[Discussion] CFP: Mapping Globalization (Germany) (9/30/05; 5/18/06-5/20/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: Helge Wendt <helgewendt@yahoo.de>

Promotionskolleg "Globalisierung aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive,"
Universität Mannheim

5/18/06- 5/20/06, Schloss Universität Mannheim

Deadline: 9/30/05

Call for Papers
International Conference

Mapping Globalization

The term "globalization" has certainly not yet been completely exhausted, its
inflationary usage notwithstanding. Consequently, the asserted goal of this
conference is to go beyond the descriptive-diagnostic uses and test its
analytical suitability in cultural research. The implications of the title are
twofold: Globalization on a meta-level is to be the focus of reflections within
cultural theory enabling an analysis of possible modes of perception and
observation of global processes in different areas of (world) society.
"Mapping," however, also refers to the semantics of cognitive navigation systems
and is to be understood as a concrete method of organization and classification,
of mapping, determination and translation, which transcends conventional
territorially and nationally coded borders of meaning and (re-)contextualizes
globality as a non-linear space-time-continuum of breaks, overlaps and
contemporaneity.

In this context, globalization does not primarily refer to the phenomenological
reality of the global flows of communication and commodities or to global
network and exchange processes. Rather, it is assumed that globalization's
actual explosive potential stems from a fundamental unsettling of formerly
reliable categories. The vocabulary of such rigid signifiers as nation, state,
ethnicity, territory and sovereignty becomes increasingly slippery. "Mapping
Globalization" is particularly interested in the potential for disquiet and
irritation that globalization represents for the semantic repertoire of modern
cultures. The conference thus centers on the question of which mental spaces are
opened up when members of binarily coded bodies of knowledge start to mistrust
their own modes of cultural perception and observation. The erosion of cultural
certainties, frequently diagnosed as "crisis," does, however, not preclude
rigorously and aggressively stated assertions of identity (Nationalism,
Regionalism, Fundamentalism).

Globalization as a reflexive term could provide a perspective on the surplus, on
the oscillation at the borders of traditional structural pairs of opposites.
Moreover, it could focus on their productive and functional mechanisms, which
usually lie in the blind spots of differentiated socio-cultural sub-areas.
Thus, the main research question the conference focuses on is not what
globalization is, but how globalization is generated and negotiated in different
discourses and systems. Besides an approach to this operative dimension of
culture from the perspective of cultural theory, the respective specific
mediality, presentational options, avenues of approach and rules of cultural
knowledge generation in relation to the global are also to be focused on. Thus,
social and cultural semiosis in a continuing period of globalization can be
observed at the interfaces between epistemology and aesthetics, between the
political and the imaginary, between science and poetry. We are looking for
contributors that are willing to walk the tightrope of "between," a place in
which what can be said and thought is re-negotiable. The contours of such a
space of reflexive globality can be seen in the popular imagination of movies,
television and best-selling literature, as well as in the boundaries between the
determinations of classifications and genres (specialized book, documentary
fiction, science fiction) and cultural demarcations (world literature, world
music), in medial and communicative transfer and translation activities, and
finally at the threshold of differentiated sciences and cultural poiesis. The
conference is fundamentally concerned with questions of ruptures and
continuities in the epistemic configurations of historical associations and
seeks to contribute to the complex and open debate on the epochal attempts at
periodizing and dating globalization.

Topics may include, among others:

- Periodizations: Globalization as break and transition (post-modernity,
modernity turned reflexive)
- Structural metaphors of the global: network "rhizome" system
- Concepts of particularity and totality: the whole as conspiracy?
- Facets of a geo-political realm of the imaginary in politics and culture
- (Trans-)Formations of time / Time-Forms: the temporality of globalization
- Between order and chaos: culture as complexity and potentiality
- Outlines of a cultural theory of the global
- Organisations and locations of space. Topographical routing semantics of
globalization
- The poetics of world literature
- Hybridity and cosmopolitanism as dimensions of cultural translation
- The media "hardware" and user interfaces in an age of globalization
- Regimes of territoriality and sovereignty
- World society and metaculture

Papers are limited to 30 minutes. Abstracts (300 words) and a brief academic
Curriculum Vitae should be sent to prkgorg@rumms.uni-mannheim.de by September
30.


Promotionskolleg "Globalisierung aus
kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive"
Sprecher: Prof. Dr. Ulfried Reichardt
Schloss, Ehrenhof West, Zimmer EW 261
68161 Mannheim
Tel. ++49 621 - 181-2363
http://www.phil.uni-mannheim.de/pk_globalisierung/index.html






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