[csaa-forum] MINOR CULTURE PANEL PROPOSAL: 'Minor(ity) Cultures, Identity, Vulnerability and Resilience'

[Timothy Laurie]

There's a new panel stream proposal for Minor Culture<http://culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/events/minor-culture-conference> entitled 'Minor(ity) Cultures, Identity, Vulnerability and Resilience', convened by Associate Professor Rob Cover (The University of Western Australia), and the abstracts are due June 8 (next Monday, see below).

The deadline for 'Pop-Up Economies<http://culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/events/minor-culture-conference/special-events/pop-up-economies>' (convened by Professor Susan Luckman) has also been extended until June 8, so please send through any abstracts or queries (http://culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/events/minor-culture-conference/special-events/pop-up-economies).

Also, general abstracts and panel proposals for Minor Culture<http://culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/events/minor-culture-conference> are due today (June 1), please see the website (http://culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/events/minor-culture-conference/call-papers) for details.


Minor(ity) Cultures, Identity, Vulnerability and Resilience

Panel Convenor: Associate Professor Rob Cover (The University of Western Australia)
Email: rob.cover at uwa.edu.au<mailto:rob.cover at uwa.edu.au>

Vulnerability emerged in the early 2000s as a key mode for the critique of ethical relationalities with marginal identities, populations, cultures and concepts.  In Judith Butler’s framework, the ‘willing away’ of primary vulnerability—and the ethical relations of belonging obliged by vulnerability—produces marginalities and minorities that are de-humanised and whose lives are un-grievable.

At the same, the converse of vulnerability is presented through the notion of resilience.  Yet to be critiqued in cultural studies, resilience is a term used by politicians, policy-makers, journalists and political commentators, often pointing to real-world and media examples of minority subjects who prevail against marginalisation, economic precarity, social change and complex issues of health.

Examples of the interplay between vulnerability and resilience in the representation of minor(ity) cultures include report, policy and advocacy around refugees and asylum seekers, the critical response to socio-economic precarity in observational documentaries like SBS’s Struggle Street, arguments around the social benefits of same-sex marriage, and community discourses on human preparedness for climate change, among many others.

In what ways do vulnerability and resilience intersect in discourses around minority identity and marginalised groups and concepts?  What are the mechanisms of contemporary media that represent minority groups as alternatively vulnerable and resilient?  In what ways do vulnerability, resilience and minority converge in scandal and moral panic?  And can such convergences be said to have social, political or critical utility?

Call for papers
We invite proposals for 15-minute papers on “Minority Vulnerabilities and Resiliences”. Please email 250 word abstracts to rob.cover at uwa.edu.au<mailto:rob.cover at uwa.edu.au> by 8 June 2015. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance no later than 1 July 2015.

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