Psychosocial Studies Conference 2013 - Call for Papers
Call for Papers: Psychosocial Studies Conference 2013 ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS IN THE PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT
Call for Papers: Psychosocial Studies Conference 2013
ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS IN THE PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT
On Monday 17th June we will be hosting the PSYCHOSOCIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 2013!
This exciting event will be an opportunity for all the areas of our department to come together, to showcase, discuss and debate the diverse array of intellectual and political work with which we are engaged. THE CONFERENCE SEEKS FULLPARTICIPATION FROM ALL LEVELS OF THE DEPARTMENT. We hope not just to hear presentations from our faculty,but to generate engagement between and across students (MA, MSc and PhD, full-time, part-time) and staff.
TO SUCCEED IN TRULY ENGAGING OUR DIVERSE COMMUNITY, WE NEED YOUR PARTICIPATION! Below are the three panel themes we have chosen. We have made them intentionally broad to encompass the varied interests of our department and encourage the cross-pollination of ideas. Each paper presentation will last about 15 minutes, with time for Q&A at the end of the panel.
Please email us a short abstract (max 300 words) of your work BY FRIDAY 17TH MAY if you would like to present.
DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED! This is a community event, not an evaluation -- we want to hear, and support, your ideas!
We welcome the excellent papers that you have submitted in your courses, as well as your independent work.
Panel Themes
1. Psychoanalysis and the Political
2. " 'Race' or Gender? You decide...":- Power, Identity and Subjectivities in Psychosocial Research and Pedagogy.
3. Creativity, Aesthetics and the Arts
Further Information about the Panels:
Contexts and Inspiration
1. Psychoanalysis and the Political Psychoanalysis, while originating in the clinic, has been utilised not only to address subjectivity and clinical processes, but has also been extrapolated to the realm of politics. Taking into account that psychoanalysis - at its most subversive - enables subjects to question alienating discourses of power, it is an inherently political practice.
This panel will attend to the implications, effects and consequences of combining psychoanalysis and politics. We aim to investigate both how the practice of psychoanalysis is an explicitly political enterprise, and to reflect on the utilization of psychoanalysis in order to discuss political phenomena.
This is an invitation to address how contemporary political issues may be fruitfully analysed through psychoanalytic theory, but also how political phenomena may reflect back on psychoanalytic thinking. At the same time, we want to create an opportunity to analyse and question the political aspects of psychoanalysis itself, and to examine the different approaches that have led to various interpretations and understandings of psychoanalysis today.
2. " 'Race' or Gender? You Decide..." :- Power, Identity and Subjectivities in Psychosocial Research and Pedagogy.
“All the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave…” We can't escape the question of identity. Why, then, do we so often fail to appreciate the issue in its full complexity? Why do we privilege one 'identity category' -- race, sex, class -- over others? With reference to race, sex and gender, “…to contemplate them in isolation from each other is to perpetuate their more insidious and political effects…” (Schneider, 2012:126).
How might psychoanalysis be implicated in this failure -- or, how might psychoanalysis help us interrogate the problem? As Birkbeck Fellow Avtar Brah asks, “Does the privileging of ‘sexual difference’ and early childhood in psychoanalysis limit its explanatory value in helping us to understand psychic dimensions of social phenomena such as racism?”
Has there been a paradigm shift in conceptualizing "subjectivity" or "identity", or are we stuck in the same old patterns? Do we ever discuss ‘gender’ and ‘race’ laterally as opposed to hierarchically? How does one make the decision of which axes of power is to be analysed? Can we discuss gender without discussing sexuality? Can we discuss ‘race’ without discussing ethnicity?
What of the role of education and academic pedagogy? Are current practices reflective of the multi-layered, hybrid, diasporan experience, subjectivities and identities common to many students and staff? What is the role of autoethnographic reflections and/or critiques, in furthering debate around ‘gender’ and ‘race’ in academic discourse and researcher epistemology? Is assemblage theory as espoused by Puar (2012) a useful tool to theorise ‘race’ and ‘gender’ together in a non-analogous, non-hierarchical way?
Despite the methodological challenges and a lack of a singular definition of ‘intersectionality’, in an age of globalisation and geopolitical turbulence, can we afford notto take an intersectional approach to our work within Psychosocial Studies?
Controversial or conservative, we welcome papers that engage with 'race', gender and other identity formations in new, innovative, comparative and/or transnational ways.
3. Creativity, Aesthetics and the Arts
Is art enough? / Art is not enough
The question of what art is has been so oft-repeated as to be banal. And yet, what is art? If perhaps banal, this question is not a trivial one. While the death knell of artistic practice has sounded many times over from all sides of the political spectrum, "art is dead; long live art!", the presumed relationship between politics and aesthetics, from radical to reactionary, has scarcely wavered.
So then, what is art? Art is that which we call art. This tautology is in turns an unsatisfactory answer to a pressing question about the ontology of meaning and the only answer possible. The paradoxes of the aesthetic, its capacity
to mean in the face of meaninglessness and to be meaningless in the face of meaning, have driven theorists from the humanities and the social sciences alike to wonder why it is that we turn to art again and again as a tool for understanding, producing and reproducing ourselves and our relationship to the world.
Does art or has art ever provided a space for originality, creativity, imagination, innovation, the sublime or any of the other notions of authenticity that are so often associated with it? Or is it never anything more than a repetitive gesture given significance through the context of its utterance? Could it be both? If it cannot be meaningful or if it cannot indeed be unto itself, where, when and can art be, meaningful or otherwise? Where do we meet art objects, be they material or immaterial, on the ontological plane?
Is there such a thing as art? Has there ever been? Does it matter?