Some geographer friends passed this along to me. Thought it might interest 
those of you with greater critical-philosophical rigour than I. Certainly 
looks like the kind of thing to which archaeologists could/should 
contribute.

Best
Angela

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	CFP AAG 2010: Geography and the 'Speculative Turn'
Date: 	Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:54:58 -0600
From: 	Keith Woodward <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: 	Keith Woodward <[log in to unmask]>
To: 	[log in to unmask]



Call For Papers, AAG Meeting, April 14-18, 2010, Washington, DC

Geography and the 'Speculative Turn'

Organizers: Keith Woodward (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Arun
Saldanha (University of Minnesota)

Today’s emerging ‘Speculative Turn’ in post-continental thought appears
to be the first instance of a ‘viral’ philosophical movement. Thanks
largely to the efforts of an intimate network of bloggers, conference
organizers, and small-time publishers, it has been subject to
rapidly-growing interest in just a few short years. A driving force
behind this progression has been the series of recent publications by
four philosophers - Ray Brassier, Graham Harman, Ian Hamilton Grant, and
Quentin Meillassioux. Part outgrowth of the recent boom in translations
of works by Alain Badiou and other contemporary French thinkers, part
reaction against post-structuralism’s overarching concerns with the
construction of meaning, their projects, while often dissonant, share a
strong interest in exhuming several fundamental questions in speculative
philosophy. Often blurring the distinctions between analytic and
continental theoretical traditions, their initial forays have merged
these concerns with realist, materialist and - importantly -
post-Deleuzian perspectives. In an era marked by the production of
positive ontology, their distinct and fairly idiosyncratic ontological
accounts of reality and philosophy’s relation to it describe strange
systems of ‘weird realism’ and ‘speculative materialism.’ Accordingly,
they offer a number of startling and innovative engagements with, for
example, the vicariousness of causation, the de-linking thought from the
organism, the pervasiveness of Kantianism today, and the status in life
of the inorganic.

In calling for papers dealing with the varied contributions of this
burgeoning movement, we are not interested in repeating the flawed
inquiry that asks how we might ‘apply’ this work to geography. Instead,
we ask, what might a speculative turn mean for human geography in the
wake of its incorporation of post-structuralism, post-humanism, and
other recent trends in continental philosophy?

We ask this in light of two considerations. 1) Though it has long held a
central place in human geographic traditions, the practice of ‘applying’
philosophy to social-scientific inquiry has often met with varied
success. Accordingly, today the relations and non-relations between
scientific and philosophic ontology remain open question that we should
re-engage.  2) Geography’s historic relations to speculative philosophy
and speculative science have often been complicated and contentious - so
much so that the notion of an ‘armchair geographer’ remains a
disciplinary insult. But on what presuppositions regarding our
relationship with phenomena does such an insult depend? In an era
overshadowed by the dynamic uncertainties of theoretical physics and
other sciences, what presumptuous limits do we set for geographic
thought when we preemptively strike-out speculative strategies?

With these provocations in mind, we invite abstracts that consider the
relevance of the current speculative turn - and speculative philosophy
more broadly - for the theorization and practice of geography.  Some
possible areas might include, but are not limited to:

- The viability of research beyond perception/empiricism
- Neuroscience and the philosophy of mind in geography
- The lingering influence of Kantianism upon geographic thought
- Thinking after Deleuze
- The (ontological) status of the infinite in geography
- Correlationism and the geographic tradition
- Nature as the unknowable but thinkable
- The place of earth in Western philosophy and cosmology
- The political avenues opened by speculative re-engagement ‘after the
posts’
- The critique of vitalism
- Geography outside of phenomenology
- Astronomy, geology, paleontology and the question of “deep time”
- The metaphysics of the nonhuman
- Materialist critiques of Badiou
- Mathematics and ontology
- Revaluating logical positivism
- The 'materialization' of German Idealism
- The relationship of geographical exploration to philosophy
- Whither Hegel?
- Speculative thought and the philosophy of science
- Can natural laws exist?
- The contingency of God

Please send abstracts and expressions of interest to BOTH Keith Woodward
([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Arun Saldanha
([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) by October 5th.



Keith Woodward

Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin - Madison
455 Science Hall, 550 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706



-- 
Sam Kinsley
School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol

0117 331 7316
http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/personal/SamKinsley/
http://www.samkinsley.com/


---------- End Forwarded Message ----------



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A A Piccini
Lecturer in Screen Studies
Drama: Theatre, Film, Television
School of Arts
University of Bristol
Cantocks Close, Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1UP
T: 0117 331-5087
E: [log in to unmask]
Skype: aapiccini
W: www.bris.ac.uk/drama/staff_research/angela_piccini/

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