[xmca] Fwd: Call for Papers : Subjectivity Conference : Cardiff University

Especially section 3 of this conference appears of special interest to
xmca-ites.
mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dimitris Papadopoulos <papadopoulosd@cardiff.ac.uk>
Date: Jun 8, 2007 3:04 PM
Subject: Call for Papers : Subjectivity Conference : Cardiff University
To: Dimitris Papadopoulos <papadopoulosd@cardiff.ac.uk>

SUBJECTIVITY

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, CULTURAL STUDIES AND SOCIAL
THEORY

27-29 JUNE 2008

School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University, UK
www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/subjectivity [site will be up in July 07]

C A L L F O R P A P E R S

This conference explores shifting conceptualisations of subjectivity in
contemporary culture, politics, social science and theory. Although
subjectivity is a key analytic term in fields as diverse as critical
psychology, postcolonial studies, film theory, gender studies, social
theory, geography, anthropology and cultural studies, it is rarely discussed
in its own right. The conference attempts to explore subjectivity as a locus
of social change, to rethink possibilities for everyday social
interventions, to explore how subjectivities are produced and how emerging
subjectivities remake our social worlds. We are interested in proposals for
papers and symposia whose scope falls within or between one of the following
areas:

1 EMBODIMENT, AFFECT, MATERIALITY

The emergence of 'body-theory' across the humanities has transformed the
terrain in which questions about power, ideology, discourse and subjectivity
can be asked. There is a move to dismantle the idea of separation between
the body and the world and to see bodies as always gesturing towards
practices, energies, things and intensities beyond themselves. This focus on
process, connection, relationality and bodily affectivity traverses a
diverse range of disciplines and is forcing a reconsideration of our
understanding of subjectivity. In this stream we welcome papers that might
deal with areas such as 'carnal knowing', the sentient body, embodiment,
critical perspectives on cyberculture and the machine-human symbiosis, new
materialism, affective labour and care, disability and the critiques of the
'able body', somatic feeling and the non-cognitive, for example.

2 NEW POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITIES/NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

A developing body of scholarship examines the production of new
subjectivities and social movements in a moment marked by neoliberalism,
de/re-territorialising capitalism and emerging new sensibilities in relation
to gender, sexuality, transnational mobility and racial and religious
differences. What role are the media and new information and communication
technologies playing in the production of new femininities, masculinities
and sexualities - and resistance to them? What kinds of social movements are
emerging to address global injustice related to the transformation of labour
and the new conditions for the production of science and technology, biotech
and medical rationalities? How adequately have our theoretical vocabularies
engaged with new social, political and cultural complexities related to
processes of racialization and migration? What new possibilities are there
for interdisciplinary work that creates new spaces and dialogues, activism
and interventions?

3 REDISTRIBUTING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL

For many years, critical psychologists and social theorists have attempted
to move away from an individualist concept of the psychological. Some
psychologists attempted to rework what was understood as on the inside to
the outside through the concepts of discourse, activity and narrative;
sociologists have attempted to understand what constitutes the psychological
through exploring its position within the social and cultural lifeworld;
social theorists have attempted to expand the concept beyond reductionist
notions of the subject. While these attempts are all important, how
successful are they? What is the future of critical studies of psychology
and of the psychological? How can we develop work which goes beyond the
psychological while still being able to accommodate and understand
singularity and experience?

Please send a 200 word proposal to subjectivity@cardiff.ac.uk by 31
January 2008

Notification: 1 April 2008 (please contact us if you are in need of an
earlier notification)

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