[Air-L] Announcement: International Symposium "The Secret Life of Objects", Rio de Janeiro, August 2012

[Ricardo Oliveira]

Dear list members,

the International Symposium “The Secret Life of Objects: Materialities,
Medialities, Temporalities” will take place in Rio de Janeiro, between
August 1st and 3rd. Promoted by the State University of Rio de Janeiro,
along with several other academic institutions (such as the Vilem Flusser
Archiv and Universität Wien), the event is intended to debate the emergence
of new paradigms, epistemologies and intellectual scenarios within the
Humanities (see the abstract bellow). The keynote speaker will be the
French sociologist Bruno Latour and several other participants have already
confirmed their presence (Graham Harman, Siegfried Zielinski, Joachim
Paech, Richard Grusin, Steven Shaviro, Ian Bogost etc.). The event is free
and open to the public. Enrollment is possible trough our website
http://vidadosobjetos/inscricao. The form is in Portuguese, but it’s very
easy to fill out:



Nome (name)

CPF (don’t bother that, something like a social security number)

Email

Profissão (Profession)

Instituição (Institution)

Cidade/Estado (City/State)

Link para Redes Sociais (Link for social networks)



Erick Felinto (President) - UERJ

Adalberto Müller – UFF/Letras

André Lemos - UFBA

Fernanda Bruno - UFRJ

Lúcia Santaella - PUCSP

Maurício Lissovsky - UFRJ

Simone de Sá - UFF

Vinicius Andrade Pereira - UERJ



Abstract: There are strong indications that a significant transformation is
underway in the so-called “human sciences” (Geisteswissenschaften, sciences
humaines, Humanities). After a period of intense crisis and uncertainty, in
which human sciences have frequently sought to mirror or approach the hard
sciences, the beginning of the twenty-first century seems to witness a
broad renewal of disciplines, approaches and methodologies. From the
questioning of its traditional foundations, humanities are reinventing
themselves by a broad reconfiguration of its borders and even of the notion
of “humanity” that served as its cornerstone. One of the areas where the
wealth of this new scenario is most clearly displayed is that of media
studies. Spurred by the impact of new digital technologies, media studies
cleverly learned to appropriate the epistemological principles and major
theoretical issues that have come to characterize the contemporary cultural
scene. The objective of the Seminar "The Secret Life of Objects:
Medialities, Materialities, Temporalities" is to sketch a systematization
of this scenario from a transdisciplinary perspective, but with a decisive
focus on communication studies and culture. The three axes that structure
the Seminar represent articulating knots that cut across different
disciplines in the humanities, from sociology to philosophy, but acquire
special meaning in the context of new media studies. The underlying
assumption is that we need to radically rethink the notion of epistemic
agency in a context where the action and the impact of the objects, media
and technological materialities become increasingly important. Thus, it is
not only necessary to investigate the place of human actors in a world
enriched by the life of polymorphic objects, but also to highlight the
issues that the strong tradition of hermeneutics of the humanities have
often obscured: what, without constituting meaning per se, contributes
nonetheless to the production of meaning? What is a medium and how
mediation processes unfold? In what ways does technological materiality
inform cultural worlds and determine forms of cognition? What new models of
historical research of techniques and culture are emerging within the
current epistemological paradigms? In what ways is the material dimension
of experience combined with the intangible dimensions of culture? What does
it mean to purport an “object-oriented” philosophy? In what sense does the
category of the human reconfigure itself in light of our new relations with
objects and nonhuman entities? How important is the legacy of the genealogy
and archeology of knowledge (Nietzsche, Foucault) to a perspectivization of
the impacts of "new" digital culture? By means of interdisciplinary panels,
in which philosophers, anthropologists and scientists will discuss with
experts in media studies, we intend to address these issues in order to
elaborate a preliminary cartography of an epistemological territory still
in its early stages of exploration.