Transformations is seeking abstracts for the following issue: "Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediation in the Age of Global Culture" What does Walter Benjamin offer for critical thinking and creative practice in an age increasingly mediated by virtual technologies?
Much Benjaminian scholarship proposes a Benjamin at best ambivalent to, and at worst, in recoil from modernity. Yet, recent critical thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy provide new possibilities in approaching the analysis of contemporary culture inspired by Benjamin's insights and arguments. These suggest
innovative ways of reading and incorporating Benjamin, ways that re-engage an active configuration between politics, art, and representation in response to the shift from mass to global culture.
Increasingly it seems possible to reconsider the role art can, and may be already playing, in such a configuration. This issue of Transformations seeks submissions that address these ideas. In the light of Benjamin's thought, and those who take that thought further, we want to look at what the concept of virtuality- the tendency in mediated contexts towards disembodied interactions and ways of being
human-- does to Benjamin's ideas of politics, art, and media?
Call for abstracts: abstracts of 500 words due end of November 2006
Papers due: March 2007
Publication: mid 2007
Submissions: Submissions should be sent to the Issue editor: John Grech, at
John.M.Grech@ alumni.uts. edu.au Or alternatively, to the General editor: Warwick Mules at w.mules@cqu. edu.au4
[sursa e-nass]
