DEADLINE EXTENDED to NOVEMBER 14

The Paranoid Realities of David Cronenberg: The Occult Body Techno-politic as Magical Medium 

The Area for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic invites special panel presentation proposals on the paranoid realities of David Cronenberg to be included in its events at the 46th annual conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, held this February 19-22 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

While David Cronenberg is best known for his more visceral work on "bodies," his heavily corporeal/technological cinema is also marked by a profound sense of political and technological paranoia. From his earliest works like Stereo and Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg's films have fixated on covert forms of communication, political power, and modes of social control through media in the McLuhanite sense in which the medium is the message.

This fascination has persisted, from high profile classics of his oeuvre like Scanners or Videodrome –– whose emphases on governmental "mind control" and failed utopian politics manifest in disparate but equally compelling metaphors––through his metatextual adaptation of The Naked Lunch, which effectively renders the esoteric, occult, and magical paranoid of sorcerer William S. Burroughs in a reality in which every agent defects eventually -- all the way up to his most recent film, The Shrouds, which updates this paranoia for an AI age in which data privacy is, for many, no longer considered possible. What can be learned about the present socio-cultural and political landscape from the works of David Cronenberg?  This panel will work to unpack these thematic elements of Cronenberg's cinema, examining his works as means to dissect our own paranoid reality and interrogate its occulted somatics and gnostic techno-politics.

Please direct 200-500 word abstracts, optionally accompanied by CV, to the Area Chair for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic at SWPACA, Dr. George J. Sieg, at georgejsieg@gmail.com November 14.  The Area Chair will also provide the main EOM Area CFP on request by email, as well as any other information desired.