Grad conference at Berkeley.  Apologies for cross-postings.  Terrell

I write on behalf of an interdisciplinary graduate student committee at UC Berkeley.
We will be hosting a conference in May (see CFP pasted below, and attached as PDF
for easy printing and posting), and would very much appreciate your assistance in
disseminating the CFP to your students or others that might be interested. We feel
that this conference presents a unique opportunity to bring together a strong group
of graduate students working in the field of political theory. Moreover, we hope
to provide airfare for participants, as an added incentive to bolster the strength
of the conference. 

We appreciate your assistance,
George Ciccariello Maher

=============================================
Please circulate widely. Apologies for cross-postings.

Call For Papers
A Graduate Student Conference in Political Theory
27-28 May 2005
University of California, Berkeley

Note: to facilitate participation, the conference will provide accommodation for
invited presenters, and will contribute up to $300 towards transportation costs 
for invited applicants, funding permitting.

Thinking the Present: The Beginnings and Ends of Political Theory

Keynote speaker: Bonnie Honig, Professor of Political Science and Director of the
Center for Law, Culture and Social Thought, Northwestern University

Closing remarks will take the form of a roundtable discussion, featuring the keynote
speaker and several distinguished panelists from UC Berkeley.

Our present can be characterized as a time of new and old forms of political and
military domination and dramatic re-organizations of power. We face a widespread
redefinition of rights, liberties, and constitutions, alongside and intertwined 
with patterns of segregation, exclusion, and occupation; a global network of interrogation
and torture camps, a perpetual war, sustained invocations of emergency powers, bulldozed
and bombed homes and cities. But what is the status of this present, this particular
historical era? How does (or should) this present define, condition, or circumscribe
the activity of theorizing? What erasures of the past are performed in theorizing
the present?

In confronting the present, the political theorist also confronts the beginnings
of political theory itself. What are the conditions, grounds, and triggers from 
which theorizing proceeds? What histories and genealogies impel and inform political
theory, and how does the location of this beginning limit the horizons of political
theory, either in its specific iterations or in its status as a historical discourse
and as a vocation?

What is the relationship between political theory's beginnings and its ends? Is 
theory instrumental, pursuing specific ends? If so, how should we articulate these
ends? Can political theory one day achieve its ends, thereby exhausting itself? 
Or, conversely, can theory irrevocably fail to achieve its ends, proving itself 
inadequate to the demands of the present? Can we perhaps theorize without end(s)?
What would a non-instrumental, unending political theory look like, especially in
relation to the present? Is there a moment in politics when theory becomes improper?

In asking these questions, we mean to direct attention to the role of the present
in the practice of political theory. How do ideas about the present as a teleological
end, or an interruption of history, or a return of history partially constitute 
the very act of theorizing about politics? 

Potential topics might include:

* Representations of Newness and Nowness
* Thinking the Event: Theorizing Continuity and Discontinuity 
* Historical Iterations and the Politics of Déjà Vu
* Nationalism, Natality, and Narration
* Constitutional Fictions
* The Function of Crisis in Theory and Theorizing
* The Violence of Beginnings: Genocides, Colonization, Insurrections
* The Violence of Ends: Foreclosures, Horizons, Solutions
* Theorizing Body Counts and (Neo-)colonial Warfare 
* Contemporary Despotism: the Politics of Emergency Powers
* Situating, Contextualizing, and Provincializing Political Theory

The Conference invites paper submissions from all graduate students working on topics
in political theory. Please send proposed paper abstracts of 750 words to [log in to unmask]
by 31 January 2005.

Proposals should include: 
* a proposal title and summary 
* name, departmental affiliation, address, telephone number and e-mail address of
the applicant 

For further enquiries, please contact [log in to unmask] 

Organizing Committee:
George Ciccariello Maher, Political Science
Tucker Culbertson, Jurisprudence and Social Policy/Boalt Hall
Jack Jackson, Political Science
Sharon Stanley, Political Science
Yves Winter, Rhetoric

=============================================
George J. Ciccariello Maher IV
Department of Political Science
210 Barrows Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1950