Call for Proposals: Static: Formations and Disruptions
Social and Political Thought (SPT) Program\, York University\, Canada
May 14-15\, 2020
The Social and Political Thought graduate program presents its 33rd annual student organized conference\, Strategies of Critique\, entitled Static: Formations and Disruptions. Every day we encounter static\, perhaps without even realizing it\, within and outside of the academy. In this conference\, we seek to explore static &mdash\; as it relates to epistemologies\, methodologies\, modes of critique\, organizing metaphors &mdash\; and its implications for social and political thought.
Static evokes the crackling and hissing interruptions of aural and visual communications\, as well as the shock of electricity when friction between two objects causes an imbalance of electrons. Static or stasis also suggests the stabilization of systems &mdash\; ecological\, physiological\, economic\, political\, and electrical. The static/stasis dialectic sparks new interpretations and perceptions of these interrelated ideas.
As a transdisciplinary site\, static challenges us to think about stability and disruption\, which we believe animate a series of questions around justice\, agency\, being\, and affective understandings of the political past and present. We invite papers that examine productive refusals of business as usual\, energetic disturbances of inequality&rsquo\;s equilibrium\, and disruptions of aural and visual communications that generate new meanings. Along the same circuit\, we also encourage papers that interrogate stasis/static as a passive experience of inheriting traditions and ideas\, the inadvertent maintenance of (dis)order and hierarchy\, and enclosure that prevents the circulation of life and/or lively ideas.
Submissions may include\, but are certainly not limited\, and indeed are encouraged to go beyond any of the following topics:
- \; \; \; \;media and technology as message and/or movement
- \; \; \; \;(im)mobilities and (un)reliable transits
- \; \; \; \;environmental stagnation and/or activism
- \; \; \; \;(ar)resting neoliberal states and institutions
- \; \; \; \;sense\, nonsense\, and the disruption of sensibility and the sensual
- \; \; \; \;intertextuality of cultural productions (e.g. visual art\, theatre/ performance\, literature\, music)
- \; \; \; \;(re)framing identity/nationhood/citizenship/sovereignty
- \; \; \; \;(counter)narratives of resistance\, competing discourses and testimonies
- \; \; \; \;collectives\, coalitions\, and conspiracies
- \; \; \; \;feminist\, anti-colonial\, anti-racist\, anti-fascist\, and/or anti-capitalist networks
- \; \; \; \;institutions and counter institutions as (un)stable sites
Submission Requirements:
Submit to: \;strategiesofcritique@gmail.com
Submission deadline: February 23\, 2020
Conference date: May 14-15 2020
Location: York University\, Toronto\, Canada - the territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy\, Wendat Nation\, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation\, and the Mé\;tis Nation of Ontario.
Please specify if your presentation will require special equipment or venue specifications. We strive to make our venue accessible. If further accommodations are needed\, please let us know.
Individual proposals: Please submit a 250-word abstract and a 100-word biography.
Panel proposals: Please submit a panel rationale of 500 words\, as well as individual proposal abstract and biography for each presenter.
In addition to abstract submissions\, we encourage proposals for work that engages these themes in activist and aesthetic registers (workshops or performances).
Presenters will have the opportunity to submit finished papers for publication. Please direct inquiries to the Strategies Committee at \;strategiesofcritique@gmail.com \;.
Please visit our website for more information: \;https://strategiesofcritique.wordpress.com/