inspire thinking and to carve out the specificities of practice. Matter refers to ubiquitous, vibrant and continuous becoming that is one of the central concerns of New Materialism: practices are always material, and surprising in nature. Ecology indicates an open and continuously transforming system, which depends upon how its components relate to each other. Relationality, for its part, is the moving principle of being in the world, or with the world. We become in relation to others. We co-emerge, as do artworks, ideas and collectives.

We welcome contributions that address, for example, the following questions:

How do transversal practices work and how can we account or conceptualise them?

What kind of methodologies do they necessitate, or call for?

We encourage critical approaches that transversally cross the following: collectivity, corporeality/incorporeality, materiality/immateriality, indigeneity, individual/group subjectivity, knowledge-production/onto-epistemologies, language, temporality, transdisciplinarity, processes of making art/philosophy/ activism, and the three Ss—spatiality, sociality and the sensorium. All conference submissions will be referred with opportunities to submit completed papers for a refereed publication.

Enquiries about the conference can be directed to: admin@newmats2015.net

Newmats2015 conference is sponsored by the Faculty of the VCA and MCM at the University of Melbourne in co-operation with ISCH COST Action New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter.’

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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

 

‘Time and Space in the Social Universe of Capital’ – by Michael Neary and Glenn Rikowski, now at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/10545768/Time_and_Speed_in_the_Social_Universe_of_Capital

New Forms of Realism in Contemporary Philosophy

Speculative Realism

NEW FORMS OF REALISM IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY

INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES – SKOPJE

New Forms of Realism in Contemporary Philosophy

In cooperation with the International Institute of Studies of Humanities and Social Sciences (Athens)

SUMMER SCHOOL

2015

June 26^th – July 3rd 2015 in Ohrid, Macedonia

 

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje in cooperation with the International

Institute of Studies of Humanities and Social Sciences (based in Athens) announces the summer school program “New Forms of Realism in Contemporary Philosophy.” Part 1 will be held in Ohrid (Macedonia) 26 June-3 July, 2015.

The “New Forms of Realism in Contemporary Philosophy” summer school in Ohrid will focus on the recent trends of realism in contemporary philosophy which has been labeled often erroneously under a single and vague category such as “speculative realism” or “new materialism” etc. Unpacking such generalizations and aiming at specific authors who have generated distinct strands of thought that nonetheless constitute what we have vaguely termed “new realisms in philosophy,” we conceptualized the sub-courses:

– “The non-standard philosophy of François Laruelle”; sub-course leader: François Laruelle

– “Non-standard epistemologies”; sub-course leader Anne Françoise Schmid

– “Magic Realism and Socialist Realism: Arts and Persuasion”; sub-course leader Svetlana Slapšak

– “Exploration of possibilities for realist readings in contemporary feminist philosophy in line with non-standard philosophy and the writings of Marx”; sub-course leader: Katarina Kolozova

Working language of the summer school will be English and French (with translation into English).

Professors:

Prof. Dr. François Laruelle, Prof. Dr. Anne Françoise Schmid, Prof. Dr. Katarina Kolozova, Prof. Dr. Ray Brassier (TBC) and Prof. Dr. GDil rA.nSvidejtalrana Slapšak, Prof.

Summer school Director:

Prof. Dr. Katarina Kolozova, Executive Director of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje

Summer school academic coordinator:

Dr. Jordan Šišovski, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje

Eligibility:

-Participants must be MA students or PhD candidates in any field belonging to the social sciences or humanities

-Participants must submit an abstract for a presentation in one of the summer school’s workshops or for one of the final presentations sessions;

-Participants from other countries are also eligible to participate;

Registration:

Early bird Registration: until February 20th

Participation fee: 140 Euro for 9 day course

Early bird applications from at least three persons from same institution: 100 Euro

Normal Registration: February 21^st – March 20th

Participation fee: 170 Euro for 9 day course

Applications from at least three persons from same institution: 130 Euros

Late applications:

Registration: March 21st – April 10th

Participation fee: 210 euro for 9 day course

Late applications from at least three persons from same institution: 170 Euros

Number of participants: 50

Process of Selection

Members of the boards  of the Internaitonal Institute in Athens and of ISSHS will form the organizing committee and selection committee that will review the applications

Interested applicants should send short CV, abstract for presentation and the available application form.

Deadline for submitting an application: April 10th 2015

Deadline for announcing the results of the selection process: April 30th 2015

Accommodation:

It is entirely up to each student to decide accommodation of their own choosing. The organizers will provide information and enable and inform about possibilities for discount accommodation, and will be available to help logistically.

Contact persons:

Dr. Jordan Šišovski, Project Coordinator, e-mail: jordan.shishovski@isshs.edu.mk, info@isshs.edu.mk

Applications should be sent to the Project Coordinator to either of these two addresses.

Prof. Dr. Katarina Kolozova, Executive Director of Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje, e-mail: katerina.kolozova@isshs.edu.mk

Address: 20 Oktomvri nr. 8 (second floor), 1000 Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

Tel/Fax: +389 2 3 113 059

http://www.isshs.edu.mk

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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Education for the Commons: Pedagogy, Politics, and Potentiality

Education Crisis

EDUCATION FOR THE COMMONS: PEDAGOGY, POLITICS, AND POTENTRIALITY

Call for Book Abstracts: ‘Education for the commons: Pedagogy, politics, and potentiality’

Alexander Means, State University of New York, Buffalo State
Derek R. Ford, Syracuse University
Graham B. Slater, University of Utah

While the common has a long history in Western and non-Western thought, it has recently re-emerged as a prominent theme within social science, law, economics, business, technology, policy, ecology, and activist theories and movements. The reinvigoration of the common across these varied fields can be attributed largely to growing recognition of the need for creative responses to a wide array of global crises that threaten our collective lives and futures. In this sense, the common is often invoked as a challenge to neoliberal hegemony and the destructive expansionary drive of capitalism to enclose what remains of the world’s common resources, labor, and culture for private gain. At the same time, the common is also being taken up as a pragmatic and utopian referent to rethink modern political categories and imagine alternatives to both capitalism (private property) and socialism (public property). This framing of the common as both an analytical concept and normative political ideal has generated fascinating new discussions around the nature of contemporary subjectivity and collectivity as well as new forms of life, labor and value relations, identity, imperialism and neocolonialism, and–what we wish to focus on in this edited collection–education.

The common, we argue in this volume, must be understood as an educational concept. This is another way of suggesting that the common is inherently pedagogical. As an actual and virtual field of material, social, and cultural production, the common is constantly being made, remade, and undone. The fault lines and generative tensions of commoning and enclosing, by enabling or constraining ways of being, knowing, working, and relating, literally teach us. To say that commoning and enclosing are pedagogical relations is to also recognize that they are political relations–that is, the common is always a divided and contested site rich in social and cultural difference and rife with differentials of power. Ultimately, the pedagogical and political dimensions of commoning and enclosing always harbor latent forms of potentiality. As with education itself, the common can never be fully captured or enclosed. Rather the common is an open question: a necessarily hopeful and conflicted condition of our global commonality and interrelation.

This volume is interested in exploring education as a crucial domain of the common. How is it that conflicts over the common raise and answer pedagogical questions concerning geography, class, power, race, gender, institutions, sexuality, value, labor, technology, colonialism, subjectivity, communication, politics, affect, emancipation, and ecology? What can educational theories offer movements for the common, and how can struggles for commons, particularly common educational institutions and practices, inform the development of educational theory and critical social theory more broadly? We are interested in abstracts of no more than 300 words that explore these questions concerning contemporary articulations of education and the common through a variety of themes and topics.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Privatization and New Enclosures
• Public, Private, and Common
• Values, Value Theory, Value Conflicts
• Precarity, Labor, and Social Reproduction
• Technology, Technoscience, Technopolitics
• New Materialisms
• Aesthetics and Affect Theory
• Queer Theory
• Indigenous Perspectives and Indigeneity
• Decolonial Projects
• Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Disability
• Feminism and Feminist Pedagogies
• Critical Race Theory
• Neoliberal Culture and Subjectivity
• Humanism, Transhumanism, and Posthumanism
• Critical Pedagogy and Radical Educational Philosophy
• Cognitive Capitalism, New Media, and Immaterial Labor
• Finance Capitalism, Anti-capitalism, and Post-Capitalism
• Biopolitics, Governmentality, Power, Subjectivity
• Social Movements, Occupations, Radical Imaginations
• Ecoliteracy, Ecopolitics, and Ecopedagogy
• Spatial Theory, Place-Based Education, Border and Mobility Studies
• Critical Disability Studies

If you are interested in contributing to this edited collection for Palgrave Macmillan please submit an abstract by March 31, 2015 of no more than 300 words to: educationforthecommons@gmail.com.

We anticipate final manuscripts being due January 4, 2016 with a late 2016 publication. Manuscripts should be between 6,000-8,000 words.

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/