Re: [Foucault-L] Call for Papers! Call for Papers! (Grad conf)

I wish I could come. Obviously, the work I've done on the Montreal Massacre is relevant, as activists in London have been partly responsible for putting up memorials to the women who were killed in Montreal in 1989 that day - no less than two memorials within London. Unfortunately, my credit card will no longer pernit me the extravagance of travelling to Canada. I had my last chane this may, and got nowhere.

After presenting my idea of a multitude of perspectives, and not just feminists, the first response to my paper was a woman still able to focus only on the fact that it was women who were killed. Well, yes it was. No one is denying that, and the fact that Lepine should not have done it. But just what is a person supposed to do when all their hard work has been for nothing and people with power on thier side walk in and take over places traditionally held for men.

It has become a class-based system, more than it eve has been before, because now black people, and women, are able to reach the top, and men as well as women get pushed to the bottom despite their abilities.

I am a graduate of Western, and I am not happy at the waste of an education I received, when women get in through marrying well, or having the proper relationships, or whatever hoops they jump through. I just watched a NS woman conference organizer HAND OVER the reins of the Narrative Matters conference to another woman - at a Florida university - the "old girls" network at work. And no one had a voice in it.

I write, and I write well. Any supposed lack of ability is not an issue. I am not permitted to discuss what happened at the university here where I first began a PhD and ws then pushed out. Obviously, OBVIOUSLY, if there was a problem it had to have been me, and not the professors. But I'll tell you, the women are just as bad as the men.

Marc Lepine was fucked by an unafair system, and it's happening to me. There's nothing a person can do if people at the top take it into their heads I will not be allowed to use my skills and abilities. Marc lepine should not have killed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUT WHAT SHOULD HE HAVE DONE.

Please do not come back with any condescending comments, like make a formal complaint, and other idiotic things. I realize you can make me appear to be the one at fault (just as Marc Lepine was made the scapegoat) . It's not difficult when you have the credibility and I have none, and you have the money, the youthful sexual attractiveness, the middle class status, and so on, that is desired.

I live in despair, treated by my community as as lesser human being, since being pushed out by Essex (yes, Rupert), I just got your post. When I went to Essex their standards were low. And they have raised them, I'm sure, in some ways, but they have also pretty much destroyed my life.

I realize I can speak truths and not be heard, but why make accusations now. I only wanted to complete my PhD degree, at Essex, where I had been invited to come. When I say they destroyed my life I mean they started the process which would lead to me being rejected for jobs (ah ha - something happened at Essex, it couldn't have been the professors, it must have been this woman), and at other universities I applied to to do the PhD.

I have applied to do a PhD again, but there's no reason to think athis point it will be accepted. There's too much in my past, and I have doubts about any potential supervisor who makes the wild claim that he is judging my proposal based on its merits. If I'm wrong, then the world will be a better place. But there simply is no reason to think that that could be true.

And that's how they get ya, you see. they keep you hoping, and keep you silent, waiting. Well, I've waited ten fucking years. I don't stand a chance now of ever gettting out of debt. I am 60 years old. I don't stand a chance of doing what I had hoped to do.

You win, Elise - you and the feminists at Western and the activists in London and wherever else can all have a great time toaking about inequality, and those hateful people like Marc Lepine and me, student name Sue Fulham. Tell them, I can't keep writing and writing and not be heard.

Sue McPherson
Flat 2 Hannah Court
St Botolphs Church Walk
Colchester. CO2 7EE
Tel: 01206 540097
Email: sue@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://suemcpherson.blogspot.com
http://SAMcPherson.homestead.com/homepage.html
http://www.DiversityinRetirement.net
http://diversityinretirement.homestead.com/DMR/mrdilemma.html
http://www.MontrealMassacre.net
http://woodstockYWCA57to64.homestead.com
http://EmpressofFrance.homestead.com














----- Original Message -----
From: "elise thorburn" <elise@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 5:47 PM
Subject: [Foucault-L] Call for Papers! Call for Papers! (Grad conf)



Hi all
Some students in the Theory Centre at UWO have decided to put together a conference for next year with a more overtly political theme. We are excited about the possibilities that this conference will bring forward in terms of new ideas for theory and action, and the possibility of participating in the drive to increase and enliven activism in academia and in the community.

In order for our dreams to be reality, though, we need your help. We need papers and workshops, proposals for panels or presentations. Check out the Call for Papers below and then put on your thinking cap and submit something so that we can have one of the most amazing conferences yet to be seen!

Also, the long-term plan for this project is to put together a book from this conference, so if you submit something awesome you just may see yourself in print in the not too distant future.

Please pass this CFP on to anyone or any list serv you think might be interested.

Contact me with any questions at illusionsofidentity@xxxxxxxxx

Elise

CALL FOR PAPERS: PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WILDLY

Illusions of Identity: resisting (beyond) identity politics
An interdisciplinary graduate conference hosted by the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, Canada

October 14-15, 2006

With the limits of contemporary leftist social movements becoming increasingly apparent, and in the face of advanced capitalism's relentless appropriation of revolutionary discourses and the rise of the moral right in North America, we feel an urgent need to contribute to the ongoing efforts to rethink identity politics. We imagine this conference as an opportunity to work through and disseminate new frameworks for thinking social movement and resistance. As such, we intend to bring together students and activists whose works traverse disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to articulate some of the possibilities and pitfalls of identity categories (gender, race, nationality, class, sexuality, ability, etc.). Coming from the point of view that the much-contested division between theory and activism is a false one, our aim is that this conference will constitute a site for the proliferation of new conceptual frameworks that will be taken up, and hopefully transformed, by our fellow activists and academics.

We are seeking papers and panels troubling, re-articulating, and creating theoretical frameworks addressing identity politics in areas including, but not limited to:
- feminist theory;
- queer stuff;
- trans/figurations of identity;
- the appropriation and containment of resistance;
- global strategies and local tactics;
- nationalisms and national identities
- race and the racialization of identity categories;
- thinking coalition-building and other political maneuvers;
- capitalism and identity;
- 'old' thinkers, 'new' readings;
- critiques of capitalism;
- the politics of theoretical practice;
- trans/gressions, incoherences, destabilizations;
- identities and legalities
- law as constraint/law as possibility
- (dis)abilities and identities
- the politics of citizenship
- First Nations and the nation-state
- indigenous identities

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by August 15, 2006 to: illusionsofidentity@xxxxxxxxx
(Please include your academic or activist affiliation in your proposal.)

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Yours truly,
Conference organizers



--
I am lost in a frenzy, unable to find where I am.

- rene descartes

the struggle is always inner, and played out in the outer terrains.

- gloria anzaldua
--



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