Language-Communication-Culture
Evora, Portugal, Nov. 27-30, 2002
Session announcement and Cfp
Theme: Freedom, Culture, Community
Organiser: Alvaro Pina
<ferpi@mail.telepac.pt>
In what became a classical statement in cultural studies, Stuart Hall=20
argued in 1980 that =91the fact that =93men=94 can become conscious of their=
=20
conditions, organize to struggle against them and in fact transform them=20
(=85) must not be allowed to override the awareness of the fact that, in=20
capitalist relations, men and women are placed and positioned in relations=
=20
which constitute them as agents=92.
From another angle, but quite relevantly for our theme, David Harvey in=20
The Limits to Capital (1999) focused on the duality of the worker as=20
=91object for capital=92 and as =91living creative subject=92, the=
contradiction=20
between immediate experience and theory, and observed that such duality=20
=91has never been adequately resolved in Marxist theory=92 (p. 114). And in=
his=20
Afterword he remarked that =91though susceptible of all manner of influence=
=20
through bourgeois institutions and culture, nothing can in the end subvert=
=20
the control workers exercise over certain very basic processes of their own=
=20
reproduction. Their lives, their culture and, above all, their children are=
=20
for them to reproduce=92 (p. 447).
Nikolas Rose reminds us that freedom =91does not arise in the absence of=20
power: it is a mobile historical possibility arising from the lines of=20
force within which human being is assembled, and the relations into which=20
humans are enfolded. Freedom is the name we give today to a kind of power=20
one brings to bear upon oneself, and a mode of bringing power to bear upon=
=20
others=92 (Powers of Freedom, 1999, p. 96).
In Freedom (1988) Zygmunt Bauman wrote that the =91meaning of freedom=
remains=20
clear as long as it is thought of as the redress of oppression; as removal=
=20
of this or that specific constraint, at odds with an intention most=20
intensely felt and most painfully frustrated at the moment. It is less easy=
=20
to visualize freedom positively, as a durable state. All attempts to do so=
=20
invariably lead to contradictions to which no convincing solution has been=
=20
found so far=92 (p. 51). And in Community (2001) Bauman noted that =91freedo=
m=20
and security, both equally pressing and indispensable, happen to be hard to=
=20
reconcile without friction=92, and that they are =91complementary and=20
incompatible; the likelihood of their falling into conflict has always been=
=20
and will forever be as high as the need for their reconciliation=92 (p.19).
In this 2-hour session, proposed as a cultural studies session, I welcome=20
five 20-min papers dealing with, and focusing on, freedom as a social=20
relation of difference and of community, as well as exploring the=20
contradiction between =91object for power=92 and =91creative subject=92 and=
between=20
experience and theory, and/or the reconciliation of freedom and security,=20
and/or freedom and consumption, and/or the constitutive role of culture in=
=20
freedom as a social relation of difference and of community.
Deadline for 150-word abstracts: June 30, 2002
===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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