BETWEEN URGENCY AND ABSTRACTION: CULTURAL STUDIES AFTER STUART HALL
BETWEEN URGENCY AND ABSTRACTION :
CULTURAL STUDIES AFTER STUART HALL
Conference organised by the Centre for Cultural Studies,
Goldsmiths, University of London
Wed 25th - Thurs 26th June, 2014
http://urgency-abstraction.tumblr.com/
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“Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God’s name is the point of cultural studies? … At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don’t feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook.”
– Stuart Hall
We may allow Stuart Hall’s recent death to mark an opportunity for reflection on the history of the field of cultural studies, its inherited imperatives and future trajectories. Hall called for a direct engagement between the academy and the social world ‘outside’ of it, imagining cultural studies as the site of this interaction – and hence a site of both contestation and radical politics. Compared to fields such as sociology, this imperative was reflected in a methodological freedom that has been the basis of cultural studies’ flourishing and the crisis of identity which seems to continually confront it. Is this freedom a threat to cultural studies’ raison d’être and character, once located in the sense of political urgency inherited from Hall, or does it now encompass a more abstract reading of the political as rhetorical and aesthetic production? Is this move away from its Marxist roots a denaturing of cultural studies, or a necessary move with the times? And what does the shift in cultural studies tell us about the shift in contemporary politics more generally?
This conference will explore the terrain of cultural studies after and beyond Stuart Hall by interrogating its contemporary orientation, aims, and (anti-) methodologies. From its right to risk and experimentation to its imperative to bring knowledge outside of institutions, we seek to explore the past, present and future iterations of the field in order to reaffirm its contemporary relevance as both an academic field and a political force.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Wednesday, 25th of June
RHB 256 (2nd floor Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths) until 15:30
09:00 - 09:15
TEA / COFFEE AND WELCOME
09:15 – 10:45
PANEL I : ‘Rethinking Cultural Studies’
- Oana Parvan (PhD Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘Against Cultural Studies as an Enterprise’
- Kevin W. Molin (PhD Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘Seeking for the Quiddity of Cultural Studies in Gramsci’s Notebooks’
- Desmond Hok-Man Sham (PhD Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘On (Ir)relevancy of Cultural Studies with East and Southeast Asia’
- Frederiek Pennink (MA Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘Benjamin and the Smart City’
11:00 – 12:00
KEYNOTE I
- Dr. Julian Henriques (Goldsmiths), Title TBC
12:15 – 13:15
PERFORMANCE PRESENTATION: ‘Reflections on Radical Creativity and Space’
- Hosted by Collective Creativity
13:15 – 14:00
LUNCH
14:00 – 15:30
KEYNOTE II
- Dr. Benjamin Noys (University of Chichester), ‘Separation, Fusion, Mediation’
Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre (Whitehead Building, Goldsmiths)
15:30 – 16:30
AFTERNOON TEA
16:30 – 20:30
FILM SCREENING : ‘In Search of UIQ’ / ‘Facs of Life’
- ‘In Search of UIQ’ (72 minutes) / ‘Facs of Life’ (115 minutes), Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson (Terminal Beach) - with introduction by Dr. Simon O’Sullivan (Goldsmiths)
Thursday, 26th of June
All RHB 309 (3rd floor Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths)
09:30 - 10:00
TEA / COFFEE AND WELCOME
10:00 – 11:30
PANEL II : ‘Aesthetics of Urgency: Between Figure and Abstraction’
- Sophie Hoyle (MFA, Goldsmiths), ‘Collapse: Contemporary Artists’ Works Exploring Global Divisions of Labour’
- Mariska Versantvoort (MA Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘From Flâneur to Cynic: Political Engagement in Benjamin and Late Foucault’
- Rebecca Eng (MA Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘The Lumpen Aesthetic’
- Neda Genova (MA Contemporary Art Theory, Goldsmiths), ‘Interventions on a Wall: Abstraction and Everyday Protest in Sofia’
11:30 – 12:00
MORNING TEA
12:00 - 13.30
WORKSHOP I: ‘The University as a Site of Political Struggle’
- Hosted by Goldsmiths Solidarity Network
13:30-14:30
LUNCH
14:30 – 16:00
KEYNOTE III
- Dr. Julia Ng (Goldsmiths), ‘Differentiated Unities’
16:00 – 16:30
AFTERNOON TEA
16:30 – 18:00
PANEL III : ‘Ontopower, Intersectionality and (In)Difference
- Barbara Neukirchinger (PhD Sociology, Bangor University), ‘Critical Theory, Poststructuralism and the Intersection of Gender and Disability’
- Stephanie Figgins (MA Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy, Goldsmiths), ‘Queering the Whistle: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Snowden Leaks’
- Sacha Kahir (Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty), ‘Ontological Syndicalism: Disability Rights Activism and Metapolitics’
- Ramon Sahib Johnson (PhD Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), ‘Technologies of Difference: A Technoaesthetic Perspective on Black Study’
PLEASE KEEP UPDATED at http://urgency-abstraction.tumblr.com
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Organised by the MA Cultural Studies programme / Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
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