[Linganth] Seeking panel participants for SLA2020: Responsibility and Evidence in Late Capitalist Discourse

Wed Nov 13 18:22:05 UTC 2019

Hi Aurora, thank you for circulating this wonderful panel. I may be
submitting to you a paper proposal dealing with responsibility and evidence
involved in imagistic multimodal discourses in the media, including the
very recent state-level controversy surrounding the use of map
representations in the Netflix documentary, The Devil Next Door, that
occasioned a formal protest from Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland.
Among other ways for triangulating the problem of responsibility,
authenticity, evidence and performativity in imagistic discourses, I would
be drawing on the work of Christopher Ball (2017). Working title, "A
picture is worth a thousand words. Or is it? Responsibility, evidence and
performativity in the mapping of evil."

This is just to give you heads up. I will be able to develop the abstract
this weekend. Still working on my Vancouver paper. Are you coming to the
AAAs this year?

Warm greetings,

janina

On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 8:25 AM Aurora Donzelli <adonzelli at sarahlawrence.edu>
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Joseph Sung-Yul Park and I are organizing a panel for the next SLA2020
> meeting in Boulder, Colorado. Please email us a 250-word abstract no
> later than 11/25.
>
>  best,
>
> Aurora and Joseph
>
>
> *Responsibility and Evidence in Late Capitalist Discourse *
>
>
> Organizers:
>
> Aurora Donzelli, Sarah Lawrence College, NY adonzelli at slc.edu
>
> Joseph Sung-Yul Park, National University of Singapore, Singapore
> ellpjs at nus.edu.sg
>
> Our contemporary moment is often represented as marked by the progressive
> extension of market logics to every domain of human existence and
> interaction (Brown 2003, 2006; Cruikshank 1993; Martin 2000; Rose 1990;
> etc.). Key to this process has been the institution of novel paradigms for
> determining moral and epistemic standards of conduct. The ideal neoliberal
> subject is imagined to be engaged in the moral project of maximizing the
> value of one’s human capital, as well as a constant evidencing of one’s
> engagement with such responsibility of self-development. Institutional,
> technological, and political economic configurations constantly monitor and
> assess individuals in these terms, guiding them towards internalization of
> such discourse through self-modulation. A growing ethnographic literature
> has thus shown how the contemporary world is characterized by the
> proliferation of evidentiary regimes based on ideals of transparency and
> moral standards pivoting on notions of accountability and individual
> entrepreneurialism (see for, example, Cavanaugh 2016; Gershon 2011, Matza
> 2009; Shore and Wright 2003; Strathern 2000; Urciuoli 2008; West and
> Sanders 2003). But we still lack a fuller account of how these larger
> discursive formations impact the grain of everyday life, structuring our
> daily encounters and interactions. Drawing on the seminal volume edited by
> Hill and Irvine (1993) and extending its insights into contemporary
> political economic context, this panel explores of how situated language
> use participates in producing the specific notions of knowledge and agency
> that characterize the late capitalist present. Our goal is to “turn the
> tools of linguistic anthropology” to further our understanding of how
> neoliberal notions of responsibility and evidence are both produced and
> challenged through actual instances of discursive activity (Hill and Irvine
> 1993: 3). Specific questions addressed by contributions may include:
>
>
>
> -       What kinds of discursive practices and styles come to be valued
> as transparent, moral, and responsible under neoliberalism, and by what
> semiotic processes?
>
> -       How do neoliberal models of responsibility and evidence affect
> contemporary linguistic and semiotic styles of political self-presentation
> and participation?
>
> -       What do debates on fake news and (un-)accountable political
> practices reveal about the new moral and epistemic standards of our times?
>
> -       How do the moral and epistemic paradigms of our present shape
> linguistic practices in the workplace? How do they affect contemporary
> forms of material production and semiotic circulation of commodities,
> though certification protocols, (re-)branding strategies, and new
> technologies of the working self? How are they resisted and subverted
> through specific patterns of communicative behavior?
>
> -        How do shifting ideologies about ideal displays and enactments
> of responsibility, agency, and desire lead to new models of ideal
> personhood?
>
> -       What new evidentiary regimes do conditions of late capitalism,
> including those of precarity, surveillance, and inequality, represent?
>
> -       How do neoliberal modes of governance construct different
> populations as (ir)responsible, (im)moral, (un)truthful, or (un)trustworthy?
>
>
>
>
>
> *References cited*
>
>
>
> Brown, Wendy
>
> 2003 Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. *Theory & Event*,
> *7*(1).
>
> ---              2006 American Nightmare Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism,
> and De-Democratization. *Political theory*, *34*(6), 690-714.
>
> Cavanaugh, Jillian R
>
> 2016 "Documenting subjects: Performativity and audit culture in food
> production in northern Italy." *American Ethnologist* 43.4 (2016):
> 691-703.
>
> Cruikshank, Barbara
>
> 1993 Revolutions within: self-government and self-esteem. *Economy and
> Society*, *22*(3), 327-344.
>
> Gershon, Ilana.
>
> 2011 Neoliberal agency. *Current Anthropology* 52(4):537-555.
>
> Hill, Jane H., and Judith T. Irvine
>
>                   1993 Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse.
> Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.
>
> Martin, Emily.
>
> 2000 Mind‐Body Problems. *American Ethnologist*, *27*(3), 569-590.
>
> Matza, Tomas
>
> 2009 Moscow's Echo: Technologies of the Self, Publics, and Politics on the
> Russian Talk Show. Cultural Anthropology 24(3):489-522.
>
> Rose, Nikolas
>
> 1990 *Governing the soul: the shaping of the private self*. Taylor &
> Frances/Routledge.
>
> Shore, Cris, and S. Wright, (eds.)
>
> 2003 *Anthropology of policy: Perspectives on governance and power*.
> Routledge.
>
> Strathern, Marilyn, (ed.)
>
> 2000 *Audit cultures: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics,
> and the academy*. Psychology Press.
>
> Urciuoli, Bonnie
>
> 2008 Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist
> 35(2):211-228.
>
> West, Harry G., and Todd Sanders, (eds.)
>
> 2003 *Transparency and conspiracy: ethnographies of suspicion in the new
> world order*. Duke University Press.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Aurora Donzelli
>
> Associate Professor of Anthropology
> Sarah Lawrence College
> 1 Mead Way
> Bronxville, NY 10708 USA
> E-mail: adonzelli at sarahlawrence.edu
>
>
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