[artinfo] Conference, Cardiff University

[Alexa Csizmadia]

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)