Philosophy - World - Democracy: Call for contributions

Ivana Perica Announcement
Announcement Type
Call for Publications
Subject Fields
Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Humanities, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science

Dear colleagues,

Philosophy - World - Democracy: these three words constitute the axis of a new academic and activist journal that we kindly invite you to contribute to. It is with these words, which are not bare words but concepts and ideas with always specific contexts of their utterance and appearance, that we step aside from the status quo in both our professional and private everyday lives. Without ‘philosophy,’ ‘world,’ and ‘democracy,’ history would appear formless, without any of the contours of responsibilities and demands. It is thanks to their double or even multiple valency that these words matter – they matter to us both as professionals and as common citizens or, in many cases, common placeholders of the world regimes we find ourselves living in. It is thanks to this double or multiple valency that we all share a wordly as well as an other-wordly presence. And it is also thanks to the contemporary crisis, which is both an episode in an ongoing process of human suffering and an omen of a profound change – political, social, and ecological – that will affect generations to come.

Philosophy World Democracy dissipates blockages which prevent us from deliberating as everyone everywhere: these blockages are not only of a political or geopolitical kind but are also our specific professional blockages. They prevent us from reading one another and communicating beyond the established capitals of global academia. They also prevent us from creating passages between philosophy and the world, and thus from being democratic in our thoughts and deeds.

In this context, deep and reflective discussions about the world have become increasingly confined to board room spaces and think-tanks created by the technocratic elites that allocate people to “regions” and ghettoes of thought – all of which urges us to launch this online journal for short, accessible, philosophical and theoretical reflections without ever compromising the rigors of thinking. We kindly invite you to join in this collective conversation!

The topics we are first and foremost, yet not exclusively, interested in cover vast fields of interest: politics, ecology, philosophy, arts & literature, economics, technology, and more. Independent of your disciplinary specialization, we warmly encourage you to think holistically and to try out connections between your own scholarly focus and other fields of interest, or between your own geographical niche and the whole “atlas of remote islands” of thought (Judith Schalansky).

 

Your contribution:

The impact of our journal is expected as follows: we plan to offer sophisticated, complex, and highly specialized contributions to scholarly publishing which can also be accessed by the general public interested in the contemporary world and all its facets and perspectives.

1) One way to do this is to shorten and rewrite an already published scholarly article according to our criteria of 1) readability (please avoid hermetic discourse and implied knowledge shared by the “enlightened few”), 2) topicality (touching upon and dealing with issues that concern us all), and 3) brevity (the essay should not exceed 4000 words), however longer essays will be considered and appropriately prepared while working with the authors.

Preparing your already published work should not need further research time; all that is required is readjusting the results to engage a more general reading public. Although public visibility and responsibility is a central feature of scholarly work and critical outreach, this seems to have been forgotten in the neoliberal privatization of universities as agents that organize our work.

2) Another approach is to write a new essay on an issue that is topical from our journal’s point of view. In this situation, you can prepare a draft paper that includes bullet points of the planned discussion, and we will get back to you with our thoughts, wishes, or recommendations.

For other ideas and suggestions (if, for example, you are considering submitting a podcast or an interview instead), please contact us at philosophy.world.democracy@gmail.com.

 

Philosophy World Democracy is a multilingual journal – it solicits articles in all languages. Should you wish to submit an essay in a language that is not spoken by one of our editors or editorial board members, please contact us and we will see how we can help. 

The journal’s temporary website can be accessed at http://philosophy-world-democracy.org/. A final version of the homepage will be launched within a month. We will be happy to have you among our first contributors.

 

On behalf of the editors and editorial board members, I thank you for considering this invitation.

 

Kind regards,

Ivana Perica

 

Contact Email
ivana.perica@lrz.uni-muenchen.de