The Politics of Life and Death – A Second Call for Papers, AAG 2006 Chicago
Organisers: Louisa Cadman (University of Sheffield) and Camila Bassi
(Sheffield Hallam University)
For Michel Foucault, working as a journalist in Iran during 1978,
the “political spirituality” of the popular uprisings, in which
secularists, nationalists, socialists and feminists allied with Islamists
to overthrow the Shah, exemplified a revolutionary event that in some
respects was ‘beyond politics’. The outcome of the 1979 Iranian revolution -
the domination of the fiercely oppressive Khomeini regime and the high
price paid by many earlier revolutionary ‘allies’ with their lives - led
both to Foucault’s writings on Iran coming under attack from notable
figures on the French intellectual left and, arguably, to a retreat by
Foucault from his initial analyses.
This episode deposits a number of concerns for critical scholars centring
on Foucault’s fascination with martyrdom, religion and our relation towards
death, and also raises questions to how (leftist) academics respond to/in
our current political climate. Moreover, the envisioning of alternative
anti-imperialist modes of being poses important issues in terms of gender
and sexuality.
Contributions to this session are welcome on a broad range of themes, these
might include:
The positioning of gender and sexuality in anti-imperialist struggles
Life, death and the (bio)political
Religion, enchantment and politics
The relationship between the intellectual and the political
The role of political spirituality in counter-hegemonic contestations
The problematic interface between Islamist groups and leftist ‘popular
front’ campaigning
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words in length and can be emailed to
[log in to unmask] and/or [log in to unmask] prior to the session
deadline of 30th September 2005.
|