[Reader-list] Fwd: Student Seminar - Frames of reference: Speaking the Unspeakable: 19 December 2011

Shilpa Phadke phadkeshilpa at gmail.com
Tue Oct 11 13:00:51 IST 2011


 <http://forcmcs.wordpress.com/>

Speaking the Unspeakable

19 December 2011

 The 'act' of speaking calls the world into being; what is not said does not
exist. Meanings are moulded, refashioned and regurgitated to suit the
established order of things. In the process of resistance and negotiation of
power, they set the limits of our thought and imagination. The ‘unspeakable’
refers to non-articulation, an exclusion from the peculiar process of the
creation of meanings. It is not just that which is not spoken, but that
which ‘ought’ not to be spoken, an exclusion even from resistance.

In art, literature, media, culture and politics, the ‘unspeakable’ is
compelled to assume the form of the ‘incognito’. It surfaces at moments of
rupture, through modes that speak to the realm of affect, emerging within
the spaces of the non-rational and the deviant. It follows that much is at
stake in maintaining a distance from the nebulous regions of what is neither
seen nor heard. What governs the unspeakable? What grids of exclusion are
used to define the unspeakable? What disciplinary mechanisms work to
reproduce the site of the unspeakable? Whose politics makes it unspeakable?
Is the distinction between the speakable and unspeakable more amorphous than
we imagine? How does the unspeakable manifest itself in the everyday and in
the realm of art and culture? How are certain arenas and speech deemed to be
unspeakable as in the case of sexuality for instance? How does the law
engage with the unspeakable in relation to hate speech or accusations of
obscenity for example?

This seminar calls for papers that will interrogate that which is
unspeakable in the various worlds around us and seek to understand the
production and reproduction of the unspeakable. The seminar will also look
at voices that are not heard because they transgress the codes that govern
the articulation of the speakable.


*Papers can be submitted addressing the themes below but need not be
restricted to them*:

   1.

   *The city and its unspeakable(s)*
   2.

   *Imagining India: speaking the unspeakable*
   3.

   *‘**Modern, secular, democratic’: unspeakable(s) of a neo-world*
   4.

   *The unspoken and the unspeakable in Indian media*
   5.

   *Artistic expression and the unspeakable*
   6.

   *Literary/poetic voice and the unspeakable*
   7.

   *Censorship and the disciplining of the unspeakable*
   8.

   *The unspeakable in cinema*
   9.

   *Speaking the intangible: affect and faith*
   10.

   *Sexuality, obscenity and the regulation of speech*
   11.

   *Gender, violence and subterfuge of silence*
   12.

   *“**New” media/ Digital technologies: contouring spaces of silence and
   speech*


 Abstracts invited from current post-graduate (M.A., M.Phil, Ph.D) students
only.
Last date for sending abstracts – October 28, 2011
Please send your abstracts by email along with your contact details (email,
phone no, postal address) and current institutional affiliation to the
following email ID: for.cmcs at gmail.comSelection of abstracts and intimation
via email –1st week of November, 2011

Last date for sending papers -November 28, 2011
The seminar updates will be posted on our blog *
http://forcmcs.wordpress.com/*.
*For any queries, Please Contact : *9022952539 (Ufaque), 9820387103 (Anurag)

*For any queries, Please Contact : **9022952539 (Ufaque), 9820387103
(Anurag)*


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