Call for Papers

The Cultural Transformations Research Network invites proposals for papers that engage with the theme of Re-Assemblage. Papers may explore ways in which cultures, histories and cultural elements/artworks have been, or are being, re-assembled into different media, new locations, and new forms, whether in theoretical, critical, aesthetic, or social terms.

The term Re-Assemblage suggests a focus on contexts of heterogeneity, emergent states, spaces, or times, non-essentialism and differences, processes, relationships, tactics and contingency. It might call up aesthetic practices such as collage, pastiche, intertextuality, collection, or re-mediation, across a range of art practices. Critical practices that emphasise comparative or interdisciplinary approaches also relate to the theme. A further range of areas or concerns often associated with the concept of Re-Assemblage relates to new technologies, cybernetics and informatics (Haraway), the post-human (Hayles), and the ‘desiring machine’ (Deleuze and Guattari). In social and cultural theory, contexts of hybridity, globalisation and ‘glocalisation’ are exemplary instances of Re-Assemblage. Despite their utopian charge, concepts or practices of Re-Assemblage can also call for analysis of the ways that they encounter or produce resistance.

This symposium further proposes the theme of Re-Assemblage as a means to examine and push the boundaries of existing discourses of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, as mobilised across a range of disciplinary boundaries. Postgraduate scholars and early career researchers are particularly encouraged to contribute.

Papers from across the disciplines are invited to address any aspect of assemblage, including:

• aesthetic practices
• critical strategies
• (post)colonialism, politics, globalisation
• tactics in everyday living
• media, new media, re-mediation
• technologies and human-machine/human-animal configurations
• gender and sexuality