Following the stimulating exchanges at our first conference in September, we are delighted to announce that the panel proposal ‘Spectres of Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century? Cultural Autonomy in Venezuela’ which we submitted for the SLAS Annual Conference 2015 has been approved.
Please find below the panel abstract and details on how to submit paper proposals for the panel via the conference website. The panel is open, which means anybody can submit proposals so please feel free to circulate this information to colleagues you think might be interested.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
SLAS Annual Conference
University of Aberdeen, UK, 17-18th April 2015
Keynote: Deborah Poole
Conference webiste: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/slas-2015/
PANEL
Spectres of Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century? Cultural Autonomy in Venezuela
Abstract
Against theories that downplay the role of the nation-state in the formation of a globalised society, this panel assesses negotiations of nationalism in contemporary cultural production. Recent attempts to designate an official version of Venezuelan identity, in particular through culture legislation passed in 2013, raise questions about the usefulness of autonomy as a concept to think about how aesthetic manifestations emerge within, against, or alongside fixed notions of territoriality and the state. We seek to engage with the conflicting temporal, spatial and political dynamics at work in the construction of “new” national communities that revitalise old symbolisms, monumental histories and conventional cultural forms beneath the guise of revolution.
In this context, this panel invites critical analyses of cultural manifestations that span everyday practices, official discourse, digital technologies, and literary and visual production, that examine them beyond the polarizing forces of ideology and totalizing conceptions of belonging. These analyses act to problematise the performativity of political identities and the negation of individual agency, while also assessing the scope of affect as a means of renegotiating the terms of identity, history and territory within personal remits. Ultimately, the panel contrasts the Utopian vision of “protecting” national culture from globalisation and imperialism with the growth of diasporic communities of Venezuelans in order to engage critically with territory and identity as shifting phenomena rather than fixed sites.
Link to abstract submission website
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/slas-2015/paper-submission/abstract-submissions
Deadline for submissions: 28 November 2014
Notification of decisions: before 16th January 2015