[mscp] Contretemps 7: Sedition - second CFP

[Esther Anatolitis]

Contretemps 7: Sedition
Second call for papers

SEDITION: 'Conduct or language inciting to rebellion against the
constituted authority in a state.

Sedition poses immanent problems for liberal states. These states are
founded on principles of freedom of expression and individual liberty;
yet they draw the line at sedition. In denying individuals the right to
sedition, liberal states curtail their constitutive principles.
Ultimately, the problem posed by sedition is the problem of
distinguishing legal from illegal violence. If states come into being
through violence (either as a matter of historical fact or understood
‘transcendentally’, i.e., in the absence of any prior legitimation),
then a critical reflection on sedition inevitably questions the basis of
the modern legal-juridical order. 

Is the critique of sedition a seditious act? Or is sedition a
dialectical ruse of the state, a doubling that defines the object to
which the state is opposed? Is it possible, on the other hand, that
questioning the state is the wrong strategy; that we must learn to think
sedition otherwise than sovereignty and the state? What ethical status
may be granted to 'communities of sedition'? How have recent depictions
of sedition in art, literature, music and film challenged us to rethink
sedition in the name of positive social transformation and renewal? 

In the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere, a juridical
concept of sedition threatens to undermine or even criminalize
activities that might otherwise promote positive social transformation
and renewal. How might we recast the problem of sedition so as to
alleviate its sovereign violence? How might we rethink the problem of
sedition so as to liberate the critical and progressive (i.e., creative)
energies of society? 

Deadline: 1st August 2005
http://www.usyd.edu.au/contretemps/


e.

Esther Anatolitis
Co-Curator, RMIT Architecture+Philosophy series
http://www.architecturephilosophy.rmit.edu.au/

Editor, Contretemps
http://www.usyd.edu.au/contretemps/

General Manager and CEO, Express Media
http://www.expressmedia.org.au