THE HUMAN CONDITION SERIES: 2nd Annual International Multidisciplinary
Conference on: TERROR
May 2-3, 2008, Laurentian University @ Georgian College, Ontario, Canada
Dear Colleague,
This exciting conference is one of the most significant meetings of the year
on the sources and meanings of political and cultural violence.
We welcome proposals from people in the fields of anthropology, sociology,
history, peace studies, psychology, religious studies, cultural studies,
psychoanalysis and political psychology.
We look forward to receiving your abstract.
Best regards,
Orion Anderson
Confirmed Keynote Speakers
We are pleased to announce the participation of three internationally
renowned keynote speakers:
* Henry Giroux (McMaster University)
* Sunera Thobani (University of British Columbia)
* Sut Jhally (University of Massachusetts)
Special Plenary Talk
Richard A. Koenigsberg (Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis)
Description of the Series and Conference Theme
"Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition:
It rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way."
-Hannah Arendt
This conference is part of a larger series of ongoing, international,
multidisciplinary conferences--run under the banner of The Human Condition
Series--that brings together people from a variety of disciplines to assess
a singular topic from artistic, cinematic, literary, ethical, social,
political, philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. We
encourage you to share innovative ideas and new ways of thinking and acting.
Proposals will be considered on any related theme and we especially welcome
papers, reports, works-in-progress, workshops and sessions. This year's
theme is Terror.
The concept of Terror is often found safely hidden and un-thought in diverse
cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions and ways of life. One can
see these safe havens extending from the divine mythologies of religious
experience to the seemingly opposed rationalized life of contemporary
high-tech societies. With respect to religious experience, it is clear that
we have to seriously reconsider the dynamics of organized religion in the
face of rising religious fundamentalisms and terrorist activity.
But terror in the highly rationalized world of technological societies can
also impose its existing logic as a way of maintaining the order of things.
We give it various positive names that conceal its potency and negative
effects. At precise moments in history, terror's potency has appeared in
benign terms such as "child welfare," "residential schools," the "founding
nation," the "developed world," the "hysterical woman," the "mentally ill,"
the "social and sexual deviant," the "immigrant problem," the "disposable
income," and the "democratic liberation of other peoples."
It is the absurd rationalizations of these terms in the face of concrete
realities that covers over terror's effects and keeps it intact. This
conference will investigate what role Terror has in maintaining the
contemporary condition of humanity--and what hope there is of envisioning a
condition in which Terror is natural and organic rather than strategic and
imposed.
_____
Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS
Word Format) to TerrorProposal@ideologiesofwar.com
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008.
For more details about the conference go to:
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9gpoxicab.0.0.85y8w8n6.0&ts=S0314&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhu
manconditionseries.wordpress.com%2Fspeakers-08%2F&id=preview> or
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9gpoxicab.0.0.85y8w8n6.0&ts=S0314&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhu
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_____
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
The Laws of State-Terror
* Non-sovereign Peoples Subjected to the Authority of the Privileged
* Structures that Organize, Control, Punish, and Reward Subjects
* Denial to Total Self-Governance
Communications of Terror
* Propaganda, Public Relations and other Communication Management in
the Opinion Industry.
* Overt and Covert Representations of Terror
* The Centrality of Spin and Lobbying in Communicating Terror
* The Role of the PR Industry in Creating Terror
* Think Tanks and Policy Communications
* Global Media Management and Terror
The Manufacture and Management of Terror
* The Marketing of Terror
* Falsified News Coverage and the Intelligence Industry
* Techniques of Generating and Maintaining Terror through the Medical
Industry's Management of 'Outbreaks'
* The Relationship of Terror to the Modern Malaise: Anxiety,
Disorders, Disease
* Terror as Pleasure
Designating Terror
* The Construction of the Transnational Terrorist
* Deconstructing and Reconstructing Designations: "Terrorism",
"Freedom Fighter", "Peacekeeper", "Organized Crime", "Legality", and "Human
Security"
* Delegitimation of Claims of Origin in Land-Ownership
Terror and the Transformation of States and Nations
* Legitimacy of Landownership.
* Public and Private Responses to Political Violence
* Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and Conflicting Agendas in
Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Crime Policies
* Forces in Society which Resist Terror via Fighting, Politics,
Activism or Critical Journalism.
Spaces of Terror
* The International Political Economy of Corporate Power as Terror
* Hospitals, Clinics and the Medical Industry as Terror
* Education and Terror
Gender, Sexuality and Terror
* Otherness as Terror
* Patriarchy and the Violence of Gender Performance
* Gendering Terrorism
_____
Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS
Word Format) to TerrorProposal@ideologiesofwar.com
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008.
For more details about the conference go to:
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9gpoxicab.0.0.85y8w8n6.0&ts=S0314&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhu
manconditionseries.wordpress.com%2Fspeakers-08%2F&id=preview> or
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9gpoxicab.0.0.85y8w8n6.0&ts=S0314&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhu
manconditionseries.wordpress.com%2Fpast-conference-07%2F&id=preview>
All papers accepted and presented at the conference will be
considered for inclusion in the The Human Condition Series e-journal.
In addition, some papers will also be considered for publication in a themed
volume on Terror.
Contact Person: Marianne Vardalos, Director
Human Condition Series Organizing Committee, 2008
_____
Recreational Terror
* Terror Pornography
* Horror Genres
* The Commodification of Fear
* Ritualistic Terror
Terror as Text
* Artistic Expressions of Terror
* Imagining Terror
* Literature and Terror
* Discourses and Counter-Discourses of Terror
* Historic Perspectives on Terror
* Linguistic Evolutions of Terror
The Doxas of Terror
* The Terror of Morality
* Market Terror
* Techno-Scientific Terror
* The Terror of Fundamentalisms
* Military Logic as Terror
* The Culture Industry as Terror
* The Terror of Reason
* The Metaphysics of Terror
* Racial Knowledge as Terror
* Faith and Terror
