Radicality, Criticism and Reality.
Considering the Past, the Present and the Future of Challenging Critiques.
A One-Day Conference *
Saturday September 27th 2003
The Centre for Critical Practice
School of English
University of Central England
Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU
United Kingdom
Conference Organizer/Coordinator: Dr. Philip Tew, Reader in English and
Aesthetics, Director of the Centre for Critical Practice
The University of Central England in Birmingham invites postgraduates,
academics, scholars, reviewers, journalists, and all intellectuals to
participate in what will be the first major conference of UCE's
newly-established Centre for Critical Practice (CCP).
Keynote and plenary speakers to be announced.
The CCP is a new research organization within the School of English at UCE,
'an umbrella' or network for a range of interests in the field of arts,
humanities and literary studies in particular, for researchers,
postgraduates and colleagues in these fields nationally and
internationally. Rather than being genre or period based, its core is the
act, practice, structures, metaphysics, and overall significance of
critical engagement, criticism, review and commentary
The 'conference considers acts and theories of criticism at a crucial phase
of transition. Criticism and critique are open, ongoing, and often highly
questionable fields of activity and involve explicitly or implicitly a
theoretical base or framework. Post-modernity has very recently been seen
as a critical successor that enlarged upon post-structuralism as offering a
determining critique, encompassing not just academic engagement, but
reality itself, offering notions of fracture, of a 'deconstructivism' and
plurality. This has passed into history. The concept of a post-modern
radicality and privileging of the de-centered has become passé. A range of
underlying neo-liberalist underpinnings is being viewed with increasingly
suspicion. Post-modernity is being interrogated, and held to account for
its intellectual and ideological interventions. The life-world contests its
presumptions. The world is changing in reaction not only to discourses and
images, but the practical, intersubjective framework of responses to events
and occurrence.
All criticism regards itself as radical, subversive or even among apparent
'traditionalists' exists the belief in reinforcing radically potential
stabilities that deny chaos and unreason. Criticism can be schematic,
critical or interventionist, but its notion of fracturing either current
stabilities or of determining a sustainable aesthetic that elevates
humanity represents in fact consistent academic, philosophic and
intellectual themes. Certainly it can be argued that most criticism aspires
to incorporate these two modes of thought and activity. Such ambitions
enter into the affiliated fields of literature itself, philosophy,
socio-political thought, artistic acts and so forth almost endlessly. It is
the intellectual engine of social and ideological change and transition.
Modernity, modernism, Darwinism, enlightenment thinking, chaos theory,
meta-realisms, post-modernity and feminism among others can be reconsidered
as critical methodologies, exegetical interventions, social visions, and
narratives.
Papers or pre-organized panels of 3 ? 4 papers from academics,
postgraduates, reviewers, journalists, and other interested parties are
invited for a proposed one-day conference* intended to address the issues
of the relationship defined variously by an often shifting concept of
radicality, by the fact and theory of acts of such critical engagement, and
by the challenge and meanings of such interventions. Papers might consider
whether one can determine an ongoing series of critical relations from the
age of modernity through the modernist/post-modern paradigms and onto a new
critical future. As post-modernity becomes defined as simply one more
critical endeavour among its predecessors including new criticism, belles
lettres, structuralism and historicism, can a meta-critique or some
judgment of critical endeavour be agreed upon, theorized or even negated.
The conference encourages a wide range of contributions on architecture,
art, cinema, critical theory, cultural studies, drama, education, film
studies, languages, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, sociology,
pedagogy, visual studies, and, interdisciplinary studies from the age of
modernity (with its classical underpinning) to the current
'post-contemporary' or 'meta-realist' phase. Potential topics might
include:
Textual and Authorial Experimentation
Modernity, Modernism and Postmodern paradigms
Meta-Realisms and Critical Realism
Criticism as Critique
Criticism and Society
Reviews, Criticism and Text
Changing Critical Paradigms
Concepts and Issues of Radicality
Text and Review
Texts and Criticism
National Critical Variations
Historical Accounts and Placement of Critique
Queries by e-mail or telephone; submission of paper/panel titles and 300
? 400 word abstract by e-mail only ?please add to your subject line
'Radicality, Criticism and Reality Submission/Query'?to:
Dr. Philip Tew
Reader in English and Aesthetics
Director of the Centre for Critical Practice
School of English, University of Central England in Birmingham
philip.tew@uce.ac.uk; OR: tewp@ukf.net
00 44 (0)121 331 5570
One-day conference fee* by post to School of English?address as
above?payable to 'UCE' or 'University of Central England in Birmingham'
before June 30th 2003: £30 (after June 30th £45); Postgraduates £15 (after
June 30th £25); 20% surcharge for foreign currency including euros;
institutional invoice request prior to deadline acceptable.
Deadline: March 14th 2003 Notification of acceptance: March 31st 2003
Organized in conjunction with the London Network for Textual Studies
(incorporating the London Network for Modern Fiction Studies) N.B. * If
initial response is sufficient a longer or follow-up conference may be
considered and all interested parties notified.
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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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