Apologies for crossposting.

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

(Issued first in  December 2008)

WHAT IS THE COMMON?

An International Conference

10-11 October 2009

University of Gothenburg

in cooperation with Collegium, University of Gothenburg & Kurrents Association

Sweden

Submission  deadline: September 5

Contact: [log in to unmask]

Full details> http://www.kurrents.org/conf

Keynotes (The list of keynotes will be extended)

Jacques Rancière

David Harvey

In the shadow of the global crisis of capitalism, the common, somehow obliterated in the recent past, has emerged as an indispensable and central notion. The conference addresses this notion both as a real movement and as an already present horizon, a dynamic principle, for societal life. The common is a critical topic today, not only because the public, administrated by the state, is reduced to expendable assets for regulating a supposedly self-regulating machine called Market, but more importantly because the emerging forms of the common impose themselves with an unprecedented acuity and in opposition to the doxa of the private property. 

The common refers not only to primary resources, such as water or ecological conditions on a planetary level, but it is at the same time a political force that traverses diverse fields of tension such as art and culture, law and gender relations. The question "What is the Common?" is addressed as a real agenda that conditions the thought. The Marxian notion of Kommunistische Gesellschaft  is a central point of reference for the conference.

The conference is a program that extends over 4 years. Each year will treat two themes. The conference 2009 will welcome papers related to the following two axes:

1. The Common and the Economy

Which are the specific emerging forms of the common today and what defines its relation to the material conditions of production of values in contemporary capitalism? Under this axis, both theoretical discussions and case-specific investigations in areas such as autonomous popular organisations, regional movements or global changes in one specific economic sector are welcome. 

2. The Philosophical Understanding of what the Common Is

The common has since Plato's Republic been a central question for the philosophical thinking. What is the relation or non-relation between the common and the totality of social relations? In which form and based upon what ontological or existential categories does it emerge? What is the difference between the common as the name of a real movement and the nostalgies of the return to a simple life? 

Submission Guidelines

We are welcoming papers from all disciplines regardless academic affiliation or other background. All Interested researchers are required to submit an abstract of no more than 500 words, not later than September 5. For full details, please see the homepage for the conference http://www.kurrents.org/conf  .