[Air-L] CfP - conference: Fomenting political Violence - Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, Essex University, 9-10 Sept. 2016

[Steffen Krueger]

Dear colleagues,

here a Call for Papers that I hope will be of interest to many of you!


*Fomenting political violence – Phantasy, Language, Media, Action.*

A two-day international conference at the *Centre for Psychoanalytic
Studies, *
*University of Essex*, UK, September 9 – 10 2016, in co-operation with *
Bournemouth University* and the *University of Oslo* (UiO), Norway.


Steffen Krueger, postdoc and lecturer, Dept. of Media and Communication,
University of Oslo
Karl Figlio, Professor Emeritus, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies,
University of Essex.
Barry Richards, Professor of Political Psychology, Bournemouth University.


This two-day conference invites researchers from a wide range of
disciplines to address the relationship between phantasy, language, media
and action. Do language and phantasy feed into one another, especially in
the contemporary mediascape, fostering an extremist mentality that foments
violent political action? And, if so, how can we understand the
relationship between action on the one side, and phantasy and language in
their specific forms of mediation on the other? Although it is difficult to
establish causal links between, for example, racist slurs and racist
violence, we can nevertheless observe how increases in ethnocentric,
xenophobic and fundamentalist speech in online forums and on social
networking sites go together with increases in right-extremist criminal
acts, as is presently the case in Germany.

Various traditions of research into prejudice, extremism, violence and the
media have taken different routes in conceptualising the links between the
above concepts. Discourse analysis, for example, has pointed to the subtle
ways in which language use can help make symbolic violence permissible.
Social psychology, and especially the social identity tradition, has shown
how typical tendencies in group dynamics suggest certain fault lines for
larger-scale political behaviour. Media effect studies, in turn, have
suggested a string of concepts based on social-psychological work, such as
“uses-and-gratifications”, the “spiral of silence”, “agenda setting”, and
“frame theory”, which can be instrumental in conceiving how people’s
construction of reality, facilitated by media, might lead to widely held
dispositions for the legitimation of socio-political action and/or the
restraining and containing of such action.

Although there is a substantial psychoanalytic literature on prejudice,
ethnic and religious hatred, and fundamentalism, there is little on the
process of fomenting violence, which moves from phantasy through language
into action. With a view to intervening in and advancing the above
traditions, the conference invites papers inquiring into how psychoanalysis
can help understand the build-up to eruptions of violence. How can
conceptions of sociality, relationality, divisiveness, exclusion and
affect, developed in various psychoanalytic traditions, shed light on the
often invisible ties that link what we do to what we feel, imagine, hear,
see, read or say – or to an atmosphere of extremism? Can psychoanalysis
contribute to deliberations around policy and practice in relation to
freedom of speech, ‘hate speech’ and media regulation, as well as foster a
sensitivity to implied prejudice in everyday encounters?

The attempt to gain a more rounded, situated and dialectical way to
understand these phenomena suggests ‘scenic’ methodology, for which the
work of Alfred Lorenzer – a psychoanalytic-social theorist not well known
in the English-speaking world – is central. We plan to reserve one session
to explore his work, but we invite you imaginatively to address the full
range of issues relevant to the topic of the conference. We encourage an
open, exploratory manner and look forward to engaging discussions.



*Indicative **fields of research include*:

-       Psychodynamics and social dynamics of political violence, and their
enmeshment / co-constitution.

-       Spaces, scopes and fields of action.

-       Gendered forms / gender dynamics.

-       Media discourses / media performances.

-       (Symbolic) interactions.

-       Internal and external worlds.

-       Freedom of expression vs blasphemy and prejudice.

-       -isms, -phobias and psychopathologies.

-       Methodological and/or theoretical reflections.

-       Researching across cultures.

-       Historical studies.

-       Humiliation and violence.

-       Violence and purification.

-       Bystanders and collusion with political violence.

-       Psychotic realities: Paranoia and delusions of threat.

-       Hate speech and hate actions.



If you would like to offer a paper to the conference, relating to the above
fields or to other aspects of the overall conference theme, please send an
abstract of 300-400 words to:

*cpsfv at essex.ac.uk <cpsfv at essex.ac.uk>*


Deadline for abstract submission: May 15, 2016.
(Delegates are informed about the inclusion of their papers within two
weeks from the deadline.)

Conference fee is £150 (£100 for students and unemployed).

Affordable accommodation is available on campus.


If you have questions regarding the conference or call for papers, please
write to: steffen.krueger at media.uio.no.


*Booking your place at the conference: *
*http://www.essex.ac.uk/online_shop/cps/events.aspx*
<http://www.essex.ac.uk/online_shop/cps/events.aspx>

*Book your on campus accommodation here: **https://kx.essex.ac.uk/BnB/*
<https://kx.essex.ac.uk/BnB/>
*Promotional code: CPS2016*

-- 




Steffen Krüger, PhD
lecturer and postdoctoral researcher
Dept. of Media and Communication
University of Oslo
Forskningsparken II
Gaustadalléen 21
0349 OSLO
Norway

skype: steff.krueger
mob. 0047 4580 6466