[csaa-forum] Mediating the Real 2 - Laurie Ouellette's keynote + extended CFP reminder

[Performance of the Real Research Theme]

Hello everyone,

Just a reminder that the CFP for Mediating the Real 2: Mediations in a Post-Truth Era has been extended until 31st August. We are also delighted to share with you our keynote Laurie Ouellette’s keynote abstract: ‘Fake President: Telemorphosis and the Performance of Grotesque Sovereignty’:

Laurie Ouellette
Fake President: Telemorphosis and the Performance of Grotesque Sovereignty
This presentation situates the rise and fall of the Trump presidency within the polymorphous technologies of truth and fakery associated with reality TV and social media: experimentation, verification, spectacularization, affect and performativity.  Drawing from but also complicating Baudrillard’s late diagnosis of the total telemorphosis of social life, I parse the contradictions of “post-truth” media culture, and show how the staging of governance as a reality show in which we are all compelled to play a part activates new mechanisms for contesting Trump’s presidential performance. Recalling Foucault’s notion of grotesque sovereignty as a manifestation of political power that operates in spite of its discrediting as “odious, despicable, or ridiculous,” I ask what bearing Trump’s declining ratings might have on the structural violence of race, misogyny and market neoliberalism in the United States today.

More info on the CFP below – it would be great to see a panel put together or some such.


Call for papers
Mediating the Real 2: Mediations in a 'Post Truth' Era

A conference at the University of Otago 22nd – 24th November 2017
Presented by The Performance of the Real Research Theme and the Department of Media, Film and Communication
Keynote speakers:
Dr Kim Toffoletti (Deakin University)
&
Dr Laurie J. Ouellette (University of Minnesota)

‘Post-truth’ has become a buzzword in the last year generating think-pieces and SNS chatter lamenting 'truth' as a lost object that has enabled and / or smuggled in events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. With this discussion, comes a broader demonstration of anxiety that a true 'real' (world, political sphere, social …) has been either lost or obscured. The responsibility for this loss or obscurance has fallen firmly at the feet of 'the media' (as well as the so-called postmodernists).

This conference asks and unpacks the interactions of (post) truth, the 'real' and contemporary media.

Building on and following from the success of Mediating the Real ‘1’, we encourage critically informed approaches – particularly drawing from the work of Lacan. However, this time too, we invite scholars engaged with Jean Baudrillard's prolific engagement in these matters.

Papers might ask but are not limited to:
·      What does post-truth mean in the contemporary media saturated context?
·      A consideration of the increasingly banal use of ‘post-truth’ (as OED word of the year 2016) in news chatter and the implications of this for understandings of 'truthful’ media
·      Where is the real located in this context? This might be through considerations of the Lacanian real and the possibilities for subjectivity and sociality – particularly in terms of the potential to build social bonds within the ‘discourse of capitalism’
·      What does the anguished / anxious response to 'post truth', particularly in popular and social media, tell us about contemporary subjectivity and sociality?
·      What do Baudrillard’s critical interventions tell us about the contemporary production of reality?

Key information:
Organisers and contacts: Dr Brett Nicholls (brett.nicholls at otago.ac.nz<mailto:brett.nicholls at otago.ac.nz>) and Dr Rosemary Overell (rosemary.overell at otago.ac.nz)<mailto:rosemary.overell at otago.ac.nz)>
Abstract information: please email rosemary.overell at otago.ac.nz<mailto:rosemary.overell at otago.ac.nz> a 250-500 word abstract and 150 word biography by 31st August 2017
Registration: $95 (casual / sessional workers and postgraduates) and $225 (academic and waged workers) – includes cocktail function, lunches and teas
Dinner:  $60
Venue: Richardson, 6th floor, Room 4 North
More info:
http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real/index.html
http://www.otago.ac.nz/mfco/index.html
https://www.facebook.com/performanceofthereal
https://www.facebook.com/mediafilmcomms/
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