CFP: Technology, Culture, and the Making of Sense (Brazil) (4/20/07; 11/7/07-11/9/07)

full name / name of organization: 
Fabio Durao
contact email: 

Technology, Culture, and the Making of Sense (Brazil,
04/15/2007; 11/07/2007 – 09/07/2007)

Figures of technology have been widely present in
twentieth century critical thought on literature, art
and culture. They have acquired the most varied forms
and functions in different kinds of debate, often
fulfilling otherwise unexpected roles. For instance,
technology was at the center of the discussion on the
use of the new media in artistic production, being the
pivot of the ensuing controversy concerning the future
of culture as an independent sphere. It thus worked as
mediation between discourse and reality, a connecting
instrument at a time not many of them were available.
Under the heading of "modernization", technology
triggered discussions regarding the "local" vs. the
"cosmopolitan", the "center" vs. the "margin", "First"
vs "Third" Worlds, again, providing a framework within
which diverse arguments and styles of thought could be
structured. Technology emerges here, then, as a
privileged topos to reflect on the nature of
contemporary cultural and linguistic production, as
well as on broader political and social issues. In the
symposium "Technology, culture and the making of
sense" we would like to investigate ways of
representing technology and inserting it within
different technologies of discourse. In literature,
the question of "form" or "technique" can be related
to the problem of contemporary anti-humanism; in
philosophy, the genealogy of the issue can be
connected to the attempt to distance thinking from the
physis, so as to exclude from representations of
nature – and of its corresponding forms of humanism –
the matter of artificiality; in Theory, the
proliferation of research fields and the
specialization of conceptual production resembles
technological innovation. In all these cases,
technology has an equivocal status as thing or effect,
metaphor, locus of desire, or marker for temporality,
among other functions we hope to discuss.

The symposium is the fourth one organized by the
Contemporary Criticism Research Group (GRECC – Grupo
de Estudos em Critca Contemporanea), to take place at
the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) from
November 7-9. We invite proposals for 30 min.
presentations. Please send a 200-300 abstract together
with a short biographic note to Fabio Akcelrud Durão
(fadurao_at_yahoo.com; fabio_at_iel.unicamp.br).

Note: we intend to publish a collection from the
papers presented. Our last symposium became a book
called *Desconstrucoes e contextos nacionais* (Rio de
Janeiro: 7Letras, 2006).

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Received on Sat Mar 10 2007 - 05:09:27 EST