A "subjective shot" on labor

(deadline: 30 January 2012)

Issue n. 9 of the journal Snodi will be devoted to the theme of labor, in its broadest sense, as a manual and an intellectual activity; labor of the land, in the factory, in the services; dependent or autonomous labor; regular or irregular labor; labor as a blessing or as a curse; loved or hated labor; labor producing identity and participation or refusal and exclusion, as long as it is represented 'subjectively'.

The "subjective shot" is a film technique which allows the spectator to perceive somebody else's perceptions. How can historiography use a "subjective shot " on the past? Can historians explore labor being at the same time faithful to experience, while checking on their own partiality? Can historians emphasize subjectivity without giving up a collective perspective, the social organized within production, vita activa (in Hannah Arendt's sense), mass cultures and "labor societies"? Excavating subjective representations of labor forces historians to question the categories and models through which institutions, politics, unions and intermediate groups have explained and have imposed rules over labor. They have done so by attributing to laborers missions, cultures, ideologies, which did not always correspond to the lived experience of individuals and small groups.

We encourage the submission of articles dealing especially with this conflict of perspectives on the history of labor in the modern and contemporary period. For the section Sources of the Self/Sources of the Us we would especially appreciate shorter pieces offering an analysis of sources in which a subjective shot on labor may reveal other framings, in harmony or in contrast with the perspective of the producer of the source itself.

Contributors are invited to send:

• For the section Writing: a half page abstract for an article in either Italian or English of roughly 20 pages (40.000 characters spaces included) • For the section Sources of the self/Sources of the us: a half page abstract for an article in either Italian or English of roughly 10 pages (20.000 characters spaces included, and including the sources when relevant), which analyse the methodological problems of the sources utilised in the study of this theme, exploring their peculiarity, construction and re-elaboration in an already conducted enquiry.

Proposals should be sent to snodi.pubbliciprivati@gmail.com, with a short biographical note and a short list of the author’s principal publications.

The authors of articles in English, when English is not the first language, should have their text already proofread by a mother tongue reader before sending it. The articles for the section Writing are subject to peer review. Proposals will be selected by 15 June 2011. The issue will be published in spring 2012.

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The journal S-nodi is conceived as a laboratory for the reflection around the concepts of “public” and “private” in contemporary history. The title refers to the exchanges, superimpositions, and movements between boundaries between the two terms of this great dichotomy which seems to be able to describe every individual and collective experience. On the contrary, it presents many knots (nodi) which need to be sigled out and unwound. Indeed, contemporary history is characterised by contexts in which the public dimension becomes private, and the private sphere assumes public relevance, depending on the strategies, self-representations, and conflicts between different social subjects, which move between these two spaces in a complex and fluid manner. S-nodi is an experimental workshop, open to different disciplinary perspectives and different generations of scholars, within and outside Italy, who have in common the will to reflect in a non-dichotomic way on the many publics and privates of the contemporary age. S-nodi is a project that originated in Venice, but is animated by young researchers who are active in different universities both in Italy and abroad. The journal, which intends to be a site for international exchange and welcomes contributions in languages other than Italia, contains from issue n. 3 a section entitled “Writing” where articles are evaluated not only by the editorial board but also by peer reviewers.

The editorial board includes Giulia Albanese, Margherita Angelini, Claudia Baldoli, Tommaso Baris, Giulia Beltrametti, Emmanuel Betta, Alessandro Casellato, Simon Levis Sullam, Erika Lorenzon, Giovanni Sbordone, Simona Troilo, Gilda Zazzara.