[artinfo] CFA Book publication: The Aesthetics and Politics of Irony

[Elsa de Freitas Alves]

CALL FOR ARTICLES

Book publication

The Aesthetics and Politics of Irony

Organizers: Elsa Alves (University of Copenhagen 
/ CECC) and Ana Dinger (CECC, Catholic University 
of Portugal)

CFA: Following on from the 4th Graduate 
Conference in Culture Studies, Irony: framing 
(post)modernity, held in January 2014 at the 
Catholic University of Portugal, we would like to 
prompt a reflection on the problem of irony in 
modern and contemporary culture.

After the tragedy of 9/11 in the West and the 
crisis of socialism in the East, the overriding 
ironic tone that had pervaded the 80s and 90s has 
begun to withdraw from the aesthetic and 
socio-political scenes. The last decades have 
witnessed an increasing celebration of affects 
and emotions, a return of authenticity and the 
real, and the birth of a "new sincerity". This 
backlash against ironic alienation or "cynical 
reason" hopes to replace playfulness, shallowness 
and negativity for an ethos of commitment, 
sensitivity and integrity. Nevertheless, these 
attempts could easily turn out to be rhetorical 
or ironic.

The present book seeks to address, on one hand, 
the impulse of and the resistance to irony in 
today's artistic, cultural and political 
discourses and practices. On the other hand, 
given that ironic attitudes and expressions in 
late modernity are anticipated in German 
idealism, constituting as such a Romantic 
possibility, we welcome reflections on modern 
irony at large.

Some of the key questions we wish to tackle are: 
how does irony become political? Can it build a 
community? How does it affirm the subject (e.g. 
in post-structuralism)? How does it provide a 
model of opposition to the status quo or, 
instead, how does it neutralize critique? How 
does it become an aesthetic principle and what 
are the strategies that this entails or, instead, 
how does it perform deaestheticisation? What kind 
of relation can the ironic and the tragic have? 
Are there historical moments that can be 
nominated "ironic" (e.g. post-modernity)? What 
are the post-ironic alternatives?

In this volume, Michele Cometa (University of 
Palermo) will address the theory of irony in 
Schlegel and Paul de Man, and its potential for 
culture analysis, Jorge Fazenda Lourenço 
(Catholic University of Portugal) will analyse 
irony's political overtones in Jorge de Sena's 
poetry and Philip Auslander (Georgia Institute of 
Technology) will discuss irony in the 
performative arts.

We invite contributions to be sent to the 
editors, Elsa Alves & Ana Dinger 
(<mailto:irony2014 at gmail.com>irony2014 at gmail.com), 
until the 1st of March 2015.


Submissions guideline:

Authors are encouraged to write an article 
specifically for the volume. However, it is also 
possible to draw on already published work, 
adapting this to address the volume theme.

Articles need to be written in English and 
language editing is the responsibility of 
the authors.

The texts will be selected according to 
their relevance regarding the goals set out for 
the volume, originality of scope and theoretical 
framing.

Articles will need to be max. 20 pages in length, 
Times New Roman 12, including bibliography. For 
more information see the style sheet enclosed.

Please attach a short bio-bibliographical text (c. 150 words).

Deadline for submissions is 1st of March 2015. 
The organizers will return their decision by the 
end of April 2015.


For further information:

<http://irony2014conference.wordpress.com/>http://irony2014conference.wordpress.com/

<http://cecc.fch.lisboa.ucp.pt/en/>http://cecc.fch.lisboa.ucp.pt/en/