Call for Papers:
Recyclables:
Critical Approaches to Cultural Recycling
There is nothing new about the practice of recycling. The recycling
phenomenon has been with us for decades: artistically, culturally, and,
more than ever, in our homes, we are accustomed to (or are becoming
accustomed to) recycling our waste, our excess, our re-usable goods. But
now the term "recycling" has also made a conspicuous appearance within
academic discourse, emerging as a paradigm for understanding the way that
artistic, literary, or cultural environments function. What can we make of
this transposition: is recycling a valid paradigm for talking about
literature, history, art, or theory? How might the term recycling nuance
our understanding of the ways in which different social, theoretical, or
cultural environments operate?
Our collection of critical essays intends to explore the rhetoric of
recycling as a cultural, historical, and critical construct. We are
particularly interested in investigating differences between recycling and
other critical terms such as "appropriation," "bricolage," or "recoding."
We welcome papers from across different disciplines that
define/legitimize/question the subject of recycling. Contributions should
shed new light on the already old idea of recycling. Papers might address,
but are by no means limited to the following topics and questions:
Recycling and Aesthetic Queries:
How has the aesthetic/cultural experience of modernity/postmodernity been
shaped by a relationship to recycling? How have the concepts of
"originality" and "genius" been reconfigured in a cultural context where
simulacrum and pastiche are increasingly important?
Recycling and Cultural Memory:
How do historical/autobiographical/ethnobiographical narratives recycle
past events, materials, or memories in order to make claims about the past?
What are the ideological implications of recycling as a mode of historiography?
Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property:
What are the legislative implications for the concepts of authorship,
ownership, and intellectual property under the aegis of recycling? If we
view acts of cultural production as forms of recycling rather than acts of
pure creation, how does this complicate our definitions of plagiarism?
Bio-recycling:
Explorations in Cloning, or: How recycling took the sex out of sexual
reproduction.
Recycling Critical Terminology:
How does the term "recycling" differ from or share ground with popular
critical paradigms such as bricolage, appropriation, (Deleuzian)
repetition, diff=E9rance, simulacrum, pastiche, eternal return, the nostalgia
mode, the return of the repressed, etc.?
Recycling as Ethical Mandate:
Sacrificing our goods for the (common) Good, or: Recycling as Ritual
Between Exhaustion and Excess:
What are the differences between a recycling practice prompted by the=20
exhaustion of resources and a more "excessive" recycling practice, in which
recycling is a form of aesthetic play?
Production, Perversion, Pleasure:
To what extent can recycling itself be considered productive or
pleasurable? Does the idea of recycling negate desire? Or is there room
for erotic play in a process of repetition? Could recycling be considered
masturbatory? A symptom of private or cultural impotence? What might it
mean to explore the physical, sexual, or puritanical aspects of a
fascination with recycling?
Refusing to Recycle:
How does a refusal to recycle =91trash=92 different institutions (literary,
bureaucratic, aesthetic)? Is there anything that cannot be recycled? What
are the implications of an aesthetic or political refusal to recycle?
Recycling and the Information Age:
What are the epistemological implications or limitations of recycling in
cyberspace? If the Internet constitutes a utopic space of recycling, then
what are the implications for us, its virtual ragpickers?
We are currently negotiating with University Presses for publication.
Please send one to two page abstracts (by September 1) to:
Tina S. Kendall Kristin Koster
Department of French Department of French
1 Shields Ave. 1 Shields Ave.
University of California University of California
Davis, CA 95616 Davis, CA 95616
tskendall@ucdavis.edu kekoster@ucdavis.edu
Please visit our website: http://philo.ucdavis.edu/~kendall
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