Call for Submissions, UAAC Conference 2020, Panel, "Enchantment, Disenchantment, Reenchantment"

Enchantment, Disenchantment, Reenchantment: Rethinking Practices of Interconnection in a Century of Crisis

In 1919, Max Weber described the state of the world as disenchanted, defined by the secular replacement of technoscience for magic, and the triumph of human mastery over spirit. Earlier critics from Freidrich Schiller and Weber in the early twentieth century, the modernist Frankfurt School to the Postmodern philosophers in the half of the century, share the opinion that modern acceleration brings human suffering. Contemporary scholarship (Foster 2015; Berardi 2017; Steryerl 2017) periodizes our current century as one marked by crisis. This is evermore evidenced by the ongoing systemic violence against BIPOC; the Covid-19 viral pandemic; the turn to neo-fascism in the West; oil-driven new colonialisms; migratory emergencies; and a willful ignorance among governments and corporations of the sure peril of our climate. The killing of black and indigenous peoples, the ongoing destruction of our planet, and our present self-isolation indicates the long-term effects of disenchantment have not only intensified in this climate of emergency, but have become increasingly severe.

Careful not to position enchanted cosmologies (visions of shared force and agency) against disenchanted materialisms that locate the human at the center of the world, this session turns to the fine arts to ask if the world is disenchanted, how may we propel the human out of isolated primacy? The arts stage distinctive encounters between viewers and creative objects that liven the spectator’s cerebral and sensual capacities, so disrupting the status quo by provoking modes of thinking and care. Developing a definition of enchantment that aims to highlight the human as a participant among the cosmos as opposed to an isolated observer (Jane Bennett 2001, 2010; Barad 2007; Puig de la Bellacasa 2015), this session welcomes case-studies of artworks, documentation of completed artworks, and a wide range of scholarly inquiry that explores practices of care, philosophies of interconnection, imbrication, entanglement, and subject/object assemblages. 

I am accepting submissions for a panel to take place online as part of the UAAC/AAUC Annual Congress 2020. Submissions should be presentations of about 20 minutes in length and follow the guidelines specified by UAAC here: https://uaac-aauc.com/conference/

Submissions must include / Les soumissions doivent inclure :

• • the name of the applicant / le nom de l’intervenant·e
  • the applicant’s email address / l’adresse courriel de l’intervenant·e
  • the applicant’s institutional affiliation and rank / l’affiliation institutionnelle et le titre de l’intervenant·e
  • title of proposal / le titre de la communication
  • a proposal (300 words maximum) / une proposition de communication (maximum de 300 mots)
  • a brief biography (150 words maximum) / une courte biographie (maximum 150 mots) 

Submissions must be submitted directly to Yani Kong, yani_kong@sfu.ca, via the Call for Papers form found on their conference website (see above). 

Deadline for submission is July 31, 2020. Please email for inquiries or if you would like to request more time.