[artinfo] Call For Proposals - Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme

[Geert Lovink]

The meme is dead. Or at least that is what 
opinion pieces, magazine articles, conference 
presentations, and even memes themselves have 
declared over the years. Despite this, "meme" is 
as pervasive a neologism as ever, used to 
describe a variety of digital media. Everything 
from bits of internet humor, image-macros, viral 
videos, to copy-pasta, urban legends, techno 
genres, dance routines and bodily gestures, have 
been described as memes or at the very 
leasmemetic in nature.

Initially a niche term, the meme, particularly 
the internet meme, has been adopted by the online 
public as a way to categorize the growing 
menagerie of online ephemera. The widespread 
acceptance of the term shows that it fulfills a 
role in how we understand, interpret and talk 
about the eclectic media objects that we come 
across during our interactions with digital 
culture. However, the concept of the meme and as 
well as memetics as a field of study have been 
fraught with controversy for over many decades.

In meme studies, the foundational thinking that 
grounds the concept of the meme has traditionally 
been one that seeks to understand culture through 
biological models of evolution: selection, 
replication, inheritance. It is equally important 
to underline that in various global  digital 
cultures, online ephemera had not been described 
as "memes" until recently, with local 
categorisations such as ï\èÓïÔ (biao qing bao), 
caps, monte, and other context-specific 
neologisms taking precedence over the Dawkinsian 
"meme". These categorisations come with their own 
nuanced histories and specificities and also 
offer us avenues to theorize digital culture 
beyond memes and memetics.

Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme

In the first INC Critical Meme 
Reader, <https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/critical-meme-reader-global-mutations-of-the-viral-image/>Global 
Mutations of the Viral Image (2021), contributor 
Åke Gafvelin asked if there could ever be a last 
meme in history. We concluded that every 
historical event would be haunted with a memetic 
double - memes will be around as long as humans 
are around. In the second Critical Meme 
Reader, <https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/critical-meme-reader-ii-memetic-tacticality/>Memetic 
Tacticality(2022), we observed that memes were 
moving beyond static viral images, morphing and 
transforming. It was clear to us then that memes 
have speculative and revolutionary potential and 
as a result engender political and tangible 
effects in the 'real' world. In the third 
Critical Meme Reader we are taking things a step 
further: we are killing the meme and resurrecting 
it. 

How can we define memes beyond Dawkins and 
Shifman? How can we make sense of the tension 
between meme activism and direct action? Do memes 
necessarily have to be viral and anonymous? What 
does it mean exactly for a meme to be 
tactical? How are memes evolving from 2D to 
3D? Is meme making a creative (research) practice 
tool? What would it mean for the ways we do 
research if we would exchange the word meme with 
another word completely? Would memes still exist 
without the internet? What would aliens conclude 
about us if they would find the digital remains 
of memes when they discover Earth, long after 
humans have been extinct?

Applications

We would like to invite thinkers 
and (meme) makers from a variety of disciplines 
and backgrounds to contribute manifestos, essays, 
interviews, fiction, poetry, artworks, memes and 
other yet-to-be-defined speculative interventions 
that aim to break and reassemble the ubiquitous 
concept of the meme. We are particularly 
interested in contributions from the Global South 
and marginalized communities and will prioritize 
radical perspectives.

We believe current definitions of the meme are 
limiting, so in order for meme studies to truly 
theoretically evolve as a field, the meme needs 
an expanded definition that moves away from 
neutral otological descriptions and allows for 
the inherent political potential of the 
phenomenon to be included. Billions of people 
make and consume memes, but no more than 100 
people around the world critically reflect on the 
mechanisms behind these practices. With this 
theory deficit in mind, we ask you to redefine 
the meme.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

(Critique of) ontologies in meme studies
Phenomenology of memes
Memes reframed as speculative, artistic and/or activist interventions
Global and local histories of "the meme"
Memes as commons
Memes and issues of copyright/authorship/recognition
The political dimensions of meme archival
Memes as esoterica
Memes and (algorithmic) censorship
Implications of the technical foundations and infrastructures of memes
The relation between memes and physical space
Marxist meme-labor-party-theory
Ecology of memes
The relationship between meme theory and meme practice
The relevance of meme studies beyond media studies
Meme studies and interdisciplinarity
Memes beyond dialectics
Entanglement between the concept of memes and the concept of time
Alternative futures for meme studies
Please note that we will not be accepting pieces 
that center case studies (e.g. analyses of 
specific memes, subcultures, aesthetics, and 
communities) as their main contribution. However, 
we are open to pieces that seek to investigate 
"the meme as a concept" through examples or 
cases, as long as the focus is on providing fresh 
conceptual or theoretical insights.

INC Reader #17, Critical Meme Reader III: 
Breaking the Meme, will be edited by Chloë 
Arkenbout and Idil Galip. Proposals/abstracts 
should be around 300-500 words. Please send these 
to <mailto:viralimageculture at networkcultures.org>viralimageculture at networkcultures.org by 
the 15th of May. Final contributions should be 
500-5000 words and submitted by the 4th of 
September. Contributors are welcome to join the 
conference in Amsterdam in April 2024 dedicated 
to the launch of the publication.

<https://networkcultures.org/viralimageculture/2023/04/18/call-for-proposals-critical-meme-reader-iii-breaking-the-meme/>https://networkcultures.org/viralimageculture/2023/04/18/call-for-proposals-critical-meme-reader-iii-breaking-the-meme/