CFP: Everyday politics: Redistributions of the sensible

Submission deadline: April 30, 2015

Conference date(s):
July 18, 2015 - July 25, 2015

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Conference Venue:

Heterologies of the Everyday research circle, Nordic Summer University
Druskininkai, Lithuania

Topic areas

Details

Everyday space is a space of relational practices, where lives unfold within the fluid relationscapes of spaces, things and others around us. These everyday relationscapes are grounded by material and historical circumstances within the ideological landscape of a body-politics. This symposium considers political dimensions of the everyday and aims at imagining a new “aesthetic politics of the ordinary” (Ben Highmore). According to Jacques Rancière, “Human beings are tied together by a certain sensory fabric, a certain distribution of the sensible, which defines their way of being together; and politics is about the transformation of the sensory fabric of ‘being together’.” This symposium will consider new possibilities for political and aesthetic renewal.

 Possible topics include, but are not limited to

  • sensation and togetherness as the connecting links between small event of the everyday and the life of the polis;

  • heterological, differential moments of the everyday;

  • everyday aesthetics as a ground for art, but also for politics and social life;

  • artistic representations of the everyday in the context of the polis.

  • the single day as an entry point to understanding the everyday; dialogues between a single day and the everyday as such.

    Please send abstracts (300-500 words) and a short bio to Epp Annus, by 1 May 2015 ([email protected]). If you wish to participate without giving a paper, kindly send a short (150-300 word) description of yourself and your interests, also by 1 May 2015. Later submissions may be considered, should there still be available places.

    The symposium also includes a seminar "The 'dailiness' of everyday life". Potential participants will be invited to submit a short position paper (2-3,000 words) on the topic in advance of the seminar. These papers will be circulated among participants in advance of the session and will form the basis of the seminar discussion. The seminar will be limited to 12 participants, but auditors will be welcome. Please send abstracts (300-500 words) and a short bio to Bryony Randall, by 15 April 2015 ([email protected]). Proposals are invited on any aspect of the single day and the everyday, but participants may wish to consider the following questions as part of their contributions:

    What does a focus on the ‘dailiness’ of everyday life, its daily temporality, bring to our understanding of contemporary literature, culture and society? How does this intersect with key issues of class, race, gender and sexuality that underpin experiences of the everyday? Or put another way, how can the data, narratives, experiences and affects captured in a single day be mobilised to help us understand and transform the ’distribution of the sensible’? And how do recent discoveries and preoccupations that form the epistemology of our times affect the space that dailiness and the day occupy in representations of contemporary life? (for example information surfeit; preoccupation with loss of memory; new understanding of the plasticity of memories).

    The symposium “Everyday politics: Redistributions of the sensible” is organized by the research circle Heterologies of the Everyday, which is part of the Nordic Summer University network. This circle aims to address what is most relevant and unavoidably present for every human being: everyday existence. This is an interdisciplinary project that works at the intersection of cultural studies, philosophy, literary criticism, art criticism, film studies, urban studies, anthropology, sociology and human geography.

    The 2015 Summer Session of the Nordic Summer University will take place in Druskininkai, Lithuania, in a 19th century spa resort.

    The total cost of the session (including accommodation and all meals in a four star Hotel Druskininkai) ranges from 261 euro to 407 euro, depending on the kind of accommodation you choose: http://w2015.nsuweb.org/?page_id=59

    NSU will offer scholarships for students and grants for others in need of a subsidy. The application period is from 1st April to 15th April. For more information: http://nsuweb.org/w2014/application.

    PhD students are eligible for up to five ECTS points.  

    Childcare is provided for children starting from age 3.

    Questions: [email protected]

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