The Program Committee of the Association for Studies of Culture and Representation invites proposal submissions for an interdisciplinary panel titled "Desires for Non-Human Matter." The panel will be held at the 10th Annual Meeting on July 4-5, 2015 at the Toyama campus of the Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. We are looking for 20 minutes presentations in either English or Japanese that address theoretical and historical issues of New Materialism and Speculative Realism. The submission deadline is May 20, 2015.
Cross-disciplinary debates concerning the meaning of materialism, material, and matter itself recently emerged in response to questions raised by New Materialism and Speculative Realism. What approach one may take in pursuing these questions, however, their relationship to post-structuralism is central. Broadly speaking, post-structuralism aimed to criticize the anthropocentrism in the human knowledge of the world and to elaborate a non-anthropocentric perspective. Did contemporary trends in materialism inherit the question of how to imagine a non-human viewpoint from post-structuralism? Or are they a new movement decisively separated from post-structuralism?
Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman -- the main exponents of Speculative Realism -- insist that human perspectivism ("correlationism" as expressed by Meillassoux) still remains in Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida’s work. Thus Meillasseux and Harman characterize their philosophy as an attempt to break free of such lingering anthropocentrism. This leaves us with the question of why there is such a new "desire" for non-human matter today?
We primarily invite contributions that address this desire for non-human matter in New Materialism and Speculative Realism, but we also welcome wider reflections which span different aspects of interest in materialism and realism in the present time.
Possible Topics:
- Today’s realism/materialism and psychoanalytic viewpoint
- Proliferation of "object-oriented" cultural theories
- Non-human matter in media studies
Please submit your proposal by email to conference@repre.org
Your submission email should include the following:
1) Your name
2) The title of your paper
3) A 200–250 word (English) or 600 character (Japanese) abstract
4) Your institutional affiliation and position
5) A brief Bio (limited to 50 words in English, 150 characters in Japanese)
6) Your contact information (email address, phone number and physical address)
About the Conference:
As part of the 10th Annual Meeting, we will hold a symposium on
representations of the explosion. For more details, please check our
website:
https://www.repre.org/conventions//
About the Association:
Founded in 2006, the Association for Studies of Culture and Representation is an organization dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching of humanities. Our main interest lies in the critical analysis of culture through the multi-faceted concept of
"representation." Through the mechanism of "representation," ideas and objects are produced, circulated, and received in society. We examine various modalities of cultural production and their functions in social, political, and economic contexts, while going beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and exploring areas that connect diverse fields of research and practice.
For further information on the Association, please visit the below site:
(English) https://www.repre.org/association/english/
(Japanese) https://www.repre.org/association/about/
For information on past symposiums, events, and panels, please see:
(Japanese) https://www.repre.org/conventions/
Membership:
The presenter must be a member of the Association for Studies of Culture and Representation. There is no conference registration fee for Association members. For more information about the general membership procedure for those based in Japan, please see:
(English) https://www.repre.org/association/english/
If you do not have a Japanese bank account, you may become a member directly at the conference by filling out a form* and paying the admission and membership fees in cash (Japanese yen, cash only).
*The "Referee" section in the form asks you to provide an Association member’s name and signature. If you do not have a referee or have difficulty in finding one, you may leave it blank.
Access to the Waseda University’s Toyama Campus:
http://www.waseda.jp/top/en/access/toyama-campus
If you have any further questions, please email us at: conference@repre.org