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UPDATE: Call for Papers
The Avant-Garde as Critical Practice
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
Extended Deadline: 15 December 2008 (full submissions only)
In this special issue, we are looking for contributions that acknowledge
the legacies of various avant-garde movements as they have affected the
genre known, for better or worse, as "criticism." From Walter Benjamin's
use of montage effects in The Arcades Project, to Roland Barthes'
radical experiments with form in his post-semiotic work, to Jacques
Derrida's exploration of a "science of chance" in his use of the
signature in works like Glas and Signsponge, there has been an ongoing,
if intermittent, tradition of exploring the idea that the historical
avant-garde's interest in art as a form of knowledge and research, its
dedication to using methods whose outcomes are unpredictable in advance
(Surrealist games, Oulipian constraints), its openness to the utopian
potentials of new communications technologies (particularly photography
and cinema), all have the potential to not only become an object of
criticism, but to challenge the very division between artistic
production and critical discourse. Likewise, artists have responded to
the demands of criticism in their own right by transforming them into
manifestos and artist's statements which challenge genre on a textual
level, by creating hybrid forms such as the essay film, and by making
use of both language and image in the forms of video art, installations,
and a proliferation of cyber-art genres.
This special issue of Reconstruction seeks to engage this tradition and
its proliferations both geographical (where else has the avant-garde
destabilized the binary between art and criticism) and conceptual (the
combinations of "theory" and art in Language poetry, feminist
explorations of autobiographical inquiry as a research strategy, to name
just two prominent examples) on the level of practice. While there has
been much discussion of how various philosophers and cultural critics
have broken the frames of their respective disciplines, academia has
been relatively slow to take their experiments seriously enough to allow
a proliferation of such research practices and potential variants. With
a few notable exceptions, the Enlightenment binary between "knowledge"
and "art" has held fast.
We therefore invite submissions that engage the legacies of the
"critical avant-garde" on the level of practice, that are willing to
take chances with genre. Submissions that combine text and image in new
ways are especially welcome from both "artists" and "critics," as are
contributions that take seriously the possibilities that come with
combining poetic, expository, and narrative modes of discourse. We are
looking for art that is critical, criticism that is revelatory, caprice
that is methodical and method that is "more or less capricious." Since
this special issue seeks to encourage the critical avant-garde on the
level of performance, there are no constraints as to subject matter. The
"objects" of criticism may come from any discipline or, as Gregory Ulmer
has encouraged, the "object" of criticism itself may be put into question.
Please send completed essays, multimedial performances, etc. to Alan
Clinton (alanclinton_at_earthlink.net) and John Sundholm
(john.sundholm_at_kau.se) by December 15, 2008. Publication is expected
in the second quarter of 2009.
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
<http://reconstruction.eserver.org> (ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative
online cultural studies journal dedicated to fostering an intellectual
community composed of scholars and their audience, granting them all the
ability to share thoughts and opinions on the most important and
influential work in contemporary interdisciplinary studies.
Reconstruction publishes one open issue and three themed issues
quarterly. Reconstruction is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.
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