This Conference is an invitation to collectively examine, critique, and, for the more daring, transform the imaginaries that constellate our grasp of reality and sustain the authority of law – from the racialised and gendered representations that give form and force to the colonial and patriarchal imaginaries of both North and South; to the configurations of sovereignty that are held together by the sociotechnical and technoscientific imaginaries of the Anthropocene; to the confined and confining figures of justice that populate the modern imaginaries of the state…
If the ‘imaginary’ is not so much a social context, which risks reification, nor an historical curiosity, which risks uncritical periodisation, then we might think of it as a fluid. We are immersed in it; it saturates everything; it is in the air that we breathe; but more like water to whales than quicksand to humans: inescapable, perhaps, yet nonetheless enabling of individual as well as collective forms of expression. As with any body of water, there are currents and eddies, particular ways of imagining that coalesce and recycle, for a moment, for a decade, for hundreds of years – but always with the potential for new ways of imagining to flow through.
Which is why, for every vortex(t) of ideas, tropes, desires and fears, which sucks us in and hold us down, there must be counter-currents – streams – to help move us in new directions. For the list of Streams, follow the link below. These provide the Conference sub-themes, helping to put papers in conversation with each other while creating ongoing conversations across sessions.
Submit a paper, panel or creative session by following the link below. Deadline for submissions is 15 July 2024.
This is an in-person conference. Unfortunately we are unable to host online sessions.
With keynotes by Dr Daniela Gandorfer, Prof Peter Goodrich, and Dr Kojo Koram, and other special events to be announced (for further information follow the link below).