Transformations
Refereed electronic journal in regional media and cultural studies
http://transformations.cqu.edu.au

Call for abstracts: "Accidental Environments"

"The Accident is not an exception or a sickness of our apolitical
regimes; nor it is a correctable defect of our civilization: it is the
natural consequence of our science, our politics, and our morality." -
Octavio Paz, _Conjunctions and Disjunctions_.

This issue of Transformations seeks submissions that explore, describe,
translate and transform "accidental environments". Accidents happen by
chance. They are seen as the mark of a failure to maintain control of an
environment. But can accidents be seen in another way, as productive in
the sense that seemingly incongruous things and events coincide or
collide and together create possibilities and release potentials. They
produce "events".

An environment is a fluid milieu of intermingling forces that condition
the many contexts of life. Environments are forms of immanence that make
life livable, but within certain constraints, liberties and conditions.
Environments are permeable-they always exceed the dictates of science,
capital and politics that try to control and contain them. The body, the
biosphere are environments that exceed their discursive boundaries.

An accidental environment is one constituted on the possibility of
accidents happening. There are control environments in which the
accident is reduced to a particular instance of a more general problem,
but there are also creative environments which feed off the chance
incident or encounter, and the singularity of the event.

For this issue of Transformations we seek submissions that reflect on
what it might mean to speak of an accidental environment in either of
its control or creative forms: What is the status of the accident today?
What is the role of the accident in war? How do technology, global
capital and geopolitics affect or effect accidental environments?

DEADLINE: Abstracts to be submitted by 16th June, 2006.

Abstracts (500 words) should be sent to the General Editor, Warwick
Mules. w.mules_at_cqu.edu.au (with a view to submitting completed drafts by
mid-September 2006)

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Received on Mon May 08 2006 - 08:43:13 EDT