MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, 7-9 September 2016

The (bio)politics, aesthetics, ethics and the performances of digital subjects of the following issues might be considered:

• Quotidian relationships between the vital and the virtual
• Surveillance in the digital panopticon, e.g. Wikileaks and the Snowden NSA files
• Precarious identities e.g. digital thefts, phishing, fake emails, spams and scams
• Trolls, hackers and the darknet
• Digital legalities and rights, e.g. ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ (ruled by the European Union in 2014)
• New digital cinematic aesthetics, e.g. found footage and crowd sourced (pseudo) documentaries
• Online radicalization and the digital caliphate
• Online redefinitions of social bonds and political statuses, e.g. ‘friends’, ‘followers’, ‘communities’ and ‘citizens’
• The afterlife of digital subjects, e.g. ‘Facebook memorialized accounts’
• The (bio)politics of events, e.g. the 2015 Spanish “hologram protest” and the Anonymous’ war on ISIS

The above list is intended to be illustrative, not at all exhaustive, identifying some of the areas in which digital subjects/subjectivities occur.

Please email an abstract (300-500 words) and a short bio as an attachment to both conveners, Gabriella Calchi-Novati (calchinovatig@gmail.com) and Andrew Wilford (a.wilford@chi.ac.uk), by Sunday 15th May 2016. Participants will be notified by the end of May.

Workshop participants will be asked to submit papers (app. 8-10 pages in length) not later than Monday 15th August 2016. All papers will then be circulated amongst participants and the main themes for discussion will be identified. This will allow for a more informed critical exchange during the workshop itself.

More info, please see here