CFP: Otherness, Agency and Belonging

Part of the Research Program on:
Recognition, Agency and the Politics of Otherness

Partner: CEDUA-COLMEX

Venue: El Colegio de México
(Camino al Ajusco 20, Pedregal de Santa Teresa, 10740)
Main Campus (Sala Alfonso Reyes)
Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico

This trans-disciplinary research project explores the unfolding
dynamic of the relationship between self and other as it is enacted
in our experiences of being strangers, aliens and foreigners.
Examining the history of this relationship, reflecting upon its
ideological and psychological foundations, and bearing witness to its
manifestation in the lived experiences of migrants, refugees and the
displaced, this symposium offers the opportunity to consider at the
level of both theory and practice, new means for establishing a sense
of belonging and new methods for engaging the other.

We invite colleagues from all disciplines and professions interested
in exploring and explaining these issues in a collective,
deliberative and dialogical environment to send presentation
proposals that address these general questions or the following
themes:

1. Practice, Logic and Dialogue

* Being and Belonging

  - How is belonging conceptualized? How is it lived?
  - What are the psychological and the ideological foundations for
    the need to belong?
  - How do ideals of belonging shape and inform the practice of
    recognition?
  - How is the need to belong politicized?
  - In what ways are notions of belonging being reconfigured in
    response to the rise of new technologies and new media? In what
    ways is the need to belong shaping these developments?

* Language Lessons

  - Can we speak of the self without the other? Can there be a
    language of ‘we-ness’? What terms would it employ? How would the
    grammar for such a language be constructed?
  - What metaphors can be employed in the construction of
    alternatives to binary representations of self and other?
  - How are new languages -new terminologies and new structures   -
    being lived? That is, how are they already shaping experience
    through and in the development of idioms and rhetoric, signs and
    symbols?
  - What alternatives might dialogical acts of speaking provide for
    addressing the other and the self? How might referential acts be
    used as a model for rethinking self-other relations?
  - What role might embodiment and location play in rethinking
    difference?

2. Shifting Planes and Contexts

* Monetary Values

  - What is the role of labour migration for economic growth and
    prosperity? How are the contributions of labour migration being
    recognized? How are they being measured?
  - How is migrant labour commodified? What are the effects of this
    commodification?
  - What is the political value of migrants and foreigners, strangers
    and aliens, refugees and the displaced? How are they made
    ‘invisible’ within nations and states? At what moments are they
    made visible? How is this dialectic of visibility played out,
    experienced and conceived?
  - What new models of economic/political inclusion/exclusion are we
    witnessing?

* Environment and the Link to Nature

  - How are self and other interweaved with nature? What norms,
    orientations and models prevail? Are there alternatives that are
    being collectively enacted? How might these bonds be
    reconceptualised?
  - What indigenous worldviews might foster the construction of new
    models of diversity and plurality?
  - How is the new class of environmental migrants being constructed
    and conceived?

* A Whole New World

  - Who are the new migrants? How are new migratory flows and massive
    movements mapping out, both literally and figuratively?
  - How are trans-national and post-national ideologies reconfiguring
    our conceptions of the other?
  - Who is our neighbour? Do we owe our neighbour hospitality and
    respect? Why?
  - How is responsibility to be attributed in a world that is on the
    move?

3. Enquiry and Legitimacy

* Representations

  - How are representations of difference created and disseminated
    through the arts and media?
  - By what means and through what measures do art and media instil
    and embed images of otherness? How might these avenues of
    production be used to transform and deconstruct such
    representations?
  - How are new technologies and new media framing our ideas of
    otherness?
  - What are the stories of strangers, the allegories of aliens, the
    fictions of foreigners and the discourses of the displaced being
    told? How are such narratives constructed? With what affect?

* Acts of Legitimation: On Law

  - How do nation states exclude juridically? How do laws protect
    and/or exclude the other?
  - How do citizens and non-citizens relate within juridical practices
    and discourse?
  - What place do human rights occupy in facilitating inclusionary
    and/or exclusionary practices?
  - How are trans-national and post-national ideologies configuring
    conceptions of self and other?

4. Challenging Ideals

* Productive Possibilities

  - How do our encounters with strangers, aliens and foreigners enrich
    our lives?
  - What are the productive advantages of being deemed ‘the other’?
  - What of our experiences of ‘othering’ ourselves? When and why do
    we choose to be foreigners? How do these experiences differ from
    those in which we are ascribed this condition and status?

* The Spaces In-Between: Beyond Self and Other

  - In what ways are self and other interdependent? What is the
    history of this interlacing?
  - How are the layerings and overlappings of our identifications as
    self and other, self or other lived?
  - What new models of/for exchange and engagement are developing in
    theory and in practice?
  - How might new models of cultural contact based on ideals of
    fusion, entanglement, doubleness, syncretism, amalgamation,
    creolization, interlacing, hybridization and interdependence,
    destabilize the logic of a binary system of self and other? How
    might they re-enforce this logic?

If you are interested in participating in this Annual Symposium,
submit a 400 to 500 word abstract as soon as possible and no later
than Tuesday 21st of October, 2014. (For justifiable cases, we do
uphold a tolerance period of eight days.)

Please use the following template for your submission:

First: Author(s);
Second: Affiliation, if any;
Third: Email Address;
Fourth: Title of Abstract and Proposal;
Fifth: The 400 to 500 Word Abstract.

To submit an abstract online follow these steps:

1) Go to our webpage: www.alternative-academia.net
2) Select your Symposium of choice within the list of annual events
   (listed by period and city)
3) Go to LOG IN at the top of the page
4) Create a User Name and Password for our system and log in
5) Click on the Call for Papers for the Symposium
6) Go to the end of the Call for Papers page and click on the First
   Step of Submission Process button
7) Follow the instructions provided for completing the abstract
   submission process

For every abstract proposal submitted, we acknowledge receipt. If you
do not receive a reply from us within three days, you should assume
the submission process was not completed successfully. Please try
again or contact our technical support for clarifications.

All presentation and paper proposals that address these questions and
issues will be fully considered and evaluated. Evaluation of abstract
submissions will be ongoing, from the opening date of 5th of May,
2014. All Prospective Delegates can expect a reply time to their
submission of three weeks.

Accepted abstracts will require a full draft paper by Thursday 30th
of October, 2014. Papers are for a 20 minute presentation, 8 to 10
pages long, double spaced, Times New Roman 12. All papers presented
at the symposium are eligible for publication as part of a digital or
paperback book.

We invite colleagues and people interested in participating to
disseminate this call for papers. Thank you for sharing and
cross-listing where and whenever appropriate.

Registration

Delegate Registration Fee:
357.00 EUR (Registration Opening 27-10-2014)

Non-Presenting Delegate Fee:
236.00 EUR (Registration Opening 27-10-2014)

INAA Scholarship Fee:
180.00 EUR (Registration Opening 27-10-2014)

Symposium Coordinators

Wendy O'Brien
Professor of Social and Political Theory
School of Liberal Studies
Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email: [email protected]

Oana Strugaru
Faculty of Letters and Communication Sciences
Stefan cel Mare University
Suceava, Romania
Email: [email protected]

Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
General Coordinator
International Network for Alternative Academia
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Email: [email protected]

Conference website: