th

29 ANNUAL M EETING O F THE SO C IETY F OR LITER AT URE, S CI ENC E AND THE ARTS

SLSA 2015

AFTER BIOPOLITICS      

NOVEMBER 12 – 15, 2015 3CT: CENTER FOR CRITICAL AND CULTURAL THEORY RICE UNIVERSITY HOUSTON, TEXAS

Over the past thirty years, no paradigm has become more central to understanding our own moment than the paradigm of biopolitics—a fact that has left hardly any discipline untouched, resulting in new formations such as bioart, bioethics, biotechnology, biomedia, biocapital, bioinformatics, biovalue, and biocomputing, among many others. The reasons for this are not far to seek: the engineering, canalization, domestication, and commodification of “life” in the era of “synthetic biology,” at a level scarcely thinkable fifty years ago; rapid depletion of the earth’s resources in the context of global warming in what used to be called the “first world”; seemingly endless debates over the political and economic complexities of healthcare, social security, lengthening retirement ages and dwindling personal savings rates in the developed West; confrontations over abortion and immigration in the United States, in which the concepts of “life” and “race” are never far from view; the unequal global distribution of access to medical care and medical technologies at the very moment when pharmaceutical industries have never been more deeply woven into daily life in the developed West (or more profitable); and the post-9/11 context of the “war on terror” and ongoing anxieties about security and borders resulting in the normalization of spaces and practices of juridical “exception” such as Guantanamo Bay, drone warfare, and electronic surveillance at a level heretofore unknown, all revolving around a logic whose biological underpinnings reach back to the very origins of the biopolitical in the concept of the “body politic.” Add to these an increasing awareness (in no small part under the pressure of global warming and the emergent paradigm of the “Anthropocene”) of the plight of non-human life (whether in discussions of animal rights, factory farming, and the bioengineering of non-human creatures, or in the increasingly undeniable fact of the sixth major extinction event in the history of the planet) and how deeply imbricated t is with the plight of the human and its technology, and you have ample grounds to understand why “life” (in the broadest sense) has become the central object of politics over the past few decades. In the face of such developments, the conference theme, “After Biopolitics,” seeks to reexamine the theoretical, cultural, social, and political underpinnings of the biopolitical paradigm, and to explore conceptual resources (both within and outside of the biopolitical paradigm) for the possibility of thinking what has been called an “affirmative” biopolitics that views the intersection of “Life” and the political as a potential space of affinity, community, and creativity, rather than the “thanatopolitics” that has dominated the biopolitical paradigm thus far.

POTENTIAL TOPICS The concept of “Life” Immunitary and autoimmunitary paradigms of biopolitics Race, species, and biopolitics States of exception: theoretical and historical dimensions Bioengineering life Biomedia and bioart Biopolitics and the Anthropocene The politics of medicalization and the Medical Humanities The biopolitics of foodways “Letting die”: the biopolitics of extinction Biopolitics and the ecological paradigm Biopolitics and genocide “Making live”: biopolitics, health, and hygiene Neoliberalism and biopolitics The concept of sovereignty in biopolitical thought Biopolitical histories of race, gender, and sexuality Genetics, epigenetics, and biopolitics “Flesh”: concepts of the body and embodiment in biopoltics Imagining affirmative biopolitical futures These and other topics related to the theme will be welcome. As always, the conference of the Society for Literature, Society, and the Arts is open to wide range of related topics drawn from a broad array of scholarly and creative disciplines and practices that are relevant to the mission of the organization.   SUBMISSIONS   For   individual   paper   contributions,   submit   a   250-­‐word   abstract   with   title.     Pre-­‐organized   panel   submissions,   which   might   include  three  or  four  papers  per  panel,  should  include  an  additional  paragraph  describing  the  rubric  and  proposed  title  of  the   panel.     Roundtables,   alternative   format   panels,   and   the   like   are   encouraged.   Submit   all   proposals   and   register   for   the   conference  at  http://litsciarts.org/slsa15.     Paper/Panel  Proposal  Due  Date:  April  1 ,  2015                                                                            Notification  of  Acceptance:  June  1,  2015     SLSA  Membership:     Participants  in  the  2015  Conference  must  be  2015  members  of  the  Society   for   Literature,  Science,  and  the   Arts.    For  more   information  about  joining  SLSA,  visit  the  organization’s  website  at  www.litsciarts.org.     CONFERENCE  REGISTRATION:       To   reserve   a   spot   on   the   program,   attendees   must   register   by   September   15,   2015.   Late   registrations   will   incur   an   additional  fee  o f  $75  .    Registration  for  the  conference  is  available  at  http://litsciarts.org/slsa15.    

  ordin ato rs: Site Co Cary Wolfe, Founding Director, 3CT; Maria Whiteman, Independent Scholar and Artist Thien Le, 3CT Events Coordinator Pro gram C hairs : Cary Wolfe and Maria Whiteman