CFP : A Return to the Senses

A Return to the Senses: Political Theory and the Sensorium
- A Theory & Event Conference -
May 7 – 9, 2009

The resurgence of scholarly research on the nexus between politics and aesthetics has brought to the fore rich and diverse investigations on the role of the senses in political life. Whether engaging the theories of perception that configure our understandings of justice, or forms of aesthetic experience in an ethics of appearance, or the role of affect and the passions in human motivation, the concerns that motivate these and other cognate inquiries stem from an important fact of pluralist democratic societies: namely, that individuals or groups in pluralist democracies attend to one another at the level of appearances. In this respect, how we imagine the configuration, disposition, character and function of the senses when engaging political events is of critical importance for political theory.

In collaboration with the political and cultural theory journal Theory & Event, an international conference will be held at Trent University in Peterborough (Canada) on May 7 – 9, 2009. Multidisciplinary in scope and ambition, this conference seeks proposals from scholars whose research interests pursue the diverse cultural sites of political theory’s sensorium. Such sites might include television, cinema, new media, food, music, and dance; practices of visibility, iteration, aurality, flavor; contemporary and historical treatments of perception and taste, time and movement – from a multitude of political, historical and theoretical perspectives.

The submission deadline for proposals is October 1, 2008. Please submit abstracts of 300-400 words (Ph.D. candidates should indicate their expected date of completion) to the following email address: sensorium2009@gmail.com. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in January, 2009.

Conference Organizer:
Davide Panagia
Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies
Traill College, Trent University

Conference Coordinator:
Adrienne Richard
The Center for the Study of Theory, Culture, and Politics
Trent University

Sponsored by the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and The Centre for the Study of Theory, Culture, and Politics at Trent University.

Davide Panagia
Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies
Trent University
Peterborough, ON
Canada K9J 7B8
Email: sensorium2009@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.trentu.ca/theorycentre/conferences_sensorium2009.php

Bergson and organization studies

Stephen Linstead, "Organization as Reply: Bergson and Casual Organization Theory", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 95-111.

Anthony O'Shea, "The (R)evolution of New Product Innovation", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 113-125.

Roland Calori, "Organizational Development and the Ontology of Creative Dialectical Evolution", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 127-150.

Martin Wood, "Mind the Gap? A Processual Reconsideration of Organizational", Organization, Vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), p. 151-171.

"Je ne vois qu'un moyen de savoir jusqu'où l'on peut aller : c'est de se mettre en route et de marcher." (Henri Bergson, L'énergie spirituelle)

While pursuing my research on the administration of world's fairs I came across many evidences accounting for the actual disarray of the operations which, while following clear organizational principles, had to deal with all sorts of conflicts, negociations, concessions and so on. The construction of that geometrical utopian place was, if not a mess, at least not so straightforward as it might seem and certainly not like the archetypal utopian gesture of an immediate projection of ideals in the material world. So, the production of order, cleanliness and fixed identities isn't that clean, orderly and fixed in time and space. Now on second thought, I realize that such a statement sounds a bit like a commonsensical "post-foucaldian" platitude. Nowadays, deconstructing management ideology is business as usual if anything, so what crucial insights would Bergson's philosophy provide to organization studies?

A 2002 issue of Organization published three contributions from management specialists who explore the relevance of Bergson for organization studies. The articles are introduced by Stephen Linstead, Professor of Management at Essex and well-versed in postmodern philosophy. Martin Wood uses Bergson's war on frozen states to question and undermine the ontological separation between production and uses of organizational knowledge; Andrew O'Shea draws on Bergson's theories of duration and creative evolution to undermine the implicit linear grand narrative of innovation in management and to underline the multiplicity of processes and temporalities in the emergence of innovations; and Roland Calori provides a sound attempt at outlining dialectics at work in creative evolution.

Now I have to confess my personal astonishment at the use of thinkers such as Bergson or Deleuze as food for thought for management theory, but once past the surprise I'm left with mixed impressions on these contributions. All contributors do avoid with care the methodological trap of "applying" theoretical insights from Bergson to empirical cases as with an interpretation grid, which would lead to your anti-Bergsonian fixation of life and reality. However, with perhaps the notable exception of Calori's dialectical ventures into the concepts "becoming" and "relations" , I'm stuck with the feeling that, although these endeavors do shed some light on what oraganization throries might actually be about nowadays (something I'm absolutely not familiar with), they don't seem to get us much farther than my personal spontaneous reflections evoked above and most of the recent Deleuzian-pragmatic ruminations.

Dernier numéro de TC&S sur Alfred North Whitehead

Si la philosophie d'Alfred North Whitehead occupe une place importante dans certains courants du renouveau pragmatiste en sciences sociales, notamment l'Actor-Network Theory et la Non-Representational Theory, la pertinence sociologique, anthropologique et politique du travail de philosophie spéculative mené par l'auteur de Process and Reality n'a sans doute pas encore reçu l'attention qu'elle mérite. Sa réflexion autour des notions d'abstraction, d'expérience et de concrescence permet de déséquilibrer notre approche des faits sociaux en appréhendant la multiplicité mouvante de la réalité sociale sous un angle relationnel qui évacue les dualités sujet/objet, agent/structure, réel/construit.

Le numéro de juillet 2008 de Theory, Culture & Society explore les applications possibles de Whitehead et la pertinence heuristique de son ontologie pour la recherche en sciences sociales. Avec des contributions de : Michael Halewood (introduction), Andrew Goffey, Mike Michael, Alberto Toscano, James Williams, Isabelle Stengers, Éric Alliez, Mimei Ito, Claire Blencowe.

Parution : L'Autre: création et médiation

Les colloques et publications sont à peu près nos seuls moments de gratification sociale pour le travail qu'on accomplit, donc je me permet un peu d'auto-publicité : la parution récente chez Peter Lang de Günter Krause (dir.), L'Autre: création et médiation, dans lequel j'ai contribué avec un article sur (surprise-surprise) l'alimentation aux expositions universelles.

Tell all your university libraries!

Esprit d'avant, issue no, 2 (Le temps) is online

Second issue of electronic bulletin Esprit d'avant (as "spirit to fore" rather than "spirit from before", or so I'm told...) on the topic of time is online. Tanja's contribution on Heidegger and Bergson is of course highly recommended.

Review coming up.

CFP : Rethinking human zoos

Found on h-net, might attend :

'Human zoos’, forgotten symbols of the colonial era, have been largely repressed in collective memory. In these ‘anthropo-zoological’ exhibitions, ‘exotic’ individuals were placed alongside wild beasts and presented behind bars or in enclosures. Human zoos were a key factor in the progressive shift from scientific to popular racism. Through Barnum’s freak shows, Hagenbeck’s ‘ethnic shows’, French-style villages nègres, as well as the great universal and colonial exhibitions, the West invented the ‘savage’, exhibited the ‘peoples of the world’, whilst in many cases preparing for or contributing to their colonisation. This first mass contact between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between the West and elsewhere, created an invisible border. Measured by scientists, exploited in shows, used in official exhibitions, these men, women and children became extras in cultures that were not their own.

Since its first publication by La Découverte in 2001, the collection entitled Zoos humains has triggered widespread debate about colonial representation and has obliged scholars in a range of disciplines to rethink the relationship between anthropology, science, spectacle and Empire. The present colloquium coincides with the publication by Liverpool University Press of a new English-language version of the collection. Based on the original French-language volume edited by ACHAC, but with a number of newly commissioned chapters, this new edition of Human Zoos brings together contributions by international specialists on this subject, some of whom will speak at the conference. The volume invites re-exploration of the colonial exoticisation and ‘spectacularisation’ of other cultures, a process that is to be associated with many contemporary, postcolonial stereotypes.

We invite offers of twenty-minute papers that (i) reflect on the impact and legacy of this unique book, (ii) analyse new work on the ‘human zoo’ that has emerged since the initial publication of Zoos humains, and/or (iii) contribute to exploration of the historical phenomenon that the volume outlines.

Please send a 300-word abstract and brief CV to
c.baker@lancaster.ac.uk by 31 August 2008.

Charlotte Baker
Department of European Languages and Cultures
Lancaster University, UK
Email: c.baker@lancaster.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://www.sfps.ac.uk