Assemblages
We are interested in thinking about those movements/moments of
'outside belonging' (Probyn) that presumably co-exist with the
segmentary spaces that divide modern or colonial society -
its formalized institutions, the hierarchy of specialists,
domains of super-vision and spheres of
observation/testing/competence that work to capture, control,
or manage the flux of everyday life along with the supposed
structure of inter-dependent individualities or the state of
generalized dependency that exist only for the organically
minded. We are thinking about assemblages, those diffuse,
unstable multiplicities and heterogeneous ensembles (neither
multiple/divisible, nor one/indivisible) that live on the
margins of the framework, in the openings between the offices,
the structures and binary divisions of modernity, and
constitute the connective micro-tissues between organized
sites. Here, we may think about those encounters with
'strangers,' those non-hierarchical, unauthorized (or even
anti-authoritarian) moments of sociable contact, those fluid,
irregular and unstable mixtures, 'forms of togetherness'
(Bauman) or forms of sociation (Simmel), that may hinge on
sentimentality but are nevertheless defined by their
particular style. Our primary concern is the consistency of
these qualitative mixtures. How are these marginal,
deterritorialized encounters or 'nomadic' life-styles
(Braidotti) formed and held together? Are they formed on the
basis of a resistance to landscape, architecture, to authority
or organization, that is, to all those bounded and binding
structures? Is their primary aim to resist organization, to
ward off hierarchy, identity, or settled ways? Is there a
micro-politics at work in the assemblage? Do they have an
economy (as in Lyotard's libidinal economy) that resides
outside the sphere of commodification, comprising
non-formalized exchanges (of bodies, gift-giving,
story-telling) and following other circuits? What of their
sites? Do these rhizomatic meetings (or mis-meetings?) have
some form of totem or logo, that is, something akin to a
collective representation or sacred site around which they
co-mingle, a water-cooler equivalent perhaps, or something
less permanent, fixed, or identifiable? Is the carnivalization
of the festival (like those unruly bodies that disorganize the
soccer match) a characteristic of assemblage? Do they follow
signs and codes (laws), collect them, or produce them
(semiosis vs. semiotics)? Can assemblages join or mix with
other assemblages (forming inter-assemblages, underground
networks, 'interlocking economies' [Grosz])? Is there a
possibility of a macro-politics? In short, we want to know how
to constitute, for ourselves, one of these assemblages, and
what would be the social and political risks of doing so.
Deadline for Submission: August 1, 1999
Suzan Ilcan, Guest Editor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Windsor
silcan@uwindsor.ca
Daniel O'Connor, Guest Editor
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