[URBANTH-L]CFP: Terror: The Human Condition Series (Ontario, Canada)

[Angela Jancius]

Call for Papers: TERROR: The Human Condition Series
Ontario, Canada

Call for Papers Deadline: February 15, 2008-02

This conference is part of a larger series of ongoing, international, 
multidisciplinary conferences--run under the banner of The Human Condition 
Series--that brings together people from a variety of disciplines to assess 
a singular topic from artistic, cinematic, literary, ethical, social, 
political, philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. We 
encourage you to share innovative ideas and new ways of thinking and acting. 
Proposals will be considered on any related theme and we especially welcome 
papers, reports, works-in-progress, workshops and sessions. This year's 
theme is Terror.

The concept of Terror is often found safely hidden and un-thought in diverse 
cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions and ways of life. One can 
see these safe havens extending from the divine mythologies of religious 
experience to the seemingly opposed rationalized life of contemporary 
high-tech societies. With respect to religious experience, it is clear that 
we have to seriously reconsider the dynamics of organized religion in the 
face of rising religious fundamentalisms and terrorist activity.

But terror in the highly rationalized world of technological societies can 
also impose its existing logic as a way of maintaining the order of things. 
We give it various positive names that conceal its potency and negative 
effects. At precise moments in history, terror's potency has appeared in 
benign terms such as "child welfare," "residential schools," the "founding 
nation," the "developed world," the "hysterical woman," the "mentally ill," 
the "social and sexual deviant," the "immigrant problem," the "disposable 
income," and the "democratic liberation of other peoples."

It is the absurd rationalizations of these terms in the face of concrete 
realities that covers over terror's effects and keeps it intact. This 
conference will investigate what role Terror has in maintaining the 
contemporary condition of humanity--and what hope there is of envisioning a 
condition in which Terror is natural and organic rather than strategic and 
imposed.

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Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS 
Word Format) to TerrorProposal at ideologiesofwar.com
The Organizing Committee also welcomes pre-formed panel proposals.
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008.

For more details about the conference go to:
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/ or
http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/

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This is an important, exciting conference and we hope you will participate 
by sending us your abstract.

It is one of the most significant meetings of the year on the sources and 
meanings of political and cultural violence.

We welcome proposals from people in the fields of psychology, anthropology, 
sociology, history, religious studies, cultural studies, social theory, 
psychoanalysis and political psychology.

We look forward to receiving your proposal.

Best regards,
Orion Anderson

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Possible topics include but are not limited to:

The Laws of State-Terror

* Non-sovereign Peoples Subjected to the Authority of the Privileged
* Structures that Organize, Control, Punish, and Reward Subjects
* Denial to Total Self-Governance
Communications of Terror
* Propaganda, Public Relations and other Communication Management in the 
Opinion Industry.
* Overt and Covert Representations of Terror
* The Centrality of Spin and Lobbying in Communicating Terror
* The Role of the PR Industry in Creating Terror
* Think Tanks and Policy Communications
* Global Media Management and Terror

The Manufacture and Management of Terror

* The Marketing of Terror
* Falsified News Coverage and the Intelligence Industry
* Techniques of Generating and Maintaining Terror through the Medical 
Industry's Management of 'Outbreaks'
* The Relationship of Terror to the Modern Malaise: Anxiety, Disorders, 
Disease
* Terror as Pleasure

Designating Terror

* The Construction of the Transnational Terrorist
* Deconstructing and Reconstructing

Designations: "Terrorism", "Freedom Fighter", "Peacekeeper", "Organized 
Crime", "Legality", and "Human Security"

* Delegitimation of Claims of Origin in Land-Ownership

Terror and the Transformation of States and Nations

* Legitimacy of Landownership.
* Public and Private Responses to Political Violence
* Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and Conflicting Agendas in Counter-Terrorism 
and Counter-Crime Policies
* Forces in Society which Resist Terror via Fighting, Politics, Activism or 
Critical Journalism.

Spaces of Terror

* The International Political Economy of Corporate Power as Terror
* Hospitals, Clinics and the Medical Industry as Terror
* Education and Terror

Gender, Sexuality and Terror

* Otherness as Terror
* Patriarchy and the Violence of Gender Performance
* Gendering Terrorism

Recreational Terror

* Terror Pornography
* Horror Genres
* The Commodification of Fear
* Ritualistic Terror

Terror as Text

* Artistic Expressions of Terror
* Imagining Terror
* Literature and Terror
* Discourses and Counter-Discourses of Terror
* Historic Perspectives on Terror
* Linguistic Evolutions of Terror

The Doxas of Terror

* The Terror of Morality
* Market Terror
* Techno-Scientific Terror
* The Terror of Fundamentalisms
* Military Logic as Terror
* The Culture Industry as Terror
* The Terror of Reason
* The Metaphysics of Terror
* Racial Knowledge as Terror
* Faith and Terror

Orion Anderson
(718) 393-1104
Email: terrorproposal at ideologiesofwar.com
Visit the website at http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/