4th International Symposium: Otherness, Agency and Belonging

Part of the Research Program on:
Recognition, Agency and the Politics of Otherness

International Network for Alternative Academia
(Extends a general invitation to participate)

Tuesday 6th to Thursday 8th of November, 2012
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Call for Papers

This trans-disciplinary research project
explores the unfolding dynamic of the
relationship between self and other as it is
enacted in our experiences of being strangers,
aliens and foreigners. Examining the history of
this relationship, reflecting upon its
ideological and psychological foundations, and
bearing witness to its manifestation in the
lived experiences of migrants, refugees and the
displaced, this symposium offers the opportunity
to consider at the level of both theory and
practice, new means for establishing a sense of
belonging and new methods for engaging the
other.

We invite colleagues from all disciplines and
professions interested in exploring and
explaining these issues in a collective,
deliberative and dialogical environment to send
presentation proposals that address these
general questions or the following themes:

1. Practice, Logic and Dialogue

Being and Belonging:
- How is belonging conceptualized? How is it lived?
- What are the psychological and the ideological
foundations for the need to belong?
- How do ideals of belonging shape and inform
the practice of recognition?
- How is the need to belong politicized?
- In what ways are notions of belonging being
reconfigured in response to the rise of new
technologies and new media? In what ways is the
need to belong shaping these developments?

Language Lessons:
- Can we speak of the self without the other?
Can there be a language of 'we-ness'? What terms
would it employ? How would the grammar for such
a language be constructed?
- What metaphors can be employed in the
construction of alternatives to binary
representations of self and other?
- How are new languages (new terminologies and
new structures) being lived? That is, how are
they already shaping experience through and in
the development of idioms and rhetoric, signs
and symbols?
- What alternatives might dialogical acts of
speaking provide for addressing the other and
the self? How might referential acts be used as
a model for rethinking self-other relations?
- What role might embodiment and location play
in rethinking difference?

2. Shifting Planes and Contexts

Monetary Values:
- What is the role of labour migration for
economic growth and prosperity? How are the
contributions of labour migration being
recognized? How are they being measured?
- How is migrant labour commodified? What are
the effects of this commodification?
- What is the political value of migrants and
foreigners, strangers and aliens, refugees and
the displaced? How are they made 'invisible'
within nations and states? At what moments are
they made visible? How is this dialectic of
visibility played out, experienced and conceived?
- What new models of economic/political
inclusion/exclusion are we witnessing?

Environment and the Link to Nature:
- How are self and other interweaved with
nature? What norms, orientations and models
prevail? Are there alternatives that are being
collectively enacted? How might these bonds be
reconceptualised?
- What indigenous worldviews might foster the
construction of new models of diversity and
plurality?
- How is the new class of environmental migrants
being constructed and conceived?

A Whole New World:
- Who are the new migrants? How are new
migratory flows and massive movements mapping
out, both literally and figuratively?
- How are trans-national and post-national
ideologies reconfiguring our conceptions of the
other?
- Who is our neighbour? Do we owe our neighbour
hospitality and respect? Why?
- How is responsibility to be attributed in a
world that is on the move?

3. Enquiry and Legitimacy

Representations:
- How are representations of difference created
and disseminated through the arts and media?
- By what means and through what measures do art
and media instil and embed images of otherness?
How might these avenues of production be used to
transform and deconstruct such representations?
- How are new technologies and new media framing
our ideas of otherness?
- What are the stories of strangers, the
allegories of aliens, the fictions of foreigners
and the discourses of the displaced being told?
How are such narratives constructed? With what
affect?

Acts of Legitimation: On Law:
- How do nation states exclude juridically? How
do laws protect and/or exclude the other?
- How do citizens and non-citizens relate within
juridical practices and discourse?
- What place do human rights occupy in
facilitating inclusionary and/or exclusionary
practices?
- How are trans-national and post-national
ideologies configuring conceptions of self and
other?

4. Challenging Ideals

Productive Possibilities:
- How do our encounters with strangers, aliens
and foreigners enrich our lives?
- What are the productive advantages of being
deemed 'the other'?
- What of our experiences of 'othering'
ourselves? When and why do we choose to be
foreigners? How do these experiences differ from
those in which we are ascribed this condition
and status?

The Spaces In-Between: Beyond Self and Other:
- In what ways are self and other
interdependent? What is the history of this
interlacing?
- How are the layerings and overlappings of our
identifications as self and other, self or other
lived?
- What new models of/for exchange and engagement
are developing in theory and in practice?
- How might new models of cultural contact based
on ideals of fusion, entanglement, doubleness,
syncretism, amalgamation, creolization,
interlacing, hybridization and interdependence,
destabilize the logic of a binary system of self
and other? How might they re-enforce this logic?

If you are interested in participating in this
Annual Symposium, submit a 400 to 500 word
abstract by Friday 8th of June, 2012.  Please
use the following template for your submission:

First: Author(s);
Second: Affiliation, if any;
Third: Email Address;
Fourth: Title of Abstract and Proposal;
Fifth: The 400 to 500 Word Abstract.

To facilitate the processing of abstracts, we
ask that you use Word, WordPerfect or RTF
formats only and that you use plain text,
resisting the temptation of using special
formatting, such as bold, italics or underline.

Please send emails with your proposals to the Annual Symposium Coordination
address ([email protected]) with the following subject line:
Otherness, Agency and Belonging Abstract Proposal.

For every abstract proposal sent, we acknowledge
receipt. If you do not receive a reply from us
within one week you should assume we did not
receive it. Please resend from your account and
from an alternative one, to make sure your
proposal does get to us.

All presentation and paper proposals that
address these questions and issues will be fully
considered and evaluated. Accepted abstracts
will require a full draft paper by Friday 31st
of August, 2012. Papers presented at the
symposium are eligible for publication as part
of a digital or paperback book.

We invite colleagues and people interested in
participating to disseminate this call for
papers. Thank you for sharing and cross-listing
where and whenever appropriate.

Hope to meet you in Montreal!

Symposium Coordinators:

Wendy O'Brien
Professor of Social and Political Theory
School of Liberal Studies
Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email: [email protected]

Oana Stugaru
Faculty of Letters and Communication Sciences
Stefan cel Mare University
Suceava, Romania
Email: [email protected]

Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
General Coordinator
International Network for Alternative Academia
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Email: [email protected]

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Informational Note:

Alternative Academia is an international network
of intellectuals, academics, independent
scholars and practitioners committed to creating
spaces, both within and beyond traditional
academe, for creative, trans-disciplinary and
critical thinking on key themes. We offer annual
and biannual symposiums at sites around the
world, providing forums that foster the
development of new frames of reference and
innovative structures for the production and
expansion of knowledge and theory. Dialogue,
discussion and deliberation define both the
methods employed and the values upheld by this
network.

Visit our website at: www.alternative-academia.net