::fibreculture:: CFP Transformations: The Internet as Politicising Instrument

[Grayson Cooke]

Hi fibreculturalists, hopefully this CFP will be of interest to some of you:


Call For Papers:

*Special Issue:The Internet as Politicizing Instrument.*

For this issue of /Transformations/, we invite papers that consider the 
gamut of change that the Internet has provoked, drawing on Marcus 
Breen’s /Uprising//: the Internet’s Unintended Consequences (/Common 
Ground Publishing, Champaign, IL, 2011).

In /Uprising /Marcus Breen employs Walter Benjamin’s arguments about art 
as a ‘politicizing instrument ... to allow for the proletariat to speak 
for themselves’ (p. 30). Following this assertion, we would like to 
invite contributors to submit papers that reflect on this claim, to 
support, challenge or deeply interrogate it. Discussions could include 
analysis of the ways the Internet enables the ‘proletariat’ and the 
abject to speak for themselves (following Julia Kristeva, Neil Larsen, 
Judith Butler, Arthur Kroker and others). The creation of new styles of 
false consciousness is open for discussion. Does the Internet require a 
new kind of speaking, one which does not fit older forms of class 
discourse? And what role does art, if any, play in this speaking? Can 
the Internet be understood as a new media tool offering emancipation 
given the political economy of the media in general? Are there lessons 
to be learned about proletarian political mobilization due to the 
Internet after the so-called Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street? 
Discussion about the meaning of ‘proletarianization’ in the Internet era 
could take up the interpretive work Breen offers on the new definition 
of the term in an era when cultural ‘stuff’ is largely unregulated in a 
neo-liberal context.

Shifts in the circulation and availability of otherwise regulated media 
differ from nation to nation and geographical region to region, 
suggesting that proletarianization due to the Internet takes a 
multiplicity of forms. The implications for political mobilization may 
offer unprecedented opportunities for political action across the 
spectrum. Questions about the challenges to the order of liberal 
democracy abound and are welcome from either theoretical or empirical 
case study perspectives or in innovative multidisciplinary modalities.

Abstracts (500 words): due 1^st May 2012, with a view to submit articles 
by 1st September.

Abstracts should be sent to the general editor, Warwick Mules at 
w.mules at bigpond.com <mailto:w.mules at bigpond.com>

For submission guidelines and to view Transformations online: 
http://www.transformationsjournal.org.

-- 
Dr Grayson Cooke
Course Coordinator BMedia
(acting) Director of Higher Degree Research Training
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Southern Cross University
PO Box 157
East Lismore NSW 2480
Ph: +61 2 6620 3839
http://works.bepress.com/grayson_cooke/
http://www.transformationsjournal.org