FLUID CIRCUITS:  CULTURES OF KNOWLEDGE AFTER THE DIGITAL TURN

The IACS network is now over two decades old, and this is the first time the IACS biennial conference is being held in the Philippines. It is also only the third time the conference has come to South-East Asia, after Singapore 2013 and Surabaya 2015.

Powered by the notion of ‘South-East-Asia’ as a cultural and political imaginary, this IACS Conference dwells on the complexities and possibilities of connection – over water, land, air and cyberspace. An archipelagic gravity contributes to grounding the subterranean flows that have marked the region for centuries, and that take on other dimensions under newer regimes of globalization. As twentieth-century concerns about rights, citizenship, nationalism, and cultural identity are replayed and transformed in the twenty-first, and in the digital realm, the landscape of the region, and the geographies of Inter-Asia involvement, are re-configured. At the same time, the emergent dystopias and promises afforded by the digital present themselves for our reckoning. As older ways of thinking about self and society give way to identities converging in and through these ‘fluid circuits’ of dis/connection, how may we re-imagine the task of cultural studies?

From the perspective of key concerns of Philippine cultural politics, we present a set of thematics through which we invite conference participants to situate their work and engage with our common issues.

Keynote Speakers: 

• Vicente Rafael (University of Washington)
• Caroline Hau (Kyoto University)
• Patrick Flores (University of the Philippines)

Plenary Panels: 

• Gender, Sexuality, Identity: J. Neil Garcia, Audrey Yue, Ding Naifei
• Politics of Language and Translation: Ramon Guillermo, Tejaswini Niranjana, Hsing-wen Chang
• Techno-cultures: Nishant Shah, Jonathan Ong, Amie Parry
• Special IACS 20th Anniversary Plenary: Kuan-Hsing Chen, Meaghan Morris, Chua Beng Huat

Sub-themes:

• Art-making in the 21st Century: Practices, Traditions, Futures
• Catastrophe and Resilience
• Cultural Politics of Tourism and Heritage
• Archiving Local Knowledges
• Post-Cold-War geo-politics
• Cultural Policy and Community
• Film, Media and Cultural Change
• Social Media and Technologies of Intimacy
• Gender and Religious Identity
• Cyber-politics and the Cultures of Governance

A. Individual Papers

• While we prefer panel proposals, we will be accepting individual paper proposals, on condition that author(s) would accept our decision on the organization of relevant papers into panels and the right to reorganize panels due to withdrawals and other contingencies
• Individual paper proposals must be submitted electronically via the below submission system.
• Before starting the below proposal submission, please prepare details to fill in proposal application form: paper title, 300 word abstract, participant’ name, institution, email, and nationality.

B. RoundTables

• Roundtables allow a group of participants to convene with the goal of generating discussion around a shared concern. Roundtables are limited to no more than five participants, including the organizer. We encourage roundtables involving participants from different institutions, organizations, and countries.
• Proposals for roundtables must include: roundtable title; a description of the position statements, questions, or debates that will be under discussion; and the names, titles, affiliations, email addresses, nationalities of the proposed roundtable organiser and participants.

IMPORTANT DATES