Call for Submissions: Simondon and Disability Studies

full name / name of organization: 
Wilson Kaiser
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Call for Submissions: Simondon and Disability Studies
Special Issue of the DHA (Disability History Association) Newsletter
http://www.dishist.org/newsletter.htm

The rediscovery of the work of the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon in recent years offers important new opportunities for reconceptualizing categories of normativity. As one of the fundamental concepts in the critical lexicon of disability studies, normativity/normalcy has been the focus of some of the most significant work in the field since Lennard Davis's groundbreaking Enforcing Normalcy (1995). Simondon's writings and recent scholarship on his work afford new avenues for a critique of normalcy. Even more importantly, Simondon provides a positive vocabulary for describing the formative operations of difference at the physical and cognitive levels, offering students of his work the chance to move beyond critique and the broadly descriptive sociological categories that tend to reinstitute normative classifications.

This special issue of the DHA newsletter invites short contributions (1,500 to 2,000 words) exploring the relationship between Simondon's philosophy and disability studies. Especially welcome are introductory case studies that demonstrate how Simondon may be used to explore aspects of disability from either an historical or a contemporary perspective.

Abstracts of 150-200 words and any questions may be sent to Wilson Kaiser at wkaiser@ju.edu by Sept. 1, 2013.