Subject: Re: CFP: Discourses of Globalization (COLLECTION, March 1, 2004)
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:52:37 -0500


         To:     postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
        cc:     MMURPH2-AT-bentley.edu, (bcc: Samir Dayal/Faculty/Bentley)
        Subject:        CFP: Discourses of Globalization (COLLECTION, March 1, 2004) (long)


Dear List:

Although it is too late to submit abstracts, the deadline for complete 
papers for the collection described in the enclosed cfp is not until March 

1, 2004.  We would be glad to entertain queries about proposed essays.

Thank you.

Samir Dayal and Margueritte Murphy.


Here is the cut-and-pasted cfp--this list does not accept attachments.


*************************
    CALL FOR PAPERS:

We invite papers for possible inclusion in an anthology tentatively 
entitled GLOBAL BABEL:  INTERDISCIPLINARITY, TRANSNATIONALISM AND THE DISCOURSES OF 
GLOBALIZATION.  The main focus of the anthology will be on the potential for 
interdisciplinary, cross-cultural exchange of ideas and discourses to 
overcome barriers to mutual intelligibility among disciplines and 
discourses concerned with globalization.  Do economists, non-governmental 
organizations (NGOs), antiglobalization activists, proponents of 
transnational corporations, intellectual historians or other cultural 
theorists always mean the same thing when they speak about globalization? 
If not, what are the points of incommensurability?  Even if transcultural 
or interdisciplinary discourse is possible, what lingua franca can we 
elaborate?  What shared forms of rationality can we articulate between and 
among disciplines and cultures without falling into the trap of 
Eurocentric universalism? 

We welcome papers no longer than 7500 words postmarked no later than March 
1, 2004 on topics including but not limited to the following topics, with a focus on whether we can imagine coherent discourses for theorizing 
these issues, or elaborating problems that a variety of perspectives can 
engage creatively.

Institutions, Transnational exchange, and Power Differentials. 
What roles do institutions such as the World Bank, the International 
Monetary Fund (IMF), Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), the World 
Trade Organization, and environmental groups play in the generation, 
control, and dissemination of knowledge about globalization? How are the 
horizons of this knowledge defined by the terms of a given discourse, and 
what constraints are there on the translation of these terms into other 
disciplines?  What are the "real" effects of such epistemological 
functions? What are the consequences of the transnational exchange of 
ideas and information under globalization:  exploitation or avenues of 
resistance to cultural appropriation?  How is power distributed under 
globalization? What is the relative institutional power of the World Bank, 
the IMF, NGOs, Environmental groups, or labor unions to influence policy 
regulating transnational flows of goods and information and to define the 
terms of the debates about access to resources and institutions? 

Activism and the Academy.
What is the role of the academy in the geopolitics of the contemporary 
period?   Is the "university in ruins" complicit with transnational 
capitalism?  To what extent can activist discourse generated in the 
academy have a political role in the global public sphere?

Identities in Translation.
What is the effect of globalization on the politics of immigration, 
cultural memory and national identity?  How are subjectivities of both 
immigrants and hosts being transformed in the process of large-scale 
demographic shifts as borders become more porous within the European 
Union?  What alternative identities and what imagined communities can we 
project into the future to bring about more democratic civil societies? 
How are these identities in transition represented in art, film, 
performance and/or video, and how are these representations themselves 
affected by global economic flows? 

Empire, Nationalism and Postnationalism.
How should we talk across disciplines and across national borders about 
Empire after the World Trade Center bombings of September 11, 2001and the 
U.S. invasion of Iraq?  How do formulations of Empire such as that of 
Hardt and Negri help us to talk about the Realpolitik of globalization? In 
what ways is "empire" itself a disputed term? How is empire to be 
distinguished from globalization, and if they are different the question 
in a given situation may be: Whose "empire"? 

Gender. 
In what discursive frames do defenders of sexual customs and rituals such 
as female genital mutilation in non-Western cultures respond to challenges 
from proponents in the West of universal human rights and gender parity? 
How stable are the discursive categories of the body and even the ideas of 
the human body's integrity across cultures and disciplines today? How are 
discourses of pleasure, desire, and criminality in gender relations being 
conditioned by the age of transnational travel and the cross-border 
transmission of pornography or provocative images in advertising into 
formerly insular cultures?

Conjunctures among Discourses of Technology, Business and Culture. 
What possibilities are there for meaningful collaboration between "third 
world" nations and "first world" nations on moral and financial issues 
such as the international distribution of AIDS drugs and other medicines? 
In what ways do national corporate interests, as well as transnational 
institutions, regulate and police the distribution of scientific 
technology and medical research?  How are cultural differences produced or 
perpetuated in the process?  How do we articulate an understanding of 
flows of transnational, "flexible" capital with libidinal and psychic 
economies?

Mass-Mediated Culture, Technologies of Globalization, and the Cultures of 
Cosmopolitanism.
How are we to understand the circulation of discourses and ideologies in 
transnational circuits?  How do we thematize the desirability of a 
plurality of forms of rationality, religion, secularism--in short, 
difference --as an alternative to the thesis of the "conflict of 
civilizations" taken by some to be imminent?  What can we say about the 
cultures of cosmopolitanism in the context of technologies that further 
the processes of globalization or that advance the interests of 
multinational or transnational corporations (TNCs) to the disadvantage of 
local cultures in the developing world? 

Please send proposals by November 1, 2003 or, preferably, finished papers 
by March 1, 2004, to Margueritte Murphy at mmurph2-AT-bentley.edu and Samir 
Dayal at sdayal-AT-bentley.edu.  Hard copies of both proposals and finished 
papers may be sent to The English Department, Bentley College, Waltham MA, 
02452-4705, USA.





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