CFP: Circular Flows (grad) (Germany) (8/31/06; 11/3/06-11/5/06)

full name / name of organization: 
Gerd Sebald

7th Graduate Conference in Erlangen
Deadline: August 31st 2006
November 3rd - 5th 2006
Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg
Kochstr. 4, 91054 Erlangen
Germany

Circular-Flows
--Capillaries of World CultureThe 7th graduate conference "circular flows" takes up the theme of the 6thconference which was held under the title "border//crossings". Two yearsago, in 2004, borders and border crossing was discussed, while thisyear's conference will focus on the topics of mobility and motility asconstituents of new trans-cultural spaces. The crossing of traditionalborders is considered as a necessary prerequisite of the emergenceof "Circular Flows", but the main attention is drawn towards the genesis,modification and stabilisation of knowledge and culture in the course ofborder transgression - from "roots" to "routes" as Paul Gilroy put it.The conference deals both with questions of "blurring boundaries" on thelevel of international organisations, with discourses ofnew "transnational spaces", of new "ethno-, ideo- or mediascapes" andwith discussions about "glocalization", "hybridisation" and "melange".Processuality is the common ground of all these aspects. Their stability -as suggested by the title of the conference - stems from theircircularity or recursivity in time.The conference addresses the debate about world culture und world societybeyond global finance markets and geopolitics. Artefacts, bodies, people,social relations, institutions, figures, media, facts and cultures "onthe move" are to be questioned about their bottom-up consequences for andin line with world culture.This main issue can be specified in three dimensions:1) Flows, transfer, blending and recursivity (de-constructions of globalspace)Circuits of movement, perpetual streams of communication, flows ofsymbols, the mechanisms of transfer and diffusion are elements andexpressions of "circular flows". Physical movement, the "movement" ofmeaning and media and the alteration of perspectives and world views donot necessarily coincide. They rather overlap substitute or interchangeamongst each other and into the direction of their social and culturalenvironments. We can therefore ask for the terms of their recursivity aswell as for their (de-)constructive effects in relationship to other bothmobile and immobile life-forms.2) Reflexivity, emergence of culture and of spaces (cos-mobility)The second direction focuses space in a geographical and in a figurativesense: Space as an issue of discourse as well as the construction of itssymbolic structure by actors. Being on the move involves the crossingof "traditional-modern" social spaces and may lead to the reflexiveformation of symbolic structures of aesthetics, styles and selfrepresentations. These representations have a spatial dimension and touchquestions of "home" and "identity". One could think of post-modernconstellations of symbols, the intermingling of cultural codes etc. andof questions of cosmobility.3) Regulation, inclusion und exclusion (new borderlines)>From a perspective of circularity the meaning of borders/frontiers becomesmultidimensional: in terms of borders and the crossing of frontiers as aprerequisite for the constitution of new spaces and flows, in terms ofinsecure existence next or "on" borders and in terms of transcultural orglobal demarcations in the line of recursive stabilization of new spaces(exclusion/inclusion). We want to lay emphasis on the analysis ofmechanisms of regulation, regimes and stabilization. One could think ofstudies which deal with the suppression of circular flows or withquestions of unequal distribution of opportunity structures and thevariance of abilities to capitalize on new spaces and their symbolicrepresentation. Eventually, this topic touches questions of theconditioning of communication and movement by global regimes of money andpower.We would like to invite an international and interdisciplinary audience tothe three-day conference. Graduates and postgraduates from philosophy,history, languages and literatures, media studies, social sciences etc.should post proposals to the issue of "circular flows", both theoreticalwork or concepts and empirical or literature studies.Conference languages will be English and German. The publication of ananthology is planned. Please submit your proposal using the onlineregistration form on this webpage (www.gradnet.de) until August, 31st .The conference fee will presumably be â'¬ 20,- (to be paid on arrival).Please contact us if you have any questions.Office:Department of SociologyFAU Erlangen-NurembergD-91054 ErlangenGermany0049-9131-8522092 (or: 0049-9131-8522792)graconinfo_at_arno.franken.de ========================================================== From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List CFP_at_english.upenn.edu Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu ==========================================================Received on Sun Apr 16 2006 - 09:06:01 EDT