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Return to the Street
27-28 June 2012
Goldsmiths, University of London
A two day conference exploring the shifting role of the street as
discourse and real physical space in the context of contemporary culture
and politics.
Identity formation and public debate do not simply occur online or through
new media technologies. As the recent excessive imprisonment of those
involved in the UK riots this summer demonstrated, the control and
regulation of real bodies within real spaces is still very much at stake.
Within the context of riots, protests and occupations in the UK and
worldwide - the street appears to have become once more the space where
people gather to be heard and counted. Considering this ‘return’ (although
it is questionable whether we every really left the street) how might a
line be drawn between the type of discourse which pays lip service to
banal, neoliberal fetishised notions of street as site and object of
subversive cool – incorporating graffiti, fashion, skateboarding, hiphop -
and a more critical and engaged examination of processes of exclusion,
confrontation and violence which constitute the everyday reality of life
on and in the street. The street is and should not simply be flagged up as
a site where power relations are toyed with as part of an ongoing Damien
Hirst-meets-Banksyesque flirtation between public and private space. Such
fetishisation ignores or glosses over notions of territory, surveillance
and fear.
Yet at every moment attempts to challenge existing power structures from
within the space of the street are at risk of being recuperated in the
service of bourgeois, neoliberal modes of consumption. The return to
pedestrianised zones in major European cities is frequently part of
gentrification processes and occurs within privately owned spaces with the
aim of encouraging consumerism rather than increased social interaction
precluded by motorised city spaces. The festival atmosphere at protests
and occupations might also be considered not simply as a means of creating
greater solidarity amongst participants but as embodying a Bakhtinian form
of carnival in which the political impetus of the event or movement
exhausts itself in a media circus of spectacle and rhetoric staged between
protestors and law-enforcement. Similarly, how does the crowd or the
collective end up reproducing existing forms of exclusion in claiming to
speak for the masses as a homogeneous whole? Those whose access to the
street is already restricted due to race, gender or disability must
frequently concede their voices to those for whom the street is taken for
granted as usable, occupiable and negotiable space. At the same time, a
more critical stance is needed towards both the romanticisation and
demonization of the crowd in public space. It is, for example, naive to
think that issues such as the systemic street harassment of women in Cairo
disappeared completely during the occupation of Tahrir Square yet this was
the rhetoric widely presented. Conversely, how might the pervasive
politics of fear which posits the crowd as unruly mob or herd, keeping
people off the streets, through the imposition of curfews and devices like
the mosquito be redressed? What needs to be done to encourage greater
mobilisation on the street from different groups and individuals?
The aim of this conference is to rethink the street both in terms of its
radical potential as site where dissent, critique and change can all be
achieved whilst remaining critical as to the limits of such radicality.
Where does the street lead us and what happens off the street? How might
we avoid the dead ends and turf wars involved both in conceptualising and
using the street? How might we set about building a new politics of the
street? We welcome proposals for papers, discussions, short films,
mini-workshops and other interventions engaging with the above issues and
questions.
Topics might include but are not limited to:
- street as fetish object
- societies of discipline and control
- inclusion/exclusion/exchange
- street as site of resistance/containment
- subversive potential/impotential of street art and fashion
- hiphop struggles and activism
- surveillance
- cctv and self-mapping apps
- politics of the crowd
- negotiating the street
- strategies and tactics
- territory/circulation
- politics of fear
- living and working on the street
- off the street
Abstracts/proposals of 300-500 words should be sent to:
[log in to unmask] by 3 February 2012.
Programme will be confirmed in early March 2012.
Organised by the Centre for Cultural Studies with the generous support of
the Department of Media and Communications and the Graduate School,
Goldsmiths.
Visit fuggbug.tumblr.com for updated information about the event.
Dr Sophie Fuggle
Lecturer in Cultural Studies
Centre for Cultural Studies
Goldsmiths, University of London
E: [log in to unmask]
T: 0207 078 5003
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