[URBANTH-L]
CFP AAA 2008 The panel AESTHETIC REGIMES AND THE POLITICS OF THE
SENSORY
egrama at umich.edu
egrama at umich.edu
Sun Mar 23 21:00:10 EDT 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS for AAA 2008
The proposed panel
AESTHETIC REGIMES AND THE POLITICS OF THE SENSORY
This panel will focus on the political dimensions of creating and
legitimizing aesthetical gazes and forms. Such a framework makes
possible the excavation of political ideologies that legitimize
concepts ranging from heritage and the craft of a cityscape, to global
missionary movements working to move medical supplies to areas of need,
to war zones like Iraq that struggle to define a singular state. Our
panel strives to make these ideological tensions explicit by engaging
them through the visually powerful metaphors that are planned to
encapsulate and move these discourses through regimes of beauty and
elegance. We examine the nodes in which political values coalesce to
solidify particular doctrines of governance, at both state and
international registers. These prime loci are in essence what have
been called dense transfer points of power, places that are
themselves highly fraught as different communities battle for the right
to self-determination.
Collectively, we examine in a variety of social and historical settings
the ways that aesthetic experiences, historical formations in
themselves, contribute to forms of historical consciousness. The panel
builds upon scholarly approaches that call for a finer examination of
the sense politics of the everyday in social analysis. Walter
Benjamins distinction between the contemplation and distraction
cultivated by technologies of modern life reveals an ideology of
sensory relations within each aesthetic experience. Sensory perception
is embedded in historical ways of relating to the world, as well as
imagining the social person. Michael Taussig has warned that approaches
to studying peoples daily life might presuppose an astutely perceptive
individual rather than examine the perhaps less contemplative sociality
of sensing. In this panel, we strive to investigate how ideologies of
sensory relations in daily life shape representational forms that are
moral, temporal, and political. How do aesthetic regimes, or
ideologies of sensory relations, mediate particular representational
forms? In what ways do these sensory relations become known?
Building upon Rancière who argued for a consideration of aesthetic acts
as experiential modalities so commonplace as to be a priori sensical,
we not only consider how imaginaries of beauty are conceived to mirror
political realities (and vice versa) but also how art and
architectural forms are themselves ideological strategies that anchor
claims in political struggles.
We welcome submissions that seek to answer in various ways some of the
following questions:
What is it about the pursuit of an aesthetic regime that is so
compelling in the struggle of competing political values?
If distributions of aesthetic sensibilities are not only insidious
markers of agency, what productive value do they contribute to
struggles for statehood, citizenship, and the colonial legacy?
What types of aesthetic forms and practices become privileged over
others and what criteria are called upon in such acts of legitimization?
In what ways do such institutional practices rely upon ideologies of
aesthetic representation in order to implement novel forms of
historical consciousness, through attempts to redefine distance (as a
process of constructing both an aesthetic gaze and a relationship with
history)?
We are looking for the fourth presenter to complete our panel. Please
send a 250 word abstract, a short bio, and email address to Emanuela
Grama, egrama at umich.edu, by Thursday, March 27. The deadline for
abstract submission to AAA is April 1st, and according to the AAA, each
person must submit their own abstract via the online submission process.
Thank you!
Panel co-organizers:
Emanuela Grama, PhD Candidate, the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and
History, University of Michigan
Bridget Guarasci, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of Michigan
Britt Halvorson, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of Michigan
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