CFP:
Ontological Anarché: Beyond Materialism and Idealism
A
Special Issue of Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies
Edited
by Jason Adams and Duane Rousselle
www.anarchist-developments.org
Radical
theory has always been beset by the question of ontology,
albeit
to varying degrees and under differing conditions. In recent
years,
in particular, political metaphysics has returned with force:
the
rise of Deleuze-influenced “new materalism”, along with post-/non-
Deleuzean
speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, all bear
testament
to this. In this same period, anarchism has returned as a
major
influence on social movements and critical scholarship alike.
What
then, are some of the potential resonances between these
currents,
particularly given that anarchism has so often been
understood/misunderstood
as a fundamentally idealist philosophy?
Is it
the case, as Marx famously held in The German Ideology and The
Poverty
of Philosophy, that anarchism fails to account for the full
complexity
of the ontological? Is there a lack of concern for
instance,
with the actual circumstances that would make social
transformation
possible? Is anarchism a theory for which materiality
is
“distorted in the imagination of the egoist”, inevitably producing
a
subject “for whom everything occurs in the imagination?” Should
“Sancho”
(Max Stirner), for instance, have “descended from the realm
of
speculation into the realm of reality”?
Or is
the opposition of materialism and idealism itself a barrier to a
higher,
more powerful convergence, as recent anarchist/anarchistic
thinkers
from Hakim Bey to Reiner Schürmann have argued? This special
issue
of Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies considers these
questions
in dialogue with new materialism, speculative realism and
object-oriented
ontology, in order to seek new points of departure. We
are
interested in papers that open up a space for these and other
questions
to be pursued.
Papers
need not be tied to any particular tradition of thought (i.e.,
post-anarchism,
speculative realism, or the anarchist tradition). We
welcome
creative, speculative, provocative, and risky para-academic
research.
If your current research relates to these topics, we
encourage
you to submit a proposal or a paper. We also welcome multi-
media
contributions.
Articles
may be of varying length, submitted to Jason Adams:
[log in to unmask], cc to [log in to unmask]
The
deadline for final submission is October 1st, 2012.
Anarchist
Developments in Cultural Studies is an open-access journal.
Paperback
copies of Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies are
available
from Little Black Cart (www.littleblackcart.com) and Punctum
Books (www.punctumbooks.com).
Please
Forward Widely!