This weekend in the reading roundup:
On a more positive note, Happy Mother's Day to all the Mums in the UK!
Photo credit: XiXiDu
As information about Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan--a coalition offensive purportedly against a key Taliban stronghold of 80,000 residents called Marjah--becomes available from web muckrakers like BagnewsNotes and Truthout, I can't help but think of the following passage from Jean Baudrillard's essay on Simulacra and Simulations:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true...
...Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.
In many ways, we can see Afghanistan as a governing assemblage of simulacra: democracy, humanitarianism, human rights, community capacity building, reconstruction, and the war on terror. Unfortunately, the bodies of the dead, maimed, sick, and injured--from all sides--remind us that the desert of the real is also a very brutal place.
Photo credit: Paolo Alfieri (his flickr-stream of Afghan landscapes is pretty stunning)
Are you currently working on a Masters or Ph.D. that explores aspects of how art and social change are related? Or are you really interested in the topic? If so, the following workshop organized by colleagues at the University of Bristol might just be for you. Please see the details below:
‘Beauty will save the world’*: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop on Art and Social Change
University of Bristol, 7-8 September 2010
Hosted by the Department of Politics and sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol
How does art construct, resist and contest dominant identities and social practices? How does art open up possibilities for (re)creating the world? What are the relationships between art, aesthetics, and politics? What are the power relations involved in art? Whose art, and whose values are best placed to change the world? Can engaging with art help us develop new epistemologies and research methodologies? Can beauty ‘save’ the world?
This two-day interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop is premised on the assumption that art actively constructs social ‘reality’, as opposed to merely reflecting it. Against dominant pronouncements privileging the centrality of rationalism and science as the legitimate avenues towards knowledge and social change, this workshop poses the question: what does the ‘serious’ pursuit of ‘progress’ miss out on when it disqualifies the artist’s imaginary as superfluous, lacking impact, unimportant?
The workshop aims to bring together postgraduate students working in and across various disciplines to share research which looks at the contested meanings of art and aesthetics, explores art in different cultural and historical settings, and examines the ways in which art and its constructions of beauty, society, politics can help in understanding, and changing, the social world. The workshop will also enable postgraduate students to engage and network with more established scholars, who will be present at the workshop as keynote speakers, panel chairs and roundtable discussants.
We welcome paper and panel proposals (2-3 presenters per panel) which engage specifically with the theme of art and social change, from various disciplines, including but not limited to: Archaeology, Anthropology, Classics, English, Modern Languages, History, History of Art, Visual and Performing Arts, Cultural Studies, Geography, Philosophy, Sociology and Politics.
Ideas for papers might include:Papers can include think pieces or works in progress. We encourage a diversity of presentation styles, from ‘traditional’ papers to interactive sessions, involving short film screenings, musical and dramatic performances, and the display of paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installation art. Presenters will be assigned a 30-minute slot for their presentation, which can be used by the presenter as they wish, but must include at least 5 minutes for audience questions.
Please email abstracts (maximum 300 words) of proposed presentations to both Cerelia Athanasiou (cerelia.athanasiou@bristol.ac.uk) and Shaira Kadir (shaira.kadir@bristol.ac.uk) by 31 May 2010.
Presenters will be able to make use of a digital data projector and DVD/CD player. However, we will not be able to provide musical instruments or any other specialist equipment.
*From Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.
Photo credit: mafleen
This weekend in the reading roundup:
And congratulations to David Campbell and Sharron Lovell on being awarded the 'Online excellence in projects for mid-sized websites' by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at the 15th Annual Best in Journalism Competition for the multi-media project 'Living in the Shadows'.
Living in the Shadows: China's Internal Migrants from David Campbell on Vimeo.
Have a good weekend.Image of a personal twitter network: Nimages DR
As part of its 60th Anniversary celebration, the UK's Political Studies Association is polling its membership to compile a list of the top 'political' songs of all time.
They state that:
And here's the list of songs that they've chosen as being exemplary 'political':
Annie Lennox & Aretha Franklin: Sisters are doing it for themselves
Anon.: Bella Ciao
Barry McGuire: Eve of Destruction
Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit
Billy
Bragg: Which side are you on?
Bob Dylan: The Times They Are a changing
Bob Marley: Redemption Song
Bruce
Springsteen: Born in the
Carl Bean: I was born this way
Cecil A. Spring-Rice: I vow to thee my country
Charles A. Tindley: We Shall Overcome
Charly García: Nos siguen pegando abajo
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle: Le Marseillaise
Donovan: Universal Soldier
Edwin Starr: War
Elvis Costello: Tramp The Dirt Down
Enoch Sontonga: Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika
Eugène Pottier: The Internationale
Fela Kuti: Zombie
Gil Scott Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Horst Wessel: Die Fahne hoch
Jim Connell: The Red Flag
John Lennon: Imagine
Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi
Leornard Cohen: The Partisan
Li Youyuan: The East is Red
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?
Midnight Oil: Beds are Burning
Nena: 99 Luftaballons
Nina
Simone:
Pete Seeger: Where have all the flowers gone?
Peter Gabriel: Biko
Plastic Ono Band: Give Peace a Chance
Public Enemy: Fight the Power
Randy Newman: Political Science
RATM: Killing in the name
Robert Wyatt: Shipbuilding
Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter
Sex Pistols: God Save The Queen
The Beatles: Revolution
The Clash: Know Your Rights
The Cranberries: Zombie
The
Jam:
The Police: Invisible Sun
The Specials AKA: Free Nelson Mandela
The
Strawbs: Part of the
Tracy Chapman: Talkin' 'bout a revolution
U2: Sunday Bloody Sunday
UB40: 1 in 10
Verdi: Chorus of Hebrew Slaves
Victor Jara: Te Recuerdo Amanda
William Blake:
Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land
Now to give credit where it is due, the list is not as lame as one might have feared, even if it is heavily skewed in favour of nostalgic boomer anthems and assumes that music stopped being political sometime in the mid 1990s.
But, it is an obvious collection, in part because it is underpinned by a very narrow assumption about what politics 'is' and therefore what can properly count as 'political'. These choices reveal that politics--at least for those who drafted this list--is defined by explicit representations of nationalism, street protest, conflict, inequality, support for--or opposition to--government policy, and perhaps alienation that have become associated with historical time periods or events. These are presented as songs that have responded to a politics that exists out there regardless of what we may think about it.
It is the politics of recognized issues, institutions, and actors, that have been invested by the dominant socio-economic forces of the time with the importance and privileged status of being coded as 'political' in political discourses. Moreover, it is a politics of direct intentions, intentions that the audience can supposedly discern from the lyrical content or title of the pieces.
To be clear, I am not arguing that these songs do not cover what we can consider to be political subjects. And it is not to say that these songs do not address important political issues. But there is more to music being political and to the politicization of music than a neat fit with events that are recorded in orthodox history books as being 'of' the political sphere.
For example, take the Rolling Stones' 'Brown Sugar'. Some might dismiss it as a cheeky song about lust--or maybe lines of prose from Strom Thurmond's secret diary--that is devoid of any broad political significance. Yet, the narrative exposes the societal power-relations enabled by the privileging of the white heterosexual male gaze. More specifically, the song can be seen as an example of how that gaze eroticizes difference into an object of fetishistic corporeal desire while simultaneously denying the humanity of the eroticized other. This strikes me as incredibly political and as important to understanding gender and racial dynamics today as when it is was first performed.
Furthermore, the limited conception of the political underpinning the PSA list completely misses the constitutive role of music in the creation and maintenance of particular relations of power. For example, the Barney the Dinosaur Theme Song or the Meow Mix Commercial Jingle were favoured by American interrogators as a means to torture detainees in Iraq. In my mind they have just as an important political significance as Pete Seeger lamenting the metaphorical absence of flowers.
So in the end, even with my reservations above, I'm not entirely sure how to read the PSA's attempt to form links between the field of politics and popular culture. On the one hand, given how small-c conservative the disciplines of politics and international relations are in general, might this represent an opening--however small--to begin to get colleagues to take the popular culture-world politics continuum seriously? Or is this best seen as a shallow and gimmicky appropriation that just reinforces problematic understandings of politics and of popular culture?
Photo credit: ktylerconk
This weekend in the reading roundup:
Photo credit: junhopark
Please see the message from Matt Davies below, in his capacity as the head convenor of 'The Critical Limits of the Financial Crisis: World, Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-politicization' section for the upcoming Standing Group on International Relations Conference in Stockholm. As an associate convenor, I'd just like to reiterate our desire to solicit as many interesting papers as possible!
Call For Papers
The SGIR 7th Pan-European Conference on IR will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, from September 9-11, 2010. The deadline for submitting paper or panel proposals is 28 February and proposals must be submitted on-line at here.
There are 43 sections for the conference, all dealing in different ways with the conference theme, “Politics in Hard Times.” Our section, number 9, “The Critical Limits to the Financial Crisis: World Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-politicization” especially invites panels that bring together both specialists in political economy and specialists in aesthetic or cultural theory for dialog about the contemporary crisis and how finance fits in it, or papers that could contribute to these kinds of panels. The section’s call for papers can be found here.We have had several inquiries about what this might mean and just to be clear, we do not see these contributions as being limited to papers that examine “the aesthetics of finance” understood narrowly (though such proposals would be most welcome). The panels should bring together diverse approaches to common concerns: for example, a political economic analysis of the role of the housing bubble in the financial crisis could be brought into dialog with a paper on the aesthetics of housing in times of boom or bust. Finance and visuality have been brought together in very interesting ways in cultural political economy, and the notion of “financial architecture” provides another common meeting ground between political economy and aesthetics.
Please contact any of the section convenors, listed on the section’s call for papers, if you have any questions and please feel free to circulate this call to any interested colleagues across the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences.
Photo credits: TRAFFIK [US] and calico_13
Breakthrough, an international human rights advocacy group, has put together an excellent resource to draw attention to what can only be described as the appalling treatment of immigrants in American detention centers.
Spearheading the campaign Homeland Guantanamos: The Untold Story of Immigrant Detention in the U.S. is a video game that is:
Having played the game, I was very impressed with the delicate balance achieved between the quality of the gaming experience and maintaining the gravitas that the subject deserves.
Moreover, the use of video first person testimonials from those who have been detained--or had family members detained--was extremely powerful without feeling exploitative. Hearing and seeing those--even if just a tiny portion-- who have been caught in the Kafkaesque world of ICE custody packs a real visceral punch than goes beyond reading lists or third party accounts of (alleged) violations.
And perhaps what is most admirable of all is that those who speak are given the opportunity to reveal their multiple and overlapping identities that demonstrate the violence inherent in defining someone simply as a 'migrant'. Yet, none of the people profiled are represented as passive victims; their agency, forms of resistance while detained, and hopes that current practices can be overturned come through as they share their experiences.
Although, I'm not in a position to evaluate how successful the Homeland Guantanamos campaign has been, it certainly presents its message in an innovative way that communicates the message effectively. Thus, it will be interesting to see if the use of non-traditional mediums like video games and emerging forms of social networking are adopted by other organizations seeking to make the world a more humane and just place? What do you think?
Photo credit: Menner de Braker
Colleagues at the Centre for International and Security Studies at York University in Canada have announced a call for papers for the third annual Popular Culture and World Politics Conference (PCWP). Previous events have been hosted by Politics at Bristol University (2008) and Politics at Newcastle University (2009). Both both were fantastic.
Given that a fair number of this blog's readers are artists and/or cultural producers, please note that we--that is academics studying world politics and popular culture--are particularly interested in finding out from you how political commitments--very broadly defined--may or may not influence the medium and messages of your work. Thus, I'd like to emphasize that PCWP III is really interested in 'receiving proposals for the performance, presentation, screening or display of cultural works which seek to produce a (world) politics in their practice.' And I promise, we don't bite!
Anyhow, please see the call for papers below or click on the original link here.
Call for Papers:
Popular Culture and World Politics (PCWP III)
04-05 November 2010
York University, Toronto, Canada
There is a growing movement in and around the study of international politics to think about the intersections of world politics and the production, circulation, content and consumption of various popular cultural forms. This burgeoning scholarship has reached a point in which it is possible to move well beyond the important initial forays that emphasised the content of cultural forms-as-text, seeking metaphorical connections between the cultural and the political, to explore the interwoven possibilities and limits of the cultural and political.
The York Centre for International and Security Studies is pleased to invite you to Popular Culture and World Politics III, to be held in Toronto 4-5 November 2010. Following two successful events, hosted by the University of Bristol in 2008 and the University of Newcastle in 2009, Popular Culture and World Politics III seeks to continue the growing conversation on the intersections of various forms of popular culture and the study of world politics, from a range of disciplines and practices in the social sciences, humanities and the arts.
We welcome proposals for performances, screenings, panels, or individual papers, on any aspect of world politics and popular culture. In particular, we seek proposals which address any of the following themes or issues:
If you are interested in attending the conference please Click here and submit a brief abstract of your paper (no more than 250 words) before 2 April 2010.
I hope to see many of you there!
Photo credit: lowfatbrains
This weekend in the reading roundup:
Some food for thought...
Photo credit: jurvetson
