Call for papers
Session title: “Imagine this! The familiar and the strange in archaeological mediation”
TAG Southampton Dec. 19-21, 2016
Deadline: November 15, 2016
Dear list members,
--Apologies for cross-posting--
Together with Stein Farstadvoll I am organizing the session IMAGINE THIS! THE FAMILIAR AND THE STRANGE IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MEDIATION at the upcoming TAG conference in Southampton, December 19th - 21st. See the full session abstract below.
We welcome all papers that in various ways explore the tensions between the familiar and the strange in archaeological mediation and reasoning.
The deadline for paper proposals is November 15. Please send your proposal (ca. 250 words + name, email and affiliation) directly to the session organizers (see details below).
We hope this may be of interest to some of you!
Best wishes,
IMAGINE THIS! THE FAMILIAR AND THE STRANGE IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MEDIATION
“In the end I want material culture to retain its sense of mystery, or even the uncanny, because this is the quality which is stimulating to the imagination” (P. Graves-Brown 2011)
The otherness of things, the uncanny, the unfamiliar. Infused by the ‘turn to things’ these are phrases often heard in discourses of contemporary archaeology, and even something we associate with its very analytical mode; i.e. making the familiar unfamiliar (cf. Buchli and Lucas 2001). Taken literally, this understanding can be seen as breeding a distance between past and present, between researchers and objects studied, and thus undermine aspirations for a past (or present) more common, accessible and knowable (cf. Harrison 2011). In this session, however, we wish to challenge these notions, which also may be seen as upholding traditional hierarchies of ontological distinctions between the known and unknown, the ordinary and strange. Rather than seeing the otherness of the contemporary past as a produce of archaeological/scientific estrangement, i.e. as something created through our archaeologization, we want to explore ways in which an archaeological imagination may deal with and capture a material world that is already, to a considerable extent, unfamiliar and strange. Following this we ask, to what extent does a conventional scientific aspiration for clarity – for bringing things closer and making them knowable – comply with a new, object-oriented ontology grounded in things’ autonomy and withdrawal? Or, put differently, what does knowing things (or making them accessible) really imply? Does it necessarily involve making sense of them, in the conventional interpretive manner, or does an ontological turn challenge the parameters of archaeological knowledge production and mediation? Ensuing P. Graves-Brown’s vision quoted above, we ask, by what means can archaeology grasp and mediate the uncanny and mysterious? Why is it important? And how can this result in a different archaeological knowledge, imagination or vision?
Drawing on perspectives on materiality and the ‘ontological turn’ we are interested in exploring these questions, and welcome papers addressing different aspects of the uncanny in archaeology, theoretically and/or through case studies. Themes of inquiry may concern e.g.:
- The relations/tensions between the familiar and unfamiliar in archaeological reasoning.
- The uncanny/unknown as the drive and goal of archaeological enquiry/mediation.
- Means and methods of grasping and mediating the archaeological uncanny.
- The tension between aspirations for clarity and the ‘messy’ nature of archaeological material/research.
- The role of the familiar/unfamiliar in the intersection between art and archaeology.
- Heritage and the uncanny; the place of the strange in experiencing the past.
- The confines of archaeological knowledge production.
Buchli, V. & G. Lucas 2001: The absent present: archaeologies of the contemporary past. In:Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, Victor Buchli & Gavin Lucas (eds.). Routledge, London. pp. 3-18
Graves-Brown, P. 2011: Touching from a Distance: Alienation, Abjection, Estrangement and Archaeology. In: Norwegian Archaeological Review, vol. 44, no. 2. pp. 131-144
Harrison, R. 2011: Surface assemblages. Towards an archaeology in and of the present. In: Archaeological Dialogues, vol. 18, no. 2. pp. 141-161
