Crossings: A Counter-Disciplinary Journal
Issue #9
Deadline: October 30, 2006

Killing Time: Inscribing Chaos in the Narrative of History

Time represents occurrences within temporality as sequential, and meaning
is commonly deduced by imposing a narrative interpretation upon that
sequence. When time appears as a storyline, events are assigned an order
from which history emerges as a series of causal connections.
Consequently, even declarations of a new, post- era are always already
defined in relation to the ostensibly surpassed, traditional or old, and
characterize time as a continuum that reduces every new to an after and
ensures that all potential for radical change and opportunity is
undermined by the continued celebration of progress and perfection as
longstanding ideals. As long as every interruption is incorporated into a
structure that continues to dominate the global political arena through
concepts that promise resolution, such as universal Justice, Freedom
and/or Peace, is it possible at all to reconsider the order that is in and
through a narrative alignment of time and history? Can events indeed be
subsumed entirely into the loop of a narrative, an all-encompassing
interpretation of the temporal (and even metaphysical) which tends to
assimilate everything into its causal chain? Or could each event
ultimately mark and substantiate a chaotic disjuncture that emerges
between experience and its inscription in a rational framework?

Considering the ethical, theological, sociological, and political
implications of a linear interpretation of temporality, Crossings wants to
engage a variety of investigations into the dynamics that foster notions
of stability and unity, relations of production, the potential of the
present, and alternative visions of history. To what extent, for example,
can technologies of representation (e.g. music, theatre, literature, film,
visual arts) test aesthetic expression's capacity not only to represent
time as an operative narrative, but also to reveal the potential within
anachronistic or delineated perspectives? Crossings would like to
encourage work that explores how the structures which make us rely on
epistemological categories such as continuity and causality can become
visible, how these constructions can give way to alternative
interpretations of reality and the nature of time. For the upcoming issue,
we seek submissions that explore, analyze, comment on or subvert
chronological representations and engage with alternative methods for
thinking temporality. Analytical as well as creative approaches are
welcome.

Potential topics might address (but are not limited to) the following:

Chronological/anachronistic interpretations of terror
Exaltation, exile and revolution
Emergence and becoming
Subjectivity and national memorialization
Nostalgia, utopia, dystopia
Public/private narrativizations of time
Representation and predictability
Crisis and psychosis
Singularity, discordance, interpretation
Chronological and episodical time
Temporalities of technologies
Perception and communication
Realism, Naturalism, Surrealism
Knowledge, thought, shamanism
Modernity and its imagined precursors, primitivism
Trauma, performance, potential
Event and repetition
Miracles and the uncanny
Responsibility and indifference
Rhythm, music, sound, noise
Urgency and boredom
Imagination, alienation, objectivity
Space, operability, and the body in time
Identity and global transformations
Language, ontology and history
Totalitarianism, equality, human rights
Chaos, unity, difference
Change, progress, conservation
Timeless space(s)
Discourses of power
Migration, travel, movement, flow
Subjectivity and Resistance

Inquiries and submissions can be sent in the form of microsoft word
documents attached to emails, and should conform to the Chicago Manual of
Style, 15th edition. A style sheet is available in Adobe
Acrobat format on-line at: http://crossings.binghamton.edu/style.pdf.
Please email submissions to Nilima Rabl at colifilm_at_yahoo.de (note: not
de, not com) and xings_at_binghamton.edu by October 30, 2006

or send hard copies to:
Crossings
Department of English
P.O. Box 6000
Binghamton University
Binghamton, New York 13902-6000

Additional information can be found at: http://crossings.binghamton.edu

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Received on Sat Sep 09 2006 - 10:52:35 EDT