MEDIATIONS IN A POST-TRUTH ERA registration open and papers still accepted!

Please join us in November for what should be an exciting, critical and topical event engaging with Mediations in a Post-Truth Era. This is part of the Mediating the Real series hosted by the ‘Performance of the Real’ Research Theme at the University of Otago (http://www.otago.ac.nz/performance-of-the-real/index.html).

We are delighted to be hosting Laurie J. Oullette (University of Minnesota) who will be keynoting on ‘Fake President: Telemorphosis and the Performance of Grotesque Power’ and Kim Toffoletti (Deakin University) whose keynote is titled ‘Sexy Surfers, Selfies and Social Media – Encounters with Jean Baudrillard, Postfeminism and Post-Truth’.

This will be an eclectic and critically engaged conference and we still have room available for papers on ‘post-truth’, mediation and Lacan and Baudrillard’s often contradictory takes on the ‘real’. We do hope that you can join us between the 22nd and 24th of November.

More details here (and below):http://www.otago.ac.nz/mfco/news/otago651232.html

Please do not hesitate to contact Rosemary Overell (rosemary.overell@otago.ac.nz ) and Brett Nicholls (brett.nicholls@otago.ac.nz ) with any queries

Mediating the Real 2: Mediations in a 'post-truth' era

A conference at the University of Otago 22nd – 24th November 2017

Presented by The Performance of the Real Research Theme and the Department of Media, Film and Communication

Keynote speakers

Dr Kim Toffoletti (Deakin University) &
Dr Laurie J. Ouellette (University of Minnesota)

‘Post-truth’ has become a buzzword in the last year generating think-pieces and SNS chatter lamenting 'truth' as a lost object that has enabled and / or smuggled in events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. With this discussion, comes a broader demonstration of anxiety that a true 'real' (world, political sphere, social …) has been either lost or obscured. The responsibility for this loss or obscurance has fallen firmly at the feet of 'the media' (as well as the so-called postmodernists).

This conference asks and unpacks the interactions of (post) truth, the 'real' and contemporary media.

Building on and following from the success of Mediating the Real ‘1’, we encourage critically informed approaches – particularly drawing from the work of Lacan. However, this time too, we invite scholars engaged with Jean Baudrillard's prolific engagement in these matters. 

Papers might ask but are not limited to:

• What does post-truth mean in the contemporary media saturated context?
• A consideration of the increasingly banal use of ‘post-truth’ (as OED word of the year 2016) in news chatter and the implications of this for understandings of 'truthful’ media
• Where is the real located in this context? This might be through considerations of the Lacanian real and the possibilities for subjectivity and sociality – particularly in terms of the potential to build social bonds within the ‘discourse of capitalism’
• What does the anguished / anxious response to 'post truth', particularly in popular and social media, tell us about contemporary subjectivity and sociality?
• What do Baudrillard’s critical interventions tell us about the contemporary production of reality?