Fifteenth Annual Cultural Studies Workshop organized by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSSC), Calcutta, India, to be held at Santiniketan, West Bengal, 30 January-4 February 2010
Call for papers: "The Sacred in Contemporary Culture"
In collaboration with Ford Foundation and the South-South Exchange Programme for the History of Development (SEPHIS, Netherlands).
Far from "phenomena born of religious conceptions" being everywhere in decline, fulfilling the prediction of its retreat from the spheres of art, education, or politics, the realm of the sacred has been historically reconstituted within contemporary life in a number of unanticipated ways. Instances of such reconstitution include: the renewed enchantment with, rather than repression of, the magical, even within industry and science; an increasing political focus on the consecration or desecration of icons, heroes, or histories; a secularism of the state matched by the supplemental sacrality of modern institutional spaces and processes; the adaptation of new technologies to the service of the sacred; modern states and their use of political theology. Indeed, we might say that the sacred and the secular have forged a new dependence in contemporary cultures, calling for a fresh assessment of the status of the sacred in contemporary life.
Within this broad focus, the Cultural Studies Workshop 2010 will discuss the following themes:
1. The Sacredness of Science: What are the disenchantments and new enchantments that have proliferated alongside scientific discourses and cultures, and with what consequences for the future of the secular?
2. Objects, Images, Icons: The emergence of cult values within an increasingly commodified society; new economies of sacrality that attach to a wide range of objects; the return of the sacred to the worlds of literature, art, and museums.
3. Consecrations and Desecrations : The politics of reverence and offence, the impact on lives, histories, spaces, and objects and the capacity for mobilization of communities and identities.
4. Institutions and Rituals: Has the sacred been "disembedded" from the social, and confined to specific sites and processes? Has it been kept at bay by the institutions of the state, or assumed only a relatively shrunken role within the realms of the personal and the private?
5. Political Theology: Have modern states and political ideologies refashioned for their use concepts that are innately theological? Do ideas of sovereignty, human rights, democracy, or justice make their claims largely on the basis of faith?
The workshop is intended to give young researchers an opportunity to share their work with senior scholars in the field, including some of the faculty of the CSSSC. It is aimed at doctoral or post-doctoral students (below the age of 35) whose ongoing or just completed work focuses on one or more of the themes listed above.
CSSSC will bear the expenses of rail travel (AC two-tier) and accommodation at Santiniketan for all selected candidates from India. Priority will be given to students currently affiliated to Indian educational institutions.
International participants who have studied, or have been working long-term, in countries of the global South are also invited to apply. Their airfare and local hospitality will be covered by the CSSSC in collaboration with SEPHIS. All readings and discussions will be in English, and applicants are required to be proficient in that language.
Those wishing to participate in the workshop may apply with their current CV, clearly indicating date of birth, current academic affiliation, and current postal and e-mail addresses. Applications must include a brief description (no more than one typed page) of the paper they intend to present which draws on their dissertation research.
Applications are to be sent to Ranjana Dasgupta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, R-I Baishnabghata Patuli Township, Kolkata 700 094, India): csw@cssscal.org, cssscal@vsnl.net
Deadline: 10 September 2009
27 June 2009
17 June 2009
Special issue: Theology and Democratic Futures
Corey D. B. Walker (Brown University) has guest edited a special issue of the journal Political Theology (vol. 10, no. 2, 2009) on the theme "Theology and Democratic Futures":
www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/663
Walker's introductory essay is concerned with the "revival in scholarly attention to the question of theology across various formations in the North Atlantic academy" and a tendency that "seeks to challenge the binary and dichotomous logic that separates theological formations and non-theological formations while blurring the boundaries between the two in facilitating a critical thinking in which the theological is pressed into service for the elaboration of other radical and subversive non-theological discourses" as well as an opposite tendency "assisting in bulwarking the sui generis gloss of Christianity's theological claims and doctrines" "in contradistinction to other critical and secular theoretical discourses".
While Walker claims that "[t]o think theology is to think democracy, albeit with a more profound and humbling sense of contingency and without guarantees", other contributors to this special issue seem to view democracy more critically, for example within the discourse of "post-democracy" "as a political order of a privatized and privileged politics that is not responsive to the radical democratic aspirations or potentials of the majority", concluding that "[i]t is this post-democratic landscape that should properly coordinate and calibrate our theological imaginations". Authors in this line of thought engage the evangelical right in the US (Andrew C. Willis) as much as the Islamic Law debate in the UK (Vincent Lloyd).
(BTW: The paper by Lloyd was accepted for presentation at the Third Annual International Symposium of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) on "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology" that took place in July 2008 at Sciences Po/The Institute for Political Studies in Paris, France.)
Bruce Ellis Benson argues that "radical democracy is not nearly radical enough and Christianity, when it has entered the 'public square,' has likewise not been nearly radical enough", while Paul Dafyyd Jones' "close reading and dialectical analysis of Schleiermacher and Barth and the projects of liberation theology enable him to project a broader 'theopolitical imagination' that links classical and liberationist theological perspectives in animating and empowering progressive political projects". Peter Goodwin Heltzel's essay interrogates "the theoretical and political dimensions of [Martin Luther King, Jr.'s] Christian inspired project of 'Beloved Community' and Antonio Negri's Spinoza inspired project of 'Multitude' in confronting the reduced horizon for democratic politics in our contemporary conjuncture".
Further articles concern "the case of [US death-row prisoner] Mumia Abu-Jamal" in the light of the works of Giorgio Agamben and Abdul R. JanMohammed and the "state of exception" (Mark Lewis Taylor), "Hannah Arendt's [polytheistic and thus plural] Political Theology of Democratic Life" (Jane Anna Gordon), and "phenomenology as a mode of thought that welcomes the depth and complexity of existence as an analogue for rethinking radically democratic futures" (Rocco Gangle, Jason Smick). As Walker writers: "It is the plural – whether polytheism or phenomenology – that posits the possibility of theology and democracy as open-ended forms whose futures may be less clear but more hopeful than a resurrection of past practices and forms of thought".
This special issue may help to highlight too "the state of democratic politics that so often transforms the exception into the rule, specifically in the case of the marginal and dispossessed" (Mark Taylor Lewis).
www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/663
Walker's introductory essay is concerned with the "revival in scholarly attention to the question of theology across various formations in the North Atlantic academy" and a tendency that "seeks to challenge the binary and dichotomous logic that separates theological formations and non-theological formations while blurring the boundaries between the two in facilitating a critical thinking in which the theological is pressed into service for the elaboration of other radical and subversive non-theological discourses" as well as an opposite tendency "assisting in bulwarking the sui generis gloss of Christianity's theological claims and doctrines" "in contradistinction to other critical and secular theoretical discourses".
While Walker claims that "[t]o think theology is to think democracy, albeit with a more profound and humbling sense of contingency and without guarantees", other contributors to this special issue seem to view democracy more critically, for example within the discourse of "post-democracy" "as a political order of a privatized and privileged politics that is not responsive to the radical democratic aspirations or potentials of the majority", concluding that "[i]t is this post-democratic landscape that should properly coordinate and calibrate our theological imaginations". Authors in this line of thought engage the evangelical right in the US (Andrew C. Willis) as much as the Islamic Law debate in the UK (Vincent Lloyd).
(BTW: The paper by Lloyd was accepted for presentation at the Third Annual International Symposium of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) on "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology" that took place in July 2008 at Sciences Po/The Institute for Political Studies in Paris, France.)
Bruce Ellis Benson argues that "radical democracy is not nearly radical enough and Christianity, when it has entered the 'public square,' has likewise not been nearly radical enough", while Paul Dafyyd Jones' "close reading and dialectical analysis of Schleiermacher and Barth and the projects of liberation theology enable him to project a broader 'theopolitical imagination' that links classical and liberationist theological perspectives in animating and empowering progressive political projects". Peter Goodwin Heltzel's essay interrogates "the theoretical and political dimensions of [Martin Luther King, Jr.'s] Christian inspired project of 'Beloved Community' and Antonio Negri's Spinoza inspired project of 'Multitude' in confronting the reduced horizon for democratic politics in our contemporary conjuncture".
Further articles concern "the case of [US death-row prisoner] Mumia Abu-Jamal" in the light of the works of Giorgio Agamben and Abdul R. JanMohammed and the "state of exception" (Mark Lewis Taylor), "Hannah Arendt's [polytheistic and thus plural] Political Theology of Democratic Life" (Jane Anna Gordon), and "phenomenology as a mode of thought that welcomes the depth and complexity of existence as an analogue for rethinking radically democratic futures" (Rocco Gangle, Jason Smick). As Walker writers: "It is the plural – whether polytheism or phenomenology – that posits the possibility of theology and democracy as open-ended forms whose futures may be less clear but more hopeful than a resurrection of past practices and forms of thought".
This special issue may help to highlight too "the state of democratic politics that so often transforms the exception into the rule, specifically in the case of the marginal and dispossessed" (Mark Taylor Lewis).
01 June 2009
CFP: Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions
Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at the Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 24-25 October 2009
Call for papers: Conference for Young Academics "Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions"
A conference outline (including a list of panels) can be found here:
www.normativeorders.net/en/news/current-topics/132-conference-qnormative-orders-justification-and-sanctionsq
The conference will include a panel "System of Rule and Religion: The Limited Impact of Sanctions and the Relevance of Political-Theological Narratives of Justification in the Foundation of Normative Orders in the Early Modern Period", which invites in particular contributions from historians of early modernity and people working on the history of political ideas.
Panel outline: Religion, and in particular the biblical text, was an important basis of the norms and values used both to legitimate systems of rule and to dispute claims to power in the early modern period. The "Bible as political argument" helped to justify and to deny (new) normative orders.
Within the historical framework of the debates in European estate assemblies in the early modern period, the hypothesis – which this panel will explore – is that sanctions played a lesser role in shaping and confirming normative orders than did political-theological language. Case studies aimed at testing this hypothesis – focusing on the sacral legitimation of power and the theological or natural law foundations of resistance to power – are welcomed.
Finally, the European panorama of conflicts within the estate assemblies leads to the more general question of whether and to what extent the issue of religion and politics can be approached with the categories of "sanctions" and/or "narratives of justification".
How to submit a paper: Each panel will have approximately four contributors. Young academics in the doctoral or post-doctoral phase of their career interested in contributing are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to the responsible panel chair (listed on the website with each panel's description). The deadline is 30 June 2009.
Travel grants: Travel and hotel expenses will be subsidized, although the precise level of subsidization remains to be determined.
A selection of papers will possibly be published.
Proposals for the political theology panel should be sent to Therese Schwager, who will also answer your questions: therese.schwager@normativeorders.net
For general questions on the conference, please contact: Nachwuchskonferenz@normativeorders.net
Call for papers: Conference for Young Academics "Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions"
A conference outline (including a list of panels) can be found here:
www.normativeorders.net/en/news/current-topics/132-conference-qnormative-orders-justification-and-sanctionsq
The conference will include a panel "System of Rule and Religion: The Limited Impact of Sanctions and the Relevance of Political-Theological Narratives of Justification in the Foundation of Normative Orders in the Early Modern Period", which invites in particular contributions from historians of early modernity and people working on the history of political ideas.
Panel outline: Religion, and in particular the biblical text, was an important basis of the norms and values used both to legitimate systems of rule and to dispute claims to power in the early modern period. The "Bible as political argument" helped to justify and to deny (new) normative orders.
Within the historical framework of the debates in European estate assemblies in the early modern period, the hypothesis – which this panel will explore – is that sanctions played a lesser role in shaping and confirming normative orders than did political-theological language. Case studies aimed at testing this hypothesis – focusing on the sacral legitimation of power and the theological or natural law foundations of resistance to power – are welcomed.
Finally, the European panorama of conflicts within the estate assemblies leads to the more general question of whether and to what extent the issue of religion and politics can be approached with the categories of "sanctions" and/or "narratives of justification".
How to submit a paper: Each panel will have approximately four contributors. Young academics in the doctoral or post-doctoral phase of their career interested in contributing are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to the responsible panel chair (listed on the website with each panel's description). The deadline is 30 June 2009.
Travel grants: Travel and hotel expenses will be subsidized, although the precise level of subsidization remains to be determined.
A selection of papers will possibly be published.
Proposals for the political theology panel should be sent to Therese Schwager, who will also answer your questions: therese.schwager@normativeorders.net
For general questions on the conference, please contact: Nachwuchskonferenz@normativeorders.net
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