CALL FOR PAPERS: PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WILDLY
(**apologies for cross-postings**)
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/academics.
We are seeking papers and panels troubling, re-articulating, and creating theoretical frameworks addressing identity politics in areas including, but not limited to:
race and the racialization of identity categories;
First Nations and the nation-state;
indigenous identities;
feminist theories;
queer theories and queeries;
gay/lesbian/bi/trans/two-spirit identities;
trans/figurations of identity;
(dis)abilities and identities;
capitalism and identity/critiques of capitalism;
class-based identities and critiques;
nationalisms and national identities;
thinking coalition-building and other political maneuvers;
the appropriation and containment of resistance;
global strategies and local tactics;
?old? thinkers, ?new? readings;
the politics of theoretical practice;
trans/gressions, incoherences, destabilizations;
identities and legalities (e.g. identity-based rights claims);
law as constraint/law as possibility
the politics of citizenship
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
--
Attachment:
CFP.doc
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