ACGS Conference: Where Are We Now? Temporalities of Globalisation

Third Annual ACGS Conference

*Where Are We Now? Temporalities of Globalisation*

*Amsterdam, 15-16 December 2016*

Confirmed speakers: Amy Allen (Pennsylvania State University), Louise
Amoore (Durham University), Rolando Vazquez (Utrecht University)

Globalisation is often seen as a single process, unfolding in a single timeframe that serves as a universal measure. This synchronic, or perhaps better still, monochronic conception of globalisation’s temporality creates problematic distinctions between the ‘contemporary’ and the ‘archaic’, between the ‘modern’ and the ‘traditional’ and between globalisation’s GMT and cultures, subjects and areas that are seen to remain out of time. Such a vision of the temporality of globalisation, and its underlying 'denial of coevalness' (Johannes Fabian), entails a perpetuation  of the dominant narrative of modernisation and modernity as progress and temporal advance, as the integration (or lack thereof) in the universalising timeframe of the contemporary (Amy Allen). Today, we witness many cultural practices that challenge, refute or problematise this narrative: from new forms of cultural translation (including a validation of the untranslatable) and the proliferation of decolonial altermodernities to the emergence of
Euro-American populist nostalgia; from accelerationism and hyper-temporalities  (such as that of climate change), to renewed appraisals of slowness and reflection on the end of temporality (Fredric Jameson).

The 2016 Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies conference highlights the urgency to reconsider globalisation from the perspective of today’s multiple temporalities. We want to explore new conceptualisations of the multiple, differentiated temporalities of globalisation. What if still dominant representations of globalisation as an unfolding process – an agent of sorts that is alternatively embraced, resisted, missed out on; that homogenises or pluralises – are simply inadequate to grasp what we refer to as globalisation today? We call for contributions that investigate
globalisation as the simultaneity of different and radically divergent temporalities. Emerging decolonial temporalities (Walter Mignolo), Euro-American populist withdrawal, re-emerging imperialisms (U.S., Europe, Russia, Middle East, China), the project of de-imperialisation, de-Cold War and de-colonisation (Chen Kuan-Hsing), 24/7 neo-capitalism (Jonathan Crary), the hyper-temporality of climate change, imperial ruination (Ann Laura Stoler), the exclusion of states and regions (i.e. Africa, Greece) from the rhythms of neoliberal capitalism (Maurizio Lazzarato), high-speed
financial trading, revelations of global economic warfare, aging workforces (Europe, Japan): all these examples demonstrate that globalisation, in its present, singular tense, no longer covers our fractured and multi-temporal
present.

We invite theoretical and empirical interventions to analyse the ways in which globalisation’s manifold temporalities – and their problematization – appear in the socio-­cultural realm: from decolonial cinema and novels flaunting their untranslatability to the way news and social media ‘chase’ each other; from the use of extreme duration in theatre and contemporary art and the fashionability of yoga classes and mindfulness to the global boom in plastic surgery and expressions of imperial nostalgia; from the seeming endlessness of crisis to regressive and progressive attempts to find a 'way out of here'.

The 2016 ACGS conference welcomes papers that explore the complexity and radical heterogeneity of today’s planetary temporalities. Possible topics include:-    decolonial temporalities
-    cultural translation and untranslatability
-    out-of-timeness and 'backward' peripheries within globalised economic
spheres (i.e. the Greek crisis, North Korea, Belarus)
-    differences between and intersections of urban/rural temporalities
-    chronotopias, from the Western metropolitan yearning for ‘slowness’ to
dreams of fully automated market transactions
-    affective temporalities, i.e. burn-out, exhaustion, YOLO/FOLO, things-to-do-before-you-‐die/bucket lists
-     ecology: the hyper-temporality of climate change
-    the temporal dimensions of neo-imperialisms, for example the Ukraine crisis, Euro‐American interference in the Middle East
-    debris of empire, imperial ruinations
-    cycles and crisis: social, financial, personal
-    discourses of contemporaneity, i.e. the managerial/neoliberal rhetoric of ‘this is no longer of today’
-    utopias of timelessness, i.e. the Islamic State, populism, communism
-    theories and representations of end times, i.e. biological extinction, the end of capitalism, the end of the welfare state, eschatological imaginaries in popular culture
-    temporalities of precarity (flexibility, just-in-time, absent futures)
-    the withering away of ‘the future’ as universal telos in culture and theory
-    entropy in culture, economy and ecology
-    temporalities of security (pre-emption and precaution)
-    uneven development and creative destruction
-    homogenisation of time as effect and condition of the logic of capital

Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and short bio (max. 100 words) by 1 May 2016 to acgs-fgw@uva.nl. Notice of acceptance will be given by 15 June 2016. Conference fee: 50 Euros (25 Euros for PhD students). Conference dinner: 25 Euros.

Organisers: Joost de Bloois, Marieke de Goede, Yolande Jansen, Jeroen de
Kloet, Esther Peeren, Kati Röttger.