[Reader-list] Call for Contributions to Sarai Reader 06: Turbulence

[Monica Narula]

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO SARAI READER O6: TURBULENCE

I. Introducing the Sarai Reader

Sarai, (www.sarai.net) an interdisciplinary research and practice 
programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies invites 
contributions to Sarai Reader 06: Turbulence.

We also invite proposals to initiate and moderate discussions on the 
themes  of the Sarai Reader 06 on the Reader List 
(http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list) with a view to 
the  moderator(s) editing the transcripts of these discussions for 
publication in Sarai Reader 06.

For an outline of the themes and concerns of Sarai Reader 06, see the 
Concept Outline below (section II). To know about the format of the 
articles that we invite, see 'Guidelines for Submissions' (sections 
III and IV) below.

This year, the Sarai Reader has been invited to participate in the 
'Journal of Journals' magazine project of Documenta 12. (see 
http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/magazine.htm).
Content from Sarai Reader 06 will be selected by the Sarai editorial 
collective to be published online on the Documenta 12 Magazine 
webpage.

The Sarai Reader is an annual publication produced by Sarai/CSDS 
(Delhi). The contents of the Sarai Readers are available for free 
download from the Sarai website 
(http://www.sarai.net/journal/journal.htm)

Previous Readers have included: 'The Public Domain', 2001; 'The 
Cities of Everyday Life', 2002; 'Shaping Technologies', 2003; 
'Crisis/Media', 2004; and 'Bare Acts', 2005.

The Sarai Reader series aims at bringing together original, 
thoughtful, critical, reflective, well-researched and provocative 
texts and essays by theorists, practitioners and activists, grouped 
under a core theme that expresses the interests of the Sarai in 
issues that relate media, information and society in the contemporary 
world. The Sarai Readers have a wide international readership.

Editorial Collective: Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Ravi Sundaram, 
Ravi Vasudevan, Awadhendra Sharan, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, 
(Sarai-CSDS, Delhi) + Geert Lovink  (Institute of Network Cultures, 
Amsterdam)

II. Turbulence

The past decade has opened up a series of transformations that seem 
to define (cumulatively) the contemporary, even as they themselves 
defy definition by virtue of the speed and immediacy with which they 
have made themselves manifest. Every mythic moment has begotten its 
Faustian other; globalisation produced counter-globalisation, the 
crisis of the US empire was exposed on September 11th and the 
quagmire in Iraq, the world of Islam is torn apart by internal strife 
and humiliation, the global West makes way for global China. 
Sovereignty, that old pillar of the modern state, stands in ruins, 
along with all stable social theories of the world, citizenship, the 
university and liberal doctrines of rights. Property, the legal form 
of capital is under attack, not only from labour but also from the 
mode of circulation and re-production. The kingdom of Piracy 
threatens the kingdom of Property. Massacres, media events, commodity 
fetishisms, security analysts and scam artists all clog the airwaves 
and the internet. In this world of exhilaration, death and survival, 
new practices have sought to define themselves, refusing to fall 
within old redemptive modes.

We want to invite the practitioners of these new practices, some of 
whom may be audacious even as others may be tentative, wherever in 
the world they may be located, whether in the domains of theory, 
research, contemporary art, media, information and software design, 
politics or commentary to join us in  Sarai Reader 06. You are 
invited to contribute through essays, dialogues, arguments, 
interviews, photographs, image-text combinations, comics, art-works, 
diary entries, research reports, commentaries and manifestos that can 
evoke the idea of Turbulence in all its myriad dimensions.

The Sarai Reader 6 uses 'Turbulence' as a conceptual vantage point to 
interrogate all that is in the throes of terminal crisis, and to 
invoke all that is as yet unborn. The Reader seeks  to examine 
'turbulence' as a global phenomenon, unbounded by the lines that 
denote national and state boundaries in a 'political' map of the 
world. We want to see areas of low and high pressure in politics, 
economy and culture that transcend borders; we want to investigate 
the flow of information and processes between downstream and upstream 
sites in societies and cultures globally; we want to witness surges 
and waves in ideas and practices as they crash against the shorelines 
of many dispersed locations. We want to inhabit moments of stillness 
and investigate the conditions that determine stasis, in the middle 
of a tremendous surge of movement.

A rough and ready list of questions and concepts that Sarai Reader 06 
wants to take on could be as follows:

>  How do we anticipate, recover from and remember moments of sudden 
>transformation? These moments could be anything from popular 
>uprisings, natural disasters, to an unexpected turn in a football 
>game.

>  Are there one, two, three, many globalizations?

>  Have the established categories of East and West, North and South 
>been thrown into confusion in the contemporary?

>  The earlier histories of the resolution of the crisis of property 
>are replete with violence. How does the current crisis of property, 
>in the wake of copy culture, play itself out?

>  Does the return of epidemics and natural disasters into our 
>consciousness imply the end of the grand modernist dream of immunity 
>from nature?

>  How do cities deal with the accumulation of complex infrastructural 
>uncertainty? What happens when urban chaos strikes back at urban 
>planning?

>  What does it mean to know and experience the pull of undercurrents 
>- in society, politics, the economy? How can we map the subterranean 
>tectonic shifts and displacements that occur in culture and 
>intellectual life?

>  What happens to the authority of the intellectual in the current 
>context of turbulence? How is the intellectual's authority eroded, 
>or sought to be shored up, when assailed by uncertainty, and the 
>rise of new networks of the generation and circulation of knowledge?

>  What does it take from us to tell stories, enact performances, make 
>images and record experiences in the wake of turbulence?

>  What are the histories of anxiety, exhilaration, dread, panic, 
>ecstasy, disorientation and boredom like? How can we begin to 
>narrate these histories?

>  How do we deal with the simultaneous pressures of knowing too much 
>or the anxiety of knowing too little about the world?

>  What does the consciousness of changing geo-political and economic 
>scenarios mean at the level of the street; how do we account for the 
>rise of 'Global China'?

As in all Sarai readers we will feel free to innovate thematically. 
It is an invitation to an unconventional world of knowledge, and to 
unconventional producers of ideas. It is an invitation to be agile, 
mobile, versatile and flexible in forms of thought and creativity to 
navigate the tumult of the present moment.

III. Guidelines for Submissions

Word Limit: 1500 - 4000 words

1. Submissions may be scholarly, journalistic, or literary - or a mix 
of these, in the form of essays, papers, interviews, online 
discussions or diary entries. They could also be only image or 
image-text essays. All submissions, unless specifically solicited, 
must be in English.

2. Submissions must be sent by email as txt, or rtf, or MS Word 
document or Open Office attachments. Articles may be accompanied by 
black and white photographs or drawings submitted in the tif format.

3. We urge writers to follow the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) in 
terms of footnotes, annotations and references. For more details 
about the CMS and an updated list of Frequently Asked Questions, see 
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html

For a 'Quick Reference Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style' 
especially relevant for citation style, see 
http://www.library.wwu.edu/ref/Refhome/chicago.html

4. All contributions should be accompanied by a three/four line text 
introducing the author, as well as an email address.

5. All submissions will be read by the Editorial Collective before 
the final selection is made. The editorial collective reserves the 
right not to publish any material sent to it on stylistic or 
editorial grounds. All contributors will be informed of the final 
decisions of the editorial collective.

6. Copyright for all accepted contributions will remain with the 
authors, but Sarai reserves indefinitely the right to place any of 
the material accepted for publication on the public domain in print 
or electronic forms, and on the internet.

7. Accepted submissions will not be paid for, but authors are 
guaranteed a wide international readership. The Reader will be 
published in print, distributed in India and internationally, and 
will also be uploaded in a pdf form on to the Sarai website. All 
contributors whose work has been accepted for publication will 
receive two copies of the Reader.

IV. Where and When to send your Contributions

Last date for submission: December 31st 2005. [Please write and send 
as soon as possible, preferably, latest by the 15th of November, 
2005,  a brief outline/abstract, not more than one page, of what you 
want to write about; this helps in designing the content of the 
Reader]. We expect to have the reader published by the end of 
February 2006.

Please send in your outlines and abstracts, and images/graphic material to:

1. For articles to Shuddhabrata Sengupta (shuddha at sarai.net)

2. For proposals to moderate online discussions on the Reader List to 
Monica Narula (monica at sarai.net)

3. For images and/or graphic material to Monica Narula (monica at sarai.net)

-- 
Monica Narula [Raqs Media Collective]
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net