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Call for Publications Theme: The Aesthetics of Human Rights Publication: Academic Quarter Date: Issue 5 (December 2012) Deadline: 1.6.2012 __________________________________________________ Human rights are a historical, cultural and politico-legal theme with a high level of contemporary significance. As Michael Ignatieff has argued, the human rights ideal has undergone a “revolution” in the second half of the twentieth century: its growth from a limited concept pertaining to international institutions (specifically the UN) to a broad social concept deployed by ranges of grassroots social movements and individual actors. Human rights are ingrained in both national and international law; human rights gain modicums of representation via both the aesthetics of “everyday life” as well as high politics. The development of human rights in the second half of the twentieth century was enriched by the events of 1989. In line with Francis Fukuyama’s controversial but nonetheless accurate thesis, 1989 unleashed the forces of liberalism on a global scale – individuality and cultural difference as Fukuyama (as well as Samuel Huntington) have argued, are grounded in the discourses, claims and practices of late twentieth and early twenty-first century international political culture. Indeed, contemporary deployments of human rights also involve reactions against the preeminence of liberalism and “Western” cultural practice. A phenomenological vocabulary, if one is allowed, might discuss a “life-world” of rights – global, everyday environments of rights playing a liminal role in contemporary global culture. Human rights gain life, or “animation,” via their articulation in political culture as well as art, advertising, written fiction, film, electronic media, the Internet, “lifestyle,” fashion and journalistic reportage. This issue of Academic Quarter proposes to address the mulitplicious dimensions of “human rights aesthetics.” Work on this exists in texts such as Lynn Hunt’s (2007) Inventing Human Rights, Joseph Slaughter’s Human Rights Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law (2007), D. Soyini Madison’s (2011) Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance and articles such as Giovanni Boradori’s “Tiny Sparks of Contingency: On the Aesthetics of Human Rights” (2012) (among others). The current AQ issue will develop this issue. How do we find the representation of rights as part of our daily environments, ingrained into visual, aural and textual spaces making senses of rights, their sustenance and reality as “pre-given?” How do we span representational spaces in which rights are a matter of fiction – film, books, videogames – but also fiction’s attachment to “fact”: actual historical events and concrete human rights violations? How do we gain senses of our times as defined by human rights – human rights as a “master term,” as Arjun Appadurai phrased it, or “cultural dominant,” in the words of Frederic Jameson? What, after all, are the aesthetics of human rights, and what modes of textual, intellectual-historical, critical-theoretical, sociological and philosophical-aesthetic investigation may we bring to bear on rights “culture?” Authors with human rights interests from cultural studies, media studies, sociology, history, art history, film studies, discourse studies, literary studies, philosophy, intellectual history and other relevant areas are asked to submit abstracts to contribute to a thorough treatment of the “aesthetics of human rights.” Suggestion for articles, including an abstract of 150 words to be mailed to Karen-Margrethe Simonsen ([email protected]) and Ben Dorfman ([email protected]) no later than June the 1st 2012. Accepted articles – using the Harvard System Style Sheet – should be mailed to the editors no later than August the 1st 2012. Articles will then be reviewed anonymously. The articles should be around 15,000-25,000 keystrokes (around 3,500 words). The issue will be published in December 2012. Academic Quarter has been approved according to the Danish bibliometrical system for 2011 and forward. Contact: Ben Dorfman Department of Culture and Global Studies Aalborg University Kroghstræde 3 DK-9220 Aalborg East Denmark Phone: +45 9940 9179 Email: [email protected] Web: http://akademiskkvarter.hum.aau.dk/UK/ __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
