.
Call for Contributions: Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and
Potentialities
Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex, Race invites articles for an upcoming volume
in its series, titled Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and
Potentialities, which will focus on contemporary cultural activism that deals
with issues of gender, race, queer, inter-cultural dialogue, political agency
and societal transformation within the broader framework of contemporary
anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and alternative-globalization struggles with
their particular forms, existing practices, and their further implications and
potentialities.
The Yes Men, the Guerilla Girls, Adbusters, Reclaim the Streets, Critical Art
Ensemble, Genderpranks, the Rebel Clown Army, Reverend Billy, Bansky, the Space
Hijackers, Yomango, ¨TMark, Biotic Baking Brigade and Billboard Liberation
Front are now as famous and inspiring as T. W. Adorno, Guy Debord, or Jean
Baudrillard. The actions and campaigns of such groups have brought about
alternative modes in which political activism can be innovative and
destructive. Simultaneously they proved to be inspiring forms of political art
that moves beyond its institutional boundaries as well as beyond the dichotomy
between autonomous and committed art. These contemporary practices, all of
which are directed towards disturbing and reorienting the cultural and
political sphere by attacking the narratives of truth in the society in one way
or another can be summed up under the notion of a cultural activism that
involves different tactics, such as culture jamming, sousveillance, media
hoaxing, adbusting, subvertising, flash mobs, street art, hacktivism, billboard
liberation, and urban guerilla, to name but a few. While theoretical and
historical roots of these cultural practices can be found in the avant-garde
art movements of the past-from Dada and Surrealism to Situationist
International-the socio-cultural contexts in which these actions take place
differ greatly from that of the historical avant-guards and hence deserve to be
theorized in their contemporary specificity.
Therefore, we invite scholars and activists to think together to provide
various responses and establish a productive dialogue between the theorizations
of the intricacies of our times and activist/subversive practices that deal
with them. The encounter between the insights of political, social and critical
theory and activist visions, suggestions and actions is both urgent and
appealing. We aim to explore this confrontational collaboration, its limits and
productiveness, both in theory and in practice.
An important concern is to contextualize practices both in their specificity
and in a broader framework, by considering their predecessors, their temporal
and theoretical neighbors, and allied or hostile relatives. By doing so, the
various manifestations of activist practices in different localities and their
transnational qualities can be elucidated.
Activist practices are situated at the juncture of power, desire, identity,
political practice, political agency and the dialectic of subversion and
recuperation. Contributions should try to engage with these coordinates so as
to generate various suggestions about the present and future, subjects and
politics, as well as the formation and reformation of images, spaces, meanings
and everyday life. Contributions are expected to be concerned with rethinking
and exploring theoretical concepts and tools through practice, and comprehend
and develop political practice by the help of theories, both for a better
understanding of theory and practice, and more importantly, for new practical
transformatory critical suggestions for our times.
Please send an abstract of your contribution (300 words maximum) and a short
biographical note by October 15, 2007 to Aylin Kuryel - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and Begum Ozden Firat - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. The deadline for the final articles is February 1,
2008.
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