7th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms

 

21, 22, 23 September 2016, Warsaw

 

Organized by: New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’, European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), Action IS 1307

 

and

 

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences

 

 

Performing Situated Knowledges: Space, Time, Vulnerability

 

 

Keynote speakers:

 

Prof. Ewa Domańska

Prof. Serpil Oppermann

Prof. Arun Saldanha

Dr. Milla Tiainen

Prof. Joanna Zylinska

 

This conference is one of a series of new materialism conferences that together aim to explore, through both theoretical and practical multiple transversal methodologies and approaches, the notion that vibrant, agential “matter” matters and further, to investigate the ontological, political, ethical, esthetical, and sociological implications this may carry. This year, whilst acknowledging the fast approaching thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Donna Haraway’s groundbreaking essay on “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” (1988), we invite participants to explore, perform anew, and enliven the concept of “situated knowledges”.

 

The intention of the conference is to focus on the following broadly formulated questions: What does “situatedness” mean? How does situatedness influence the concept of knowledge and vice versa—how does knowledge produce situatedness? What are the connections between knowledge production and practice? What are the generative intersections between, to name but a few, academic research, artistic research, action research, and practice-related research? How shall we address these questions taking into account the multiple processes of material-discursive production, translation, transformation, and diffraction that shape “situated knowledges”? What are the methodological challenges for the production of “situated knowledges”? Furthermore, adopting new materialist lenses, and in the context of different practices of knowledge production, the conference explores the contemporary material-discursive ways in which academia poses questions about lines of oppression within the academic world as well as about issues of vulnerability and precarity associated therewith.

 

With the above questions in mind, we would like to invite participants to reflect on the three main concepts around which this conference is organized, namely space, time, and vulnerability.

 

Regarding space, we would like to pose questions that potentially re-situate the concept of new materialism (NM) itself:

1. How does NM develop? How does it travel? How does it thrive (or subsist) in non-Western academia? How is NM itself situated and performed?

2. How does NM relate to other theories and disciplines, e.g. classic or Marxist materialism and what new theoretical/transdisciplinary/practical concepts/pathways/connections can we derive from these creative entanglements?

 

With reference to time we would like to explore the political dimension of temporality:

1. What kinds of generationalities/trans-temporalities emerge in NM? What forms of dialogues with the past are produced? What use can we make of feminist archives? How to (re)tell/(re)imagine feminist herstory?

2. How to envision futures as yet un-thought of? How to open up to new forms of collectivity and collaboration? Should we struggle to imagine utopian thinking as an alternative to reality?

 

Finally, with regard to vulnerability, we would like to investigate the political meanings, intensities, and potentials of this concept:

1. What kinds of knowledges do vulnerable bodies produce? What are the zones of insecurity and vulnerability in/around academia?  

2. What kinds of NM concepts/activisms/politics/economies can emerge from vulnerability?

 

Topics of presentation may include, while not being limited to, the following:

 

• politics of location,

• auto/biographies,

• lines of educational flight,

• precarious research practices,

• legitimacy and illegitimacy of research,

• envisioning futures,

• translating/diffracting knowledges,

• generationality,

• feminist community,

• feminist archives,

• feminist materialisms,

• vulnerability,

• vulnerable corporealities,

• vulnerability in collaboration,

• the body in pain,

• onto-epistemology as ethico-politics,

• posthumanism,

• ecologies of postbodies,

• corpovirtualities,

• material-discursive entanglements,

• transdisciplines and transbodies/transdisciplinary bodies/trans-corpo-disciplinarity,

• genealogies and cartographies of knowledges,

• incorporealities in neoliberal academia,

• questions of translations/adaptation/appropriation, diffraction instead of relocation,

• disciplining the bodies of researchers and the frames of research.

 

The event integrates multimodal forms of generating knowledge and encourages contributions in various forms and expressions: academic, artistic, performative, and others. We invite submissions of proposals for academic papers, performances, projects, personal narratives, artistic installations, etc. We also welcome pre-constituted panels and workshops around the topics of the conference.

 

 

Practical information:

Abstracts for individual papers and performances (300 words) should be sent in the following format:

 

1. Title

2. Presenter(s) + short bio

3. Institutional affiliation

4. Abstract

5. Key words

6. Technical requirements

Pre-organized panels for consideration should additionally include a summary paragraph along with proposed session title.

Proposals to organize workshops should contain:

1. Workshop proposal (300-words)

2. Summarized CV

 

All submitted abstracts, panel proposals, and workshop proposals will be peer reviewed.

 

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: April 1, 2016.

 

SEND THE SUBMISSIONS OR ANY QUESTIONS AT: admin@newmaterialism.eu