The concept of Terror is often found safely hidden and un-thought in diverse cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions and ways of life. One can see these safe havens extending from the divine mythologies of religious experience to the seemingly opposed rationalized life of contemporary high-tech societies. With respect to religious experience, it is clear that we have to seriously reconsider the dynamics of organized religion in the face of rising religious fundamentalisms and terrorist activity.

But terror in the highly rationalized world of technological societies can also impose its existing logic as a way of maintaining the order of things. We give it various positive names that conceal its potency and negative effects. At precise moments in history, terror's potency has appeared in benign terms such as "child welfare," "residential schools," the "founding nation," the "developed world," the "hysterical woman," the "mentally ill," the "social and sexual deviant," the "immigrant problem," the "disposable income," and the "democratic liberation of other peoples."

It is the absurd rationalizations of these terms in the face of concrete realities that covers over terror's effects and keeps it intact. This conference will investigate what role Terror has in maintaining the contemporary condition of humanity--and what hope there is of envisioning a condition in which Terror is natural and organic rather than strategic and imposed.

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Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS Word Format) to TerrorProposal@ideologiesofwar.com

The Organizing Committee also welcomes pre-formed panel proposals.

DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008.

For more details about the conference go to:
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/ or
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/
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This is an important, exciting conference and we hope you will participate by sending us your abstract.

It is one of the most significant meetings of the year on the sources and meanings of political and cultural violence.

We welcome proposals from people in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, cultural studies, social theory, psychoanalysis and political psychology.

We look forward to receiving your proposal.

Best regards,
Orion Anderson

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Possible topics include but are not limited to:

The Laws of State-Terror

* Non-sovereign Peoples Subjected to the Authority of the Privileged
* Structures that Organize, Control, Punish, and Reward Subjects
* Denial to Total Self-Governance

Communications of Terror

* Propaganda, Public Relations and other Communication Management in the Opinion Industry.
* Overt and Covert Representations of Terror
* The Centrality of Spin and Lobbying in Communicating Terror
* The Role of the PR Industry in Creating Terror
* Think Tanks and Policy Communications
* Global Media Management and Terror

The Manufacture and Management of Terror

* The Marketing of Terror
* Falsified News Coverage and the Intelligence Industry
* Techniques of Generating and Maintaining Terror through the Medical Industry's Management of 'Outbreaks'
* The Relationship of Terror to the Modern Malaise: Anxiety, Disorders, Disease
* Terror as Pleasure

Designating Terror

* The Construction of the Transnational Terrorist
* Deconstructing and Reconstructing
Designations: "Terrorism", "Freedom Fighter", "Peacekeeper", "Organized Crime", "Legality", and "Human Security"
* Delegitimation of Claims of Origin in Land-Ownership

Terror and the Transformation of States and Nations

* Legitimacy of Landownership.
* Public and Private Responses to Political Violence
* Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and Conflicting Agendas in Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Crime Policies
* Forces in Society which Resist Terror via Fighting, Politics, Activism or Critical Journalism.

Spaces of Terror

* The International Political Economy of Corporate Power as Terror
* Hospitals, Clinics and the Medical Industry as Terror
* Education and Terror

Gender, Sexuality and Terror

* Otherness as Terror
* Patriarchy and the Violence of Gender Performance
* Gendering Terrorism

Recreational Terror

* Terror Pornography
* Horror Genres
* The Commodification of Fear
* Ritualistic Terror

Terror as Text

* Artistic Expressions of Terror
* Imagining Terror
* Literature and Terror
* Discourses and Counter-Discourses of Terror
* Historic Perspectives on Terror
* Linguistic Evolutions of Terror

The Doxas of Terror

* The Terror of Morality
* Market Terror
* Techno-Scientific Terror
* The Terror of Fundamentalisms
* Military Logic as Terror
* The Culture Industry as Terror
* The Terror of Reason
* The Metaphysics of Terror
* Racial Knowledge as Terror
* Faith and Terror