[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: The Culture Industry Today (Brazil) (5/15/06; 8/28/06-9/1/06)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

The Culture Industry Today, Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba
(UNIMEP), Brazil, Aug. 28 – Sept. 1.

With participants from several Brazilian universities, the study group
“Critical Theory and Education” has been carrying out research on
Critical Theory since 1991, focusing especially on issues related to
education and cultural analysis. In our 5th conference, we would like to
bring scholars together to discuss – from the perspective of the first
generation of the Frankfurt School – the culture industry today,
particularly under the impact of the new technologies and the
consequences resulting from them.

The amazement vis-à-vis new interactive possibilities, as the
convergence and intertwining of new media, which are ultimately a result
of transformations in capitalism’s productive forces, has led several
critics to announce the death of the concept of the culture industry.
The so-called democratization of information, as well as the sharp
changes in perception (in aesthetics, in its old sense), give the
impression that the subject is apt to intervene in society in such a way
that the contradiction between parts and the whole starts to correspond
to mere technical problems to be solved without any need for social change.

This hasty conclusion is not capable of dispelling signs and symptoms
which are at odds with the appearance of happiness. The consequences of
fetishization and reification of consciousness stubbornly remind us that
reconciliation between the individual and society, desire and cultural
production, has not yet taken place, in spite of the attempts by the
culture industry to show that happiness may be achieved here and now.
Such promises, in fact, are not fulfilled, for what really happens
today is a “reconciliation under duress” in T.W. Adorno’s words.
However, if the basic premises of the concept of culture industry are
still valid, what would be the unfolding of the current process of
technological fetishization and absolutization? In times of globalized
Big Brothers it is fundamental to promote debates on the nature of the
culture industry today, especially concerning the objective and
subjective damages generated by cultural Halbbildung, which is fast
spreading out, as well as the congruence between technological progress
and sensorial numbness.

This theoretical framework encourages the approximation of different
fields of knowledge, such as education, psychoanalysis, communications
and language studies. These are so many axes that allow one to fully
characterize the contemporary concept of cultural industry. The talks
and panels in the conference were conceived with the intent of examining
the issues above.

Topics include:
•	Critical Theory, Culture Industry and Education;
•	Communications, Culture Industry and Halbbildung;
•	Esthetics and the education of the senses;
•	Culture Industry, Ethics and Bildung;
•	Culture Industry, Subjectivity, Bildung
•	Culture Industry, New Technologies and Language;
•	Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis;
•	The body, new technologies, Bildung;
•	Culture Industry, Literature and the Arts.

Confirmed invited speakers include: Robert Hullot-Kentor, Ulrich
Oevermann, Christoph Tuercke, Andreas Gruschka and Rodrigo Duarte.

Please send abstracts (500 words maximum) together with a short bio to
Prof. Bruno Pucci (bpucci at unimep.br) by May 10.




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