Call for Participation:
RESISTANCES: counter-conduct, inter-disruptions, and compromising acts
Graduate conference – Centre for Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD and Communication Studies PhD
Concordia University | Montréal, Québec
DEADLINE: January 20, 2010 – submissions now closed
conference dates: April 15 and 16, 2010
Resistance is not new. Resistance has been done. Is there any hope for resistances of the future? What some would call the failure of resistance to make lasting change confronts the hope for engagement with cynicism. Yet resistance returns when dissent is not accounted for. As we know, resistance and repetition, know each other intimately either as revolution, or compulsion. Is this violent intimacy desirable? Indeed, desire and seduction are always already implicated in a discussion of resistance.
While power is dispersed, implicated within us both as disciplinary and dissenting agencies, we bear the scars of these fragmentary forces. How do these conflicts act within and through us?
Resistances, historical and to come, the repetition of resistant acts, the return of revolution, the failure or impossibility of oppositional tactics, the violence of two opposing forces and the underlying violence of consensus – these are some of the discussions we hope to elaborate over the course of this conference.
Finally, does talking about it work? Can we resolve, analyze, work through divisive impasses? Or, is there a limit that resists or even forbids resolution?
By initiating a call on the theme of resistances, we are exposing ourselves to failure:
it is a paradox to solicit resistance, a paradox that we, as catalysts, cannot resolve. But the unresolvable aspects of this paradox are the points of friction from which we hope this event to depart, to take issue…
Papers can engage with aspects of resistance such as:
- political, artistic, philosophical, physical, psychoanalytic, ethical
- resistant viral strains, antibodies
- historical or contemporary events of resistance, war, apartheid
- counter-histories, narrative of revolution, micro-political acts, counter-cartographies
- protest, change, stasis, resistance and the force of law
- failure, hope, love, intimacy
- power, public and private
- violence, solidarity, antagonism
- memory, trauma, repression
Responses may also take the form of non-conformist thinking, actions, and events…
Please submit an abstract of 300 words for a 20 minute presentation (an academic paper, artist`s presentation, intervention, workshop, manifesto, performance) along with a brief bio and list of technical requirements.
Send submissions to resistancesconference@gmail.com
DEADLINE: January 20, 2010.
Special call:
As a sub-stream of the Resistances conference, we also invite participants to consider delivering academic papers in non-academic settings. Set-up like flashmobs, these presentations will be given in public spaces for an incidental audience. If interested, please send your submission with a note of interest in being considered for this special call. Please include a suggestion for which public space you think your paper would be best presented in. For example, a paper about migration in an airport or bus station. If you are interested in participating in this special stream but cannot propose a space, we are more than willing to suggest one.
