[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Utility, Excess, Value, Waste (grad) (1/31/06; journal issue)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: ajmcc <ajmcc@uclink.berkeley.edu>


CRITICAL SENSE: A JOURNAL OF POLITICAL AND CULTURAL THEORY

CALL FOR PAPERS SPRING 2006

Utility, Excess, Value, Waste:
Interrogating the Productive and the Unproductive

The difference between the productive and the unproductive vexes us in 
the most
banal and daily ways: we use these terms to categorize not only our 
work, but
also our social exchanges, our affective states, our political 
activities, our
time itself. We do not merely "do" productive or unproductive things, we 
_feel_
productive or unproductive. We unconsciously attach a normative value to 
these
descriptions of our daily activity and labor, attributing goodness, 
usefulness
and meaning to productivity, and waste, laxity, and luxury to that which is
unproductive.

For this special issue of Critical Sense we are interested in a variety of
approaches to these concepts: work that rethinks productivity and its 
attending
terms within the discourse of economy; work that translates the 
categories of
the productive and the unproductive into other discursive contexts; and work
that is critical of the concepts themselves. If these terms trace their 
origin
to classic political economy--in which they may claim to be structural or
descriptive rather than normative--they have become equally important to 
(and
the objects of critique within) a range of other fields and discourses. We
welcome a wide range of submissions that deal with this topic.

Questions or issues that might be relevant include:

*Productivity of the "symbolic work" of marketing and branding; role of
affective labor in production
*Feminist/gender theory critiques of the concepts of the productive and
unproductive; role of reproduction at the level of the family as well as 
within
ideological forms
*Adequacy or inadequacy of these terms to pre-colonial, colonial, or 
neocolonial
slavery and slave labor
*The value of the unproductive, that which cannot find equivalent, which 
cannot
produce economic value or be thought in its terms, that which is 
excessive or
beyond measure: the lazy, the ineffectual, resistance and refusal
*"Non-productive" (and, indeed, non-economic) economies of gift and 
sacrifice
*Relevance to the aesthetics of decadence, excess, or immoderation
*Relevance to/role within libidinal economies; productivity or 
unproductiveness
of drives, desires, repressive labor
*Relevance of productivity to the epistemological, cognitive, or 
philosophical
*Productivity in politics: examining cults of efficiency or critiques of 
mass or
elite politics invoking the notions of efficiency, expediency, waste, and/or
unproductive activity

We also welcome book reviews on any topic within the orbit of political and
cultural theory, whether related or unrelated to the issue's theme. Papers
should be no more than 30 pages; reviews, no more than 10. All 
submissions are
due by JANUARY 31st, 2006 electronically to 
criticalsense@lists.berkeley.edu.

Critical Sense is located online at http://criticalsense.berkeley.edu.



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