[csaa-forum] CFP Subjectivity Conference : Cardiff University Jun 08

[Melissa Gregg]

Apologies for cross-posting -

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 at 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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