Subjectivity. International conference in critical psychology, cultural studies and social theory
Mardi, juillet 3rd, 200727-29 JUNE 2008 
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University, UK
This conference explores shifting conceptualisations of subjectivity in
contemporary culture, politics, social science and theory. Although
subjectivity is a key analytic term in fields as diverse as critical
psychology, postcolonial studies, film theory, gender studies, social
theory, geography, anthropology and cultural studies, it is rarely
discussed in its own right. The conference attempts to explore
subjectivity as a locus of social change, to rethink possibilities for
everyday social interventions, to explore how subjectivities are produced and how emerging
subjectivities remake our social worlds. We are interested in proposals
for papers and symposia whose scope falls within or between one of the
following areas:1 EMBODIMENT, AFFECT, MATERIALITY
The emergence of ‘body-theory’ across the humanities has transformed the
terrain in which questions about power, ideology, discourse and
subjectivity can be asked. There is a move to dismantle the idea of
separation between the body and the world and to see bodies as always
gesturing towards practices, energies, things and intensities beyond
themselves. This focus on process, connection, relationality and bodily
affectivity traverses a diverse range of disciplines and is forcing a
reconsideration of our understanding of subjectivity. In this stream we
welcome papers that might deal with areas such as ‘carnal knowing’, the
sentient body, embodiment, critical perspectives on cyberculture and the
machine-human symbiosis, new materialism, affective labour and care,
disability and the critiques of the ‘able body’, somatic feeling and the
non-cognitive, for example.2 NEW POLITICAL SUBJECTIVITIES/NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
A developing body of scholarship examines the production of new
subjectivities and social movements in a moment marked by neoliberalism,
de/re-territorialising capitalism and emerging new sensibilities in
relation to gender, sexuality, transnational mobility and racial and
religious differences. What role are the media and new information and
communication technologies playing in the production of new femininities,
masculinities and sexualities - and resistance to them? What kinds of
social movements are emerging to address global injustice related to the
transformation of labour and the new conditions for the production of
science and technology, biotech and medical rationalities? How adequately
have our theoretical vocabularies engaged with new social, political and
cultural complexities related to processes of racialization and migration?
What new possibilities are there for interdisciplinary work that creates
new spaces and dialogues, activism and interventions?3 REDISTRIBUTING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
For many years, critical psychologists and social theorists have attempted
to move away from an individualist concept of the psychological. Some
psychologists attempted to rework what was understood as on the inside to
the outside through the concepts of discourse, activity and narrative;
sociologists have attempted to understand what constitutes the
psychological through exploring its position within the social and
cultural lifeworld; social theorists have attempted to expand the concept
beyond reductionist notions of the subject. While these attempts are all
important, how successful are they? What is the future of critical studies
of psychology and of the psychological? How can we develop work which goes
beyond the psychological while still being able to accommodate and
understand singularity and experience?
Please send a 200 word proposal to subjectivity@cardiff.ac.uk by 31
January 2008