Call for Papers: Geographies of Carnival and the Carnivalesque
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, April 15-19, 2007,
Boston (MA)

Organizers: Teresa Abbruzzese (York University) and Melinda Alexander
(Arizona State University)

We invite you to participate in creating a carnivalesque space at the
AAG. In the spirit of redeeming 'mere content' and also celebrating
our refined roles as academics, this paper session will attempt to
turn a small room in the AAG world topsy-turvy, and then discuss and
analyze it. We welcome papers and/or performers that deal with
carnival as a metaphor, conceptual tool, as embodied practices, and as
a site of analysis for rituals, spectacles, and transient ways of
being.  The discursive construction of carnival has political,
economic, social, and material implications for transforming space.
The 'carnivalesque' is a concept that embodies both a theory and
ideology of resistance to hegemony, and emphasizes alternate and
inverted conceptualizations of reality.  However, the
anti-authoritarian spirit of carnival can often get co-opted into
mainstream commodified secular and religious festivals. We aim to
explore political and transgressive potentials of carnivals and the
carnivalesque. Moving through and beyond the celebratory connotations
of carnival and the carnivalesque can lead to "an absolutely negative
space beyond the structure of significance itself" (Stallybrass and
White 1986). Through this process of performance and subtraction, we
seek to unmask hidden spaces within the 'magical' world of carnival,
for examining the production of marginality and the perpetuation of
dominant forms of oppression.

Papers and presentations can draw from a range of theoretical
perspectives and fields in human geography.  Potential topics might
include, but are not limited to:

-nomadism and nomadic identity
-circus and/or "carnie" ecology
-the blurring of regulated carnival and unregulated carnival space
-the transformation of everyday space and the mundane
-tensions between traveling life and sedentary life
-the rhythm of circus/fairground life
-tensions between festivals as sites of resistance, ritual and/or
cultural consumption and place production
-representations and boundary destabilizations of the body, gender,
and sexuality
-hierarchies: identity formation, exclusion, and inversion
-the ethics of mockery
-bourgeois hysteria, desire, and disgust

We request the submission of your paper title, PIN, and abstract by
October 25th to Teresa Abbruzzese ([log in to unmask]) and Melinda
Alexander ([log in to unmask]).  We also encourage and welcome creative
and/or performative responses; please send us a written abstract of
what you wish to present and what your performance will entail.