[Discussion] CFP: Community (6/15/05; e-journal issue)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: Joanna Zylinska <j.zylinska@virgin.net>


Electronic journal Culture Machine invites submissions for its special 2006
COMMUNITY issue.

Culture Machine <http://www.culturemachine.net> is an international, open
access, peer-reviewed electronic journal whose aim is to promote original,
exploratory work in the areas of cultural studies and critical theory. 
It seeks
to generate possibilities for new areas of interdisciplinary inquiry.

In recent years, the notion of the community has emerged as an important 
as well
as contested field of cultural and theoretical exploration. In his 
influential
study Imagined Communities (1983), social anthropologist Benedict Anderson
discusses the concept of the community as it is related to the idea of the
nation. As an imagined cultural and political artifact, &#65533;the
nation&#65533; provides a collectivity with a sense of continuity and
cohesiveness, while concealing the foundational violence that underlies such
collective myth. While Anderson&#65533;s articulation of the community 
is still
largely circumscribed by the political concept of the nation state,
philosophical inquiries into the notion of the
community by Jean-Luc Nancy (The Inoperative Community, 1983), Maurice
Blanchot (The Unavowable Community, 1983) and Giorgio Agamben (The Coming
Community, 1993), seek to open it up toward a broader politico-ethical 
context.
Nancy&#65533;s call for the deconstruction of the immanent community has 
been
particularly influential: community as the dominant Western political 
formation,
founded upon a totalizing, exclusionary myth of national unity, must be
tirelessly &#65533;unworked&#65533; in order to accommodate more 
inclusive and
fluid forms of dwelling together in the world, of being-in-common.

In this issue, we propose to engage in multiple explorations of the 
community as
a socio-historical, politico-ethical and cultural construct.
* With the demise of the traditional community as related to the 
nation-state,
what alternative formations or new collectivities, bound together by a very
different nexus of belonging, have emerged in its stead?
* How viable is the metaphor of the &#65533;global&#65533; community 
(the global
village)?
* Can the community be predicated on the ethical, perhaps cosmopolitan 
vision of
sharing and unimpeded border-crossing, or is it, on the contrary, yet 
another
homogenizing, totalizing fantasy that only benefits the empire of the 
capital?
* How does it relate to such increasingly unstable concepts as
&#65533;citizenship&#65533; or &#65533;multiculturalism&#65533;?
* What is the function of the community in the rapidly shifting geopolitical
context, of which the European community is a particularly fecund 
contemporary
example, as is a plethora of its postcolonial, post-Western 
articulations (in
the Middle East and Africa, for instance)?
* Is there community after communism?
* To what extent does Hardt and Negri's &#65533;multitude&#65533; 
(Empire, 2004;
Multitude, 2004) represent a new form of community (one made up of a
multiplicity of singularities)?
* Among the newly emergent formations, the notion of &#65533;the virtual
community&#65533; is of particular interest. We would like to 
investigate the
virtual communities that have mushroomed in numerous guises: as both 
cultural
avant-garde and cultural decadence; as the mainstay of political 
conservatism
(white supremacy networks) and the forum for politically progressive forces
(international peace coalitions).
* Finally, are we perhaps moving towards the &#65533;unworking&#65533; 
of the
community to a degree when it ceases to be a &#65533;workable&#65533; 
concept
altogether&#65533;?

In reflecting on the notion of community, this special issue of Culture 
Machine
also aspires to become a meeting place for the community of minds; indeed, a
site of community in its most basic sense of communication and 
circulation of
meaning.

Please send an abstract of 500-750 words to Dr. Dorota Glowacka, at
<dglowacka@eastlink.ca>.

1. The deadline for submitting abstracts is June 15, 2005. All 
contributors will
be notified soon after the deadline whether their abstract has been 
selected.
2. The deadline for completed papers is October 20, 2005. All papers will be
peer-reviewed.

--
Dr Joanna Zylinska
Department of Media and Communications
Goldsmiths College, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK

*** New book - The Ethics of Cultural Studies - out now ***
My website: http://www.joannazylinska.net
Reviews Editor for Culture Machine: http://www.culturemachine.net



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