International Congress of the Portuguese Association of
Germanistic Studies
14 to 16 February 2008
Lisbon, Catholic University of Portugal
Kulturbau
Aufräumen, Ausräumen, Einräumen
Tidy, Untidy, Retidy
"Call for Papers"
What’s happening with Culture(s) today? From ‘Clash of Cultures’
to ‘Multiculturalism’, by way of ‘Interculturality’ and not forgetting the
epistemic cultural animosities that the ‘Wars of the Sciences’ have
revealed, what is happening with Culture(s) today? Amongst many others,
also with the ‘two’ (Snow) or ‘three’ Cultures (Lepenies)?
What has happened to the reflection on the concept of Culture in the arena
of Humanities, in the German arena? Is it on its way to global
standardization? Will the Cultures be an endemic source of potential
conflict, a reason for struggle, or will they provide a direction for the
twenty-first century? Will there be an order, a balance, a logic of
cultures? And which knowledge is associated with it?
The theme of the Congress seeks to explore this complex “contradictory
life” of the Cultures, and proposes that this be done via the three great
metaphors or principles that appear to generically set out the laws of the
cultural spaces: Tidy, Untidy, Retidy.
In fact, the cultural space is structured above all based on the principle
of inclusion, of organization, and of order; (a) culture organizes and
organizes itself, creates hierarchies, and ‘tidies’ and ‘tidies itself’.
In so doing, however, it excludes and in some way excludes itself,
selects, sections, chooses, creates anti-bodies and counter-cultures (!),
it ‘untidies’ and, simultaneously, ‘untidies itself’, thus demonstrating
that the conditions already exist within it for its own
destruction. ‘Retidy’ thus arises as a movement of synthesis which is at
the same time harmonious and disruptive, conflicting and pacifying, the
recognisably difficult moment of reformulation of all questions: What to
integrate? What to exclude? How to do it? How to integrate the new and the
unknown, what to exclude from the known and the traditional?
The Congress is structured around three major thematic areas, with each
subdivided into two sections for which possible topics are presented here:
Tidy}
a) Utility and disadvantage of History (structures of time,
construction of (cultural) identities, historical dimensions of language,
literature and culture; tradition, duration, memory and remembering,
mnemonic techniques)
b) Topographies and scenarios (area-studies, structures of space,
topographical turn, definition and demarcation of cultural spaces, walls,
borders, passages, intermediate spaces, non-places, mapping, topography of
the genders, contact zones)
Untidy}
a) Leitkultur: The power of cultures (politics, education,
civilizations, religion, identity, estrangement, inclusion and exclusion,
discourses of power, imperialism and colonialism)
b) Leidkultur: The culture of pain (violence, illness, trauma,
impotence, madness, catastrophe, sexuality and perversion, crime, terror,
war, ritual and victims, resistance and post-colonialism)
Retidy}
a) Games and media (materiality and presence, game theory, language
theory, signs, media, economics, sound, image, performance, authenticity,
factuality, fiction, e-materiality, archives, senses)
b) Games and people (body-identity-change, virtual communities, human-
machine, cyborg, other worlds, creativity, emotion, imaginary worlds,
gender and sexual difference)
* * *
Proposals for themes and papers (in German, Portuguese or English) can be
sent
by: > 30 October 2007
to: > [log in to unmask]
or: > Prof. Dr. Peter Hanenberg
Faculdade de Ciências Humanas
Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Palma de Cima
P 1649-023 LISBOA
We recommend the sending of proposals and registration for the Congress at
http://www.germanistik-portugal.org
Proposals should be accompanied by an abstract of the paper (1200-1800
characters) and an abbreviated curriculum vitae (maximum: 1800 characters).
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