From: Archibald Scatflinger (TransdimensionalElf@hawaii.rr.com)
Date: Sun Sep 22 2002 - 20:21:15 MDT
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From: "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
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Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2002 3:29 PM
Subject: SPOON-ANN: Bad Subjects CFP 2002-2003 (fwd)
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> Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 14:07:27 -0700 (PDT)
> From: lockard@socrates.berkeley.edu
> To: spoon-announcements@lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: SPOON-ANN: Bad Subjects CFP 2002-2003
>
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>
> BAD SUBJECTS 2002-2003
> ----------------------
> CALL FOR PAPERS
>
>
> BAD SUBJECTS promotes radical thinking and public education about the
> political implications of everyday life. We offer a forum for re-imagining
> progressive and leftist politics in the United States and the world. We
> invite you to join us and participate in the Bad Subjects project as we
> enter our eleventh year of publishing.
>
> We are always looking for material to publish in Bad Subjects. If you are
> interested in writing an article for the magazine, please consult the
> individual Calls for Papers below and contact the editors for an issue you
> would like to write for (whether it be on the issue topic or something
else
> -- we welcome non-topic submissions). The ideal Bad Subjects article is
no
> more than 3000 words and keeps specialized terminology to a minimum. If
you
> are interested in writing reviews for our Web site, please contact our
> Reviews Editors Joel Schalit <riotgoy@ix.netcom.com> or Charlie Bertsch
> <cbertsch@u.arizona.edu>.
>
>
> TASTE (Issue 63)
>
> Politics matter more than taste. But we always seem to let matters of
taste
> infiltrate our politics. Religious conservatives are "tasteless." The
> activist who lets his sexual desires bleed into his political desires is a
> "boor." The earnest men and women who distribute party literature at
> demonstrations are mocked for their nerdy K-Mart attire. And the
> twenty-somethings at another kind of party feel good about themselves
> because they all like the music of band X or band Y. Why can't we draw a
> firm boundary between our political and aesthetic judgments?
>
> This issue of Bad Subjects is dedicated to exploring the politics of
> taste. We're interested in a wide range of approaches, from essays that
> make theoretical work on taste accessible to a broad audience to
> first-person pieces that provide a window on particular subcultures.
> Possible topics include: thinking with the body; popular culture vs. mass
> culture; taste and smell; anything on the relationship between art and
> food; the beautiful, the sublime, and the ugly; sexual preference as taste
> preference; reconsidering the avant-garde; opiates of the masses; class,
> taste, and culture; things you do with your tongue; Bourdieu -- and beyond
> -- for beginners; aestheticizing politics or politicizing aesthetics;
> fetishism; "alternative" cultures; cultural programming from the womb
> onward; taste and technology; flavor enhancement; rituals of the table;
> anorexia and bulimia as metaphors (or not); self-fashioning now and then.
>
> If you're interested in writing something for this issue, submit a
query --
> tastefully done, of course -- to issue editors Joel Schalit
> [riotgoy@ix.netcom.com] or Charlie Bertsch [cbertsch@u.arizona.edu] as
soon
> as you can. Or just send in a polished essay by the drop-deadline of
> October 15, 2002.
>
>
> MARX AND THEORY (Issue 64)
>
> "Bad Subjects issue 64 on Marx and Theory seeks to complicate --even
> interrogate--the way Marxism has been misappropriated by the academic
> left's over investment in poststructural theory and over-investment
> cultural studies, an investment that ultimately betrays Marxism's
> fundamental interest in a material economy. Leftist critiques are
currently
> filled with buzz-concepts such as "resistant peformativity", "alternative
> citizenship", "discursive political praxis", "mimicry", "radical
> hybridity", to name only a few.
>
> The editors wonder, to what end? Can theories based on an immaterial
> conception of cultural production, language, and politics "really" offer
> forms of social critique and resistance? Essays might also critique
> theories from the left that presuppose the text-as-reality in which the
> production of different literatures of resistance--from genre bending
> Musicscapes, graffiti,genre-bending, tattooed/pierced bodies, performance
> art, football or literary texts--are viewed as all the resistance
> necessary for a meaningful politics. Can cultural phenomena that resist
> "mastery" really work as sites of resistance and as modes of political
> intervention? Or are these theories simply participating in capitalist
> modes of production and consumption that have no substance, or if there is
> substance, is it one invested in a masculinist ontology, a colonial
> metaphysics of "Whiteness", or an elitist academic performance? When
> cultural discourse IS politics, what are the implications for "real"
> coalition building among the working classes world wide to ensure the
right
> of all citizens to equal access to education,coalition-building,
world-wide
> medical care, common transportation, and communication?
>
> Essays might also explore the dangers of the notion of power as not
> locatable, a notion that directs the understanding of the actual
> concentration of power away from a state that oppresses and exploits those
> at the margins of class, race, sexuality, and gender "norms". In the
ironic
> and textually playful world of a so-identified Marxist poststructuralism,
> power exists in the hands of no one social class nor any specific state
> institution. Without a state or collective at the locus of power, power
> becomes purely fluid and symbolic. Is a solely symbolic intervention
> satisfactory? Please send email queries and essay submissions to issue
> editors Frederick Aldama [aldamaf@hotmail.com] and Robert Soza
> [r_soza@uclink.berkeley.edu]. Issue deadline: December 1st, 2002.
>
>
> PANIC (Issue 65)
>
> The experience of panic is like no other. It is fear and frenzy all mixed
> up in a stew of undirected energy. Panic can be a gut reaction, a false
> emotion, a motivator, or a entire lifestyle. Panic is a sound biological
> reaction to immediate physical danger. But it also surfaces at odd,
> inopportune moments. It is not just a personal thing: as the Wall Street
> Journal and the New York Times tell us, something as big and abstract as
> the stock market can panic. Panic may be felt as deeply personal, but it
> is inherently political.
>
> The Panic issue of Bad Subjects will consider those panicked moments of
> modern life. From the garden variety panic attack to Dick Cheney hiding
> out in his bunker -- we want to hear from you about panic as a condition
of
> modern culture and a metaphor for personal and political life. What fuels
> the proliferation of panic all around us, and what does all this panic in
> turn promote? Does panic have a style? And what should cause us to
panic:
> Terror? Sex? The continued destruction of the environment? Your own
> shadow? Neoliberalism? The fresh spaghetti sauce stain on your expensive
> new outfit?
>
> Send queries and submissions to Zack Furness [zafst+@pitt.edu] or Jonathan
> Sterne [jsterne+@pitt.edu]. Issue deadline: February 1st, 2003.
>
>
> NATION (Issue 66)
>
> Headlines in the US blare: Pakistan and India steadily march towards
> nuclear war. The conflicting desires of Israelis and Palestinians flare
> into unusually public display. Catholics, Protestants, and the British
face
> off in Northern Ireland. Yet for all the ink spilled in Western newspapers
> over the conflicts in these regions, readers get little sense that the
West
> was there. Instead, we read sustaining fictions of two bellicose people,
> two age-old hatreds, two more or less democratic nation-states, all in
need
> of the firm, unwavering hand of Western democracy to guide them.
>
> Liberal interventionists argue that the foreign policy disasters of the
> Clinton era require a restoration of American national will and of the
> moral and military might to stop ethnic butchers and to set the world
> right. And while the Bush White House tries to spin the war in Afghanistan
> as America's first war to "liberate Third World women", the awareness that
> there ever was or could be an American imperial era slips away.
> Postcolonial history-in the majoritarian sense-is being redefined as a
> history in which colonialism has no legacy and cannot explain contemporary
> problems.
>
> Meanwhile, economic globalization-the catchword of governments,
> corporations, and media-apparently bounces over the speed bump of
> anti-globalization movements (movements that are increasingly global).
> President Bush's "fast track" victory-granting him the authority to
> unilaterally write trade agreements with other countries-is only the
latest
> step towards an integrated elite and a fragmented world.
>
> As jingoist patriotism and national identity sweeps across the United
> States, American power sponsors nation building in Afghanistan and nation
> dismantling in Iraq, and confronts national and religious movements with
> their own imperial dreams. We ask: does nationalism have any relevance for
> progressive politics today? Is the concept of a nation inherently
> repressive? What prospects for liberation does it offer, and at what cost?
> What lessons must we learn from the national movements of the 20th
century,
> and what mistakes must we prevent? What accounts for the enduring
> popularity of nationalism's promises?
>
> We're looking for a broad, international range of viewpoints on
nationhood,
> globalization, and national and international rivalries. Possible topics
> include: national, international, transnational, and global identities;
the
> effect of religious rivalries on national identity; the figuration of
> international rivalries in sports and other arenas; representations of
> nationhood and the body in hip-hop and popular culture; corporate branding
> and national identity; the power of corporate imperialism versus national
> sovereignty; concepts of the nation and internationalism in organizing
> against globalization; the localization of language in books to promote
> nationhood (for example, translating Harry Potter for American audiences);
> the relevance of Nation of Ulysses's 13 Point Plan to Destroy America to
> contemporary political life; the cosmic fellowship of One Nation Under a
> Groove. Send your thoughts to issue editors Aaron Shuman
> [Ashuman101@aol.com] and Elisabeth Hurst [lizyjn@earthlink.net]. The
> deadline for submissions is April 1st, 2003.
>
>
> FAMILY (Issue 67)
>
> Languages increasingly need new words for family members beyond mom, dad,
> the kids, grandparents and so on. Stepmothers and stepfathers, then
> half-siblings? Stepsiblings? It seems everybody also has twisted custom
> designations, like "I've always called Brenda 'Auntie', even though she's
> really my father's best friend". Then there's the queer family. As of
> 2002, the New York Times accepts advertisements for same sex commitment
> ceremonies, published side by side with wedding announcements. The
> California State Assembly wants to extend in testate rights to the
> registered partner in a domestic partnership. In state after state,
courts
> are granting people the right of second parent adoptions. So-called
> "Florida" marriages are increasingly common among the elderly and
> disabled. Increasingly, the question of who qualifies as "family" is
being
> determined not just by governments and religious denominations, but also
by
> corporate interests. In 1884 Friedrich Engels expressly linked the
family,
> private property and the state itself. To what extent do we still do so?
>
> Who decides what a family is? In a world where how we constitute a family
> seems to change dramatically from decade to decade, what do we mean when
we
> refer to our family? Let's find out. For this issue of Bad Subjects,
we're
> looking for political perspectives on stable and explosive nuclear
> families, functional and dysfunctional households, family secrets,
> monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, communes, parenting, generational
conflicts,
> loving and loveless couplings, lineage and heritage (both civil and
> religious), adoption. Brothers and Sisters, send your essays to Cynthia
> Hoffman [choff@lmi.net] and Mike Mosher [mosher@svsu.edu] by June 1, 2003.
>
>
> ORGANIZE (Issue 68)
>
> Thomas Jefferson is reputed to have quipped that if he could go to heaven
> only after shedding his affiliation with a political party, he would
prefer
> to have his name stricken from the guest list. Today, however, it seems
> increasingly common for political life to be lived in private. Across the
> political spectrum from the micro-militias of the extreme Right to the
> nebulous networks of the postmodern Left organization seems locked in a
> steady decline. Is this, as many have suggested, a positive development,
> leading in the direction of greater freedom for opinion and action? Or
does
> the decline of organized politics leave ordinary citizens weakened in the
> face of powerful elites? Is 'organization' itself a suspect principle,
> leading down a slippery slope from housecleaning to the Holocaust?
>
> This issue of Bad Subjects looks to examine the problems, perils, and
> positive things that can come from political organizing and organizing
> politics. Can organizing your bookshelves or CDs or not be a political
> statement? What does it take to be organized? Are time management, day
> planners, PDAs and pocket protectors tools of The Man or tools for
> liberation? And can or should politics even be organized in our time? Put
> this on your to-do list: send your submissions to J. C. Myers
> [jcmyers@csustan.edu] or Scott Schaffer [scott.schaffer@millersville.edu]
> no later than August 1, 2003. Time's a-wastin'.
>
> SLAVERY (Issue 69)
>
> In 1853, concerning liberal politics that protested foreign slavery but
> ignored its own oppressions, Karl Marx connected the struggle against wage
> slavery directly with the struggle against race slavery in the US southern
> states. "The enemy of British Wage-Slavery has a right to condemn
> Negro-Slavery...a Manchester Cotton-lord -- never!" That same parallel
> convinced early19th-century trade unionists and readers of Connolly's 1913
> manifesto, "To the Linen Slaves of Belfast". Slavery has functioned
> throughout the modern era as a connective metaphor in political rhetoric.
>
> The slaveries of everyday life continue no less today than under classic
> slave systems. Economic globalization drives wages continually downward
in
> order to provide dominant economies with cheaper goods, at the expense of
> workers in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Impoverished neo-slavery,
> absence of labor rights, and subordination to capital represent the terms
> of existence neo-liberalism has established for uncountable hundreds of
> millions of workers. Large segments of the sex industry function through
> violence against women and sex slavery. For some -- like the Palestinian
> 'captive nation' -- enslavement assumes the form of collective oppression
> and denial of equal political entitlement.
>
> Slavery remains one of the most relevant descriptions of contemporary
life,
> yet it gets treated as either history or rare exoticism. Bad Subjects
> issue 69 will re-explore the metaphor and reality of slavery. Worklife,
> economic, gender/sex, national, religion, social discipline and prisons,
or
> other forms of slavery: we are looking for non-fiction prose essays of
> 2500-3000 words that expand the paradigm. We will be especially interested
> also in witness essays addressing the forms of neo-slavery described in
> Bales' Disposable People. The essays we are looking for might remember the
> original words of the Internationale: "Esclaves, debout, debout / Le monde
> va changer de base / Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout."
>
> Contact issue co-editors Joe Lockard [Joe.Lockard@asu.edu] or Aaron Shuman
> [aShuman101@aol.com] with essays or essay proposals. The deadline is
> October 1, 2003.
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