[Nettime-nl] Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Potentialities

[begum ozden firat <bfirat@uva.nl>]

Call for Contributions: Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices,  
Dilemmas and Potentialities

            Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex, Race invites articles  
for an upcoming volume in its series, titled Theorizing Cultural  
Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Potentialities, which will focus  
on  contemporary cultural activism that deals with issues of gender,  
race, queer, inter-cultural dialogue, political agency and societal  
transformation within the broader framework of contemporary anti- 
capitalist, anti-consumerist and alternative-globalization struggles  
with their particular forms, existing practices, and their further  
implications and potentialities.

The Yes Men, the Guerilla Girls, Adbusters, Reclaim the Streets,  
Critical Art Ensemble, Genderpranks, the Rebel Clown Army, Reverend  
Billy, Bansky, the Space Hijackers, Yomango, ®TMark, Biotic Baking  
Brigade and Billboard Liberation Front are now as famous and  
inspiring as T. W. Adorno, Guy Debord, or Jean Baudrillard.  The  
actions and campaigns of such groups have brought about alternative  
modes in which political activism can be innovative and destructive.  
Simultaneously they proved to be inspiring forms of political art  
that moves beyond its institutional boundaries as well as beyond the  
dichotomy between autonomous and committed art. These contemporary  
practices, all of which are directed towards disturbing and  
reorienting the cultural and political sphere by attacking the  
narratives of truth in the society in one way or another can be  
summed up under the notion of a cultural activism that involves  
different tactics, such as culture jamming, sousveillance, media  
hoaxing, adbusting, subvertising, flash mobs, street art, hacktivism,  
billboard liberation, and urban guerilla, to name but a few. While  
theoretical and historical roots of these cultural practices can be  
found in the avant-garde art movements of the past —from Dada and  
Surrealism to Situationist International— the socio-cultural contexts  
in which these actions take place differ greatly from that of the  
historical avant-guards and hence deserve to be theorized in their  
contemporary specificity.

            Therefore, we invite scholars and activists to think  
together to provide various responses and establish a productive  
dialogue between the theorizations of the intricacies of our times  
and activist/subversive practices that deal with them. The encounter  
between the insights of political, social and critical theory and  
activist visions, suggestions and actions is both urgent and  
appealing.  We aim to explore this confrontational collaboration, its  
limits and productiveness, both in theory and in practice.

            An important concern is to contextualize practices both  
in their specificity and in a broader framework, by considering their  
predecessors, their temporal and theoretical neighbors, and allied or  
hostile relatives. By doing so, the various manifestations of  
activist practices in different localities and their transnational  
qualities can be elucidated.

            Activist practices are situated at the juncture of  
power, desire, identity, political practice, political agency and the  
dialectic of subversion and recuperation. Contributions should try to  
engage with these coordinates so as to generate various suggestions  
about the present and future, subjects and politics, as well as the  
formation and reformation of images, spaces, meanings and everyday  
life. Contributions are expected to be concerned with rethinking and  
exploring theoretical concepts and tools through practice, and  
comprehend and develop political practice by the help of theories,  
both for a better understanding of theory and practice, and more  
importantly, for new practical transformatory critical suggestions  
for our times.

Please send an abstract of your contribution (300 words maximum) and  
a short biographical note by October 15, 2007 to Aylin Kuryel -  
aylinkuryel@gmail.com and Begüm Özden Fırat - B.O.Firat@uva.nl. The  
deadline for the final articles is February 1, 2008.


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