CALL FOR PAPERS
CATASTROPHE NOW: THE WRECKAGE OF UTOPIA
University of Florida's Marxist Reading Group Annual Conference
Keynote Speakers: Susan Buck-Morss and Christian Parenti
March 25-27 at the University of Florida=20
"In the wake of the failed utopia of industrial modernity, where the =
promises of mass sovereignty, mass production, and mass culture have led =
not to abundance and more freedoms, but instead to ecological =
devastation, catastrophes of war, exploitation, dictatorship, and =
technological destruction and to a panoply of phantasmagoric effects =
that aestheticize the violence of modernity and anaesthetize its =
victims, how do we re-conceive collective political action and a present =
utopia?" (Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of =
Mass Utopia in East and West)
This conference seeks papers that address how pedagogy, activism, =
aesthetics, and theory help constitute positions against the hegemony of =
Global Capital. To be precise, how do we disrupt the seemingly =
undisruptable: a Capitalist system that conjures up a communal unity =
that eventually obscures the social tensions of class conflict? How do =
we re-constitute past modes of (modernist) discourse into oppositional =
modes of engagement against the State? By dissolving the boundaries of =
disparate modes of discourse e.g., Islamism, aesthetics, Marxism, can =
we produce new forms of engagement against Global Capital? How do we =
turn the dreamworld of consumerism into a state of desertion and =
engagement? How can we imagine a progressive globalization? How do we =
construct a progressive global left?
Susan Buck-Morss, a professor of political philosophy and social =
theory at Cornell University, is the author of Thinking Past Terror: =
Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: =
The Power of Mass Utopia in East and West, The Dialectics of Seeing: =
Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, and The Origin of Negative =
Dialectics: Theodore Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt =
Institute. Buck-Morss has written a number of innovative essays on =
aesthetics, politics, and the work of art, including: "Aesthetics and =
Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered" and "The =
City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe."
Christian Parenti is the author of Lockdown America: Police and =
Prisons in the Age of Crisis, Taking Liberties: Prisons, Policing, and =
Surveillance in an Age of Crisis, and The Soft Cage: Surveillance in =
America from Slavery to the War on Terror. He is a Soros Senior Justice =
Fellow of the Open Society Institute and a Visiting Fellow at the CUNY =
Graduate School's Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. He teaches at =
the New College of California in San Francisco and works as a radio =
journalist in Central America, New York and California. Parenti is a =
regular contributor to numerous publications, including: Salon, The =
Nation, San Diego Union Tribune, Washington Post, The Progressive, In =
These Times, Christian Science Monitor, and The New York News Day.
Prospective papers may address (but are not limited to) the following:
*Anti-humanism/post-humanism in Empire
*Reification of history.
*Narrative mappings of the political.=20
*What counts as labor?
*Re-thinking subjectivities through singularity.
*Society of control and new forms of policing/discipline.
*The aesthetics of security.
*Re-writing the frontiers of the nation-state.
*Exploiting security: crime and the warehousing of the poor
*Prosthetics, Clones, Cyborgs: The body and technological ontologies.
*Strategies of containing revolutionary practices.
*Gender and the place of work.
*Global capital and imagining the apocalypse.
*Pedagogies and reorganizing relations of space.
*Literature and collectivity.
*Insurgent spatial practices: sites for alternative production.
*Professionalization and the corporate university.
*Media and formulations of collectivity.
*Constructions of a revolutionary identity.
*"National Dreams" of Prosperity and Poverty
*Politics of zoning.
*US policy, war, and terrorism.
Non-traditional or performative panels will also be considered.
One-page abstracts, questions, and comments should be submitted to the =
Marxist Reading Group at extinction@clas.ufl.edu.
Abstracts due: February 10.
For more information about our group, conferences, and keynote =
speakers go to www.english.ufl.edu/mrg.
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