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<TITLE>Transformations cfp: The Internet as Politicising Instrument</TITLE>
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</SPAN><FONT SIZE="5"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:18pt'><B>CFP: Issue 23 <BR>
The Internet as Politicising Instrument<BR>
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Transformations is calling for submissions for <I>Issue 23: The Internet as Politicising Instrument</I>. <BR>
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For this issue of Transformations, we invite papers that consider the gamut of change that the Internet has provoked, drawing on Marcus Breen's <I>Uprising: the Internet's Unintended Consequences</I> (Common Ground Publishing, Champaign, IL, 2011). <BR>
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In <I>Uprising</I> Marcus Breen employs Walter Benjamin's arguments about art as a 'politicising instrument ... to allow for the proletariat to speak for themselves' (p. 30). Following this assertion, we would like to invite contributors to submit papers that reflect on this claim, to support, challenge or deeply interrogate it. Discussions could include analysis of the ways the Internet enables the 'proletariat' and the abject to speak for themselves (following Julia Kristeva, Neil Larsen, Judith Butler, Arthur Kroker and others). The creation of new styles of false consciousness is open for discussion. Does the Internet require a new kind of speaking, one which does not fit older forms of class discourse? And what role does art, if any, play in this speaking? Can the Internet be understood as a new media tool offering emancipation given the political economy of the media in general? Are there lessons to be learned about proletarian political mobilisation due to the Internet after the so-called Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street? Discussion about the meaning of 'proletarianisation' in the Internet era could take up the interpretive work Breen offers on the new definition of the term in an era when cultural 'stuff' is largely unregulated in a neo-liberal context. <BR>
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Shifts in the circulation and availability of otherwise regulated media differ from nation to nation and geographical region to region, suggesting that proletarianisation due to the Internet takes a multiplicity of forms. The implications for political mobilisation may offer unprecedented opportunities for political action across the spectrum. Questions about the challenges to the order of liberal democracy abound and are welcome from either theoretical or empirical case study perspectives or in innovative multidisciplinary modalities. <BR>
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<B>Abstracts</B> (500 words): due 1st May 2012, with a view to submit articles by 1st September. <BR>
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Abstracts should be sent to: <BR>
The General Editor, <B>Warwick Mules</B>, at <a href="w.mules@bigpond.com">w.mules@bigpond.com</a> <BR>
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For submission guidelines and to view <I>Transformations</I> online go to: <BR>
<a href="http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/">http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/</a> <BR>
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