Call for Papers

View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture
No. 14: "Refugees: Fugitive Images, Memory in Motion"

Managing editors: Iwona Kurz, Paweł Mościcki

Reecent discussions and conflicts around the phenomenon of mass migrations to Europe have been based to a large extent on the flood of provocative, shocking, or transgressive images which spread through the Internet, press and television. It seems difficult, if at all possible, to consider the “refugee question” without taking into consideration these visual representations circulating in different realms of the public sphere. They are never innocent, nor do they emerge and operate in a void. Oftentimes, the intentions behind them are these of ethical persuasion or ideological propaganda; they might also illustrate a universal thesis or serve as a weapon in an ongoing cultural war. There might, however, be something more to them.

In the upcoming issue of "View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture" we would like to reflect upon the kind of memory these images produce and carry with them. What does it mean to represent refugees visually? What kind of constellation of historical narratives and free associations do they form and what meanings – political, aesthetic, ethical – are being conceived on the way? How lengthy is the longue durée of our figurations of the foreigners who haunt Europe? What are the forms in which the past, both recent and distant, recurs in contemporary images of migration and how does it influence our conception of the present? What conflicts on the one hand, and what alliances on the other, can emerge through visual representation? Can one conceptualize such phenomenon as “refugee memory” or “refugee tradition”? We welcome texts inspired by the multiple relationships between visual culture and the question of migration (also, in a broader, historical perspective) with reference to the role of memory and its political uses and abuses.

Deadline for submissions: September 15, 2016

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