[Air-L] Call-for-Papers: TERROR: The Human Condition Series

[Orion Anderson]

CALL FOR PAPERS
THE HUMAN CONDITION SERIES: 2nd Annual International Multidisciplinary
Conference on: TERROR May 2-3, 2008, Laurentian University @ Georgian
College, Ontario, Canada


Confirmed Keynote Speakers
We are pleased to announce the participation of three internationally
renowned keynote speakers: Henry Jiroux (McMaster University) Sunera Thobani
(University of British Columbia) Sut Jhally (University of Massachusetts)

Special Plenary Talk
Richard A. Koenigsberg (Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis)

Description of the Series and Conference Theme

"Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition: It
rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way."
 -Hannah Arendt

This conference is part of a larger series of ongoing, international,
multidisciplinary conferences--run under the banner of The Human Condition
Series--that brings together people from a variety of disciplines to assess
a singular topic from artistic, cinematic, literary, ethical, social,
political, philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. We
encourage you to share innovative ideas and new ways of thinking and acting.
Proposals will be considered on any related theme and we especially welcome
papers, reports, works-in-progress, workshops and sessions. This year's
theme is Terror.

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.
____________________________________________________________________________
___
Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS
Word Format) to 

TerrorProposal at ideologiesofwar.com

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/

Contact Person: Marianne Vardalos,  Ph.D., Dept. of Sociology, Laurentian
University Director  of the Human Condition Series Organizing Committee
____________________________________________________________________________
____

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

The Laws of State-Terror
Communications of Terror
Overt and Covert Representations of Terror
The Centrality of Spin and Lobbying in Communicating Terror
The Manufacture and Management of Terror
The Marketing of Terror
The Relationship of Terror to the Modern Malaise: Anxiety, Disorders,
Disease Terror as Pleasure
The Construction of the Transnational Terrorist
Terror and the Transformation of States and Nations
Gender, Sexuality and Terror
Otherness as Terror
Terror Pornography
The Commodification of Fear
Artistic Expressions of Terror
Literature and Terror
Discourses and Counter-Discourses of Terror
The Terror of Morality
The Terror of Fundamentalisms
Military Logic as Terror
The Terror of Reason
Faith and Terror
____________________________________________________________________________
________________
Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS
Word Format) to

TerrorProposal at ideologiesofwar.com 

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/

All papers accepted and presented at the conference will be
considered for inclusion in the The Human Condition Series e-journal. In
addition, some papers will also be considered for publication in a themed
volume on Terror.

Contact Person: Marianne Vardalos,  Ph.D., Dept. of Sociology, Laurentian
University Director  of the Human Condition Series Organizing Committee