Call for Papers

The philosophical proposals of the ‘Plenum’ and of ‘Corpus Infinitum’ constitute the images that the black scholar and artist Denise Ferreira da Silva offers to contemporary decolonial feminisms to materialize the shift in the imagination urgently needed in response to the catastrophic events (displacement of populations, devastation of the earth, pandemic, global warming and climate crisis, violence of war) that the western episteme, in its historical, scientific and cultural development, is and has been producing, and profiting from, according to racial, colonial, capitalist and cis-heteropatriarchal forms of extraction, oppression and appropriation.

The Brazilian philosopher calls for “the end to the world – as we know it” through the operations of “fractal thinking”, which is “immanent, scalar, plenteous, and undetermined” in revendicating material, cosmic, elemental ‘ancestral claims’. The seminar of “Feminisms in a Transnational Perspective” finds inspiration in da Silva’s experiments with imagining otherwise, focusing on the question of new experiences of thinking and praxis ‘at the root’; ‘radicality’ is the chosen term to mean the inventive investigation attending to the complex constellations of feminist existence, decolonizing its own origins and processes of development in order to move toward necessary instances of female social and global justice.

The theme calls for a radical theoretical and practical reorientation that aims at undoing and dissolving the notions of ‘separability’, ‘determinacy’ and ‘sequentiality’ that have been and are still active and operative in the colonial and racist constitution of the modern and contemporary world, to favour the ethical force of ‘deep implicancy’ among human and non-human living creatures. It is an attempt at re/de/composing the roots of our common and collective life, to be able “to express, enact, and embody the plurality of otherwise possibilities that are both radically ‘out’ of this world and radically immanent and ‘here’”, while providing momentary resolutions at each instance according to an intention mediated by the given context.

The radicalities of which we would like to discuss, elaborate and experience in our togetherness, might imply:

the origin of transnational feminisms;

the tracing of feminist genealogies different from the modernist enlightenment ones;

the critique of universalism;

the critical engagement in postcolonial and decolonial theories and praxes;

the intergenerational dialogue;

the reconfiguration of power in social struggle;

the investigation of the techne of writing, literature and art;

the radicalization of aesthetics;

the repositioning of language otherwise;

the discussion of what might open instance of justice for indigenous, migrant, LGBT, non-white populations;

the emergence of praxis of survival, resistance, and invention;

the experimentation with translation, transposition and transformation of entangled forces;

the feminist ongoing practices of care.

 

Eligibility:

IUC courses are conducted at the postgraduate level. All interested postgraduate students (in MA or PhD programs) may apply to participate, although the course targets young scholars and postgraduate students with a defined interest in women’s/gender studies, transnational studies, philosophy, sociology, literary and cultural studies, postcolonialism, anthropology, or related discipline. The course will be limited to 15 students (25 participants in total) in order to provide sufficient space for discussion, seminar work and student presentations.

The course directors will keep open the possibility of online participation in case the epidemiological situation does not allow travel and gatherings in person. However, the organizers do hope that all participants will be able to gather in person in Dubrovnik. Participants must seek funding from their own institutions for the costs of travel, lodging and meals. Limited financial support is available for participants from parts of Eastern Europe and some non-European countries (please see http://www.iuc.hr/iuc-support.php). The IUC requires a payment of 55 EUR for the Course Fee. The working language of the course is English.

Application Procedure:

Please submit a proposal consisting of your CV and a short narrative describing your interest in the topic or a 250-words abstract if you would like to make a presention at the course. Place all current contact information at the top of your CV. Send submissions by e-mail to Mirela Dakić (mireladakic1@gmail.com). Use the subject: IUC Dubrovnik 2024. The proposal deadline is 1 February, 2024.