Spaces of Attunement

March 30, 2015 - March 31, 2015
Cardiff University

Cardiff
United Kingdom

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As the alarming consequences of the dominance of anthropocentric
forms of thinking and politics on environmental, social and mental
ecologies (Guattari, 1986) become ever more apparent, there has been
a surge of interest in inventing new ways of collaborating with,
listening to, and granting authority to new kinds of voices,
including more-than-human life and forms of material agency. In this
symposium, we invite participants to explore practices, politics,
histories and futures of attunements to voices, temporalities, and
material processes that exceed the human subject. In doing so, we ask
participants to consider the ways in which matter and more-than-human
life can make demands for human ethical and political response
(Jackson, 2012).

Practices of attunement are associated with various traditions of
thought including: phenomenological ideas of dwelling and worlding
(Heidegger, 1923); post-phenomenological and neo-vitalist theories of
encounters, affect, and hybridity (Bennett, 2009; Haraway, 2008;
Anderson, 2014; Ash & Simpson, 2014); sensory methodologies (Evans &
Miele, 2012; Spinney, 2015); spiritual practices (Oosterbaan, 2008);
feminist materialisms (Braidotti, 2002); speculative modes of theory
and politics (Whitehead, 1967; Stengers, 2011); and indigenous
traditions of responsibility to the natural world, which have
arguably been marginalized in recent debates (Tallbear, 2015).

Attunements strive to attain greater familiarity or intimacy with
more-than-human worlds. In doing so, they experiment with creating
more sustainable and egalitarian social forms. However, when
attunement starts to invoke normative ideals of being ‘in harmony’,
those who appear ‘out of tune’ (strangers, outsiders) can be
registered as dangerous and threatening (Ahmed, 2013). Nevertheless,
attunements can also affirm difference and be receptive to non-human
‘qualities, rhythms, forces, relations and movements’ (Stewart,
2011). Post-human attunements generate monstrous aesthetic forms
(Dixon, Hawkins & Straughan, 2012) and require inventive practices of
listening (Hetherington, 2013).  When objects, forces and spirits
that exceed the spaces and times of human experience press themselves
upon us with increasing force, attunements can be strange, uncanny
and uncertain. They bring us into contact with lost futures and
haunted presents (Fisher, 2014). In fact, attuning to non-human or
post-human worlds may require actively distancing our enquiries from
the intimacy of the organic body and its lived experiences and
affects (Colebrook, 2014).

This symposium invites participants to explore ‘attunement to the
world in all its particularity, strangeness, enchantment and
horror’ (Anderson et al., 2012). In doing so, we aim to contribute to
recent efforts to recalibrate notions of authority, voice, and
objectivity in ways that work towards more egalitarian, sustainable
worlds.

Topics that will animate the discussion may include:

- Practices of attunement that aim to facilitate deeper
  collaborations between humans, more-than-human life, and material
  agency
- Materialisms (old and new)
- Intersections or tensions between new materialisms and indigenous
  standpoints
- Attunements, spirituality and ritual
- The role of attunements in (re)distributing power and authority
- Attunements and aesthetics
- How attunements affect the quality of experience and encounters;
- Narrative and non-narrative forms for expressing experiences and
  practices of attunement
- Material/semiotic figures of attunement (stranger, diplomat,
  monster, guide, alchemist…)
- Biopolitics, the anthropocene, and the inorganic

Apply to attend / present a paper.
Researchers from across the arts, humanities and social sciences are
warmly welcome. If you wish to attend, or to give a 20-minute paper,
please complete the form at:
http://www.authorityresearch.net/spaces-of-attunement-abstract-submission.html
before 1800, February 13th, 2015.

Proposals for alternative presentation formats, artworks,
performances, films, sound art etc. are encouraged. We will do
everything we can to help with this in terms of technology, time, and
possibly some extra financial resources. Please get in touch.

Plenary speakers:

- Ben Anderson (Reader in Human Geography, Durham University)
- Deborah Dixon (Professor of Geography, Glasgow University)
- Kevin Hetherington (Dean of Social Sciences, The Open University)
- Mara Miele (Reader in Human Geography, Cardiff University)
- Kim Tallbear (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of
  Texas)

Venue:
Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University, UK

Organisers:

Julian Brigstocke (Cardiff University)
Email: [email protected]

Tehseen Noorani (Johns Hopkins University)
Email: [email protected]

Symposium website:
http://www.authorityresearch.net/spaces-of-attunement-symposium.html

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