London Conference in Critical Thought 2017

We are currently seeking proposals for a stream called "Radical Hospitality" at the 2017 London Conference in Critical Thought at London South Bank University.

RADICAL HOSPITALITY

Cecilia Canziani (Accademia di Belle Arti dell'Aquila) and Louise Garrett (Central Saint Martins)

This stream takes as its point of departure Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the historical and contemporary conditions of ‘hospitality’ in books such as On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness and Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond. Against Kant’s ‘perpetual peace’, Derrida reads ‘hospitality’ as an aporia – an im-possibility embedded within the categorical imperative of unconditional hospitality. Hospitality and cosmopolitanism has also been addressed by (among others) Hannah Arendt in relation to the space of politics, Edward Said in the frame of cultural translation and exile, and John Berger and Zygmunt Bauman in relation to the European project and migrant experience. How do the conditions of migration and exile now complicate and re-inscribe the range of perspectives discussed by these authors?

Derrida understood ‘hospitality’ as an interrogative term to consider both public space as a bounded zone, in which the stranger/foreigner (étranger) is subject to the codes, rules and regulations of its host (city or state), and the common right of any stranger to any space; that is, the ethical imperative that the host receives whatever and whomever enters its domain. We are interested in analysing and addressing the possibilities of such hyperbolic, radical and unconditional hospitality in terms of both historical and contemporary cultural contexts. Given the present European and American political turns, in an environment marked by the Syrian crisis, questions of the contingencies of hospitality, refuge and sanctuary are ever more urgent.

We anticipate interdisciplinary approaches that illuminate and re-evaluate the currency of ‘hospitality’ as a term to examine how public space is regulated by its authorities as well as ‘performed’ (and transgressed) by its users – guests and hosts.

This stream fosters current research and practice aimed at critically scoping and expanding concepts of ‘radical hospitality’ (in relation to space, mobility, migration, refuge, cosmopolitanism, travel, translation and related phenomena) in cultural contexts. Key considerations would include questions on how to operate in this increasingly fraught space of ongoing, contingent and restless translation and negotiation, in which the margins navigate and occupy the centres. Movement across borders, reorients ‘home’ as a space of coming and going, of ‘between-ness,’ of ‘unrest.’ How, then, is the potential of this space being articulated and utilised within cultural practices and spaces? How do we position ourselves or participate in this migratory space? Have participatory practices in art and politics been affected by the current scenario and do they have the potential to provoke new types of open, collaborative institutional and social structures? How do we act, hospitably, now? How does hospitality condition spatial politics? What is the law (or laws) of hospitality, and how do we negotiate its limits?

Using the ethics of ‘radical hospitality’, broadly understood, as a point of engagement or departure we would welcome papers proposing a wide variety of perspectives, including (but not restricted to) topics such as:

-what does ‘radical hospitality’ look like? How can the potentiality of ‘radical hospitality’ be imagined?
-friendship, solidarity and collective intention in relation to resistance and protest.
-artistic, curatorial and academic responsibilities and ethics in the frame of current political crises.
-story-telling, voice and listening.
-art and curatorial practices related to critical-spatial analysis spanning the visual arts, performance, sound, film, spoken word, design and architecture.
-hospitality in relation to participatory, collaborative, communal and activist art practice. Priority will be given to presentations of specific projects by artists, architects and designers (or collectives).
-hospitality and ethics of the curatorial.
-the problematics of translation in connection to social spaces – migrant spaces in particular – and the languages of hospitality.
-history/theory of law in relation to [the ethics of] hospitality, as well as papers on the current situation that highlight relations between law, hospitality, migration and the ‘refugee crisis’.
-philosophical questions related to the conditions and ethics of hospitality.
-economic or sociological perspectives on hospitality, social space and migration.
-ecologies of (radical) hospitality.

In addition to academic papers, we would welcome innovative or alternative forms of presentations, interventions or performances by individuals or groups.
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Please send paper/presentation proposals with the relevant stream indicated in the subject line to paper-subslondoncritical.org. Submissions should be no more than 250 words and should be received by the 31 March 2017.

For full details, visit: http://londoncritical.org/