In recent years, Affect Theory, the New Materialism, and the progressive politics so often attached to these forms of thinking have productively taken us outside of ourselves to think the object, ecology, geological histories, planetary matters, and so on. Yet humanist agency and value tends to creep back in despite the best of intentions. Mosaic invites innovative and interdisciplinary submissions on Materialities of Thinking that address such limit cases as well as escape this capture. As a collaboration between an art historian and a philosopher, this project concerns itself with ways of thinking which materialize beyond the purview of consciousness and the defaults of our cognitive ecologies. We are especially interested in strands of thinking where the “guiding thread of the body” (Nietzsche) departs from the values of humanism and the hungry dialectics of embodiment and personhood. In addition to reflection on the heterogeneous temporalities which produce human, animal and plant populations and their network of interactions, we suggest that material thinking calls for critical engagement with the repurposing of biology as technology and its rapid re-engineering of the natural. Now more than ever, policing the discursive thresholds of our interest in a non-humanist vocabulary is itself one of the key challenges for thinking about nature and the body in our rapidly changing world. What kind of vocabulary is proper to articulating our immanent activity in the world? Can we move beyond the tensions that emerge between progressive politics grounded in embodied thinking and the values of identity politics? Where does one look for examples to follow? We invite contributions in philosophy, science, literature, Indigenous Studies, environmentalism, Affect Theory, the New Materialism, and grass roots activism.
Deadline: April 30, 2024
View the full details of this call for submissions as a pdf file:
Featuring the work of Rodney Graham on its cover and a discography by David Wisdom based on conversations with the late artist, Mosaic 54.4 includes essays on Nordic Noir, shame culture, heterotopia, trauma, celebrity, ontological angst, and dystopian athletics.
Start your one-year subscription to Mosaic now and receive 50% off one of our special issues. Or start a two-year subscription and receive one of these issues free!
Choose from the following special issues:
Political Animal(s) (Jun 2020)
Emerging Scholar Essay Prize (Mar 2020)
Living On (Dec 2018)
Scale (Sep 2018)
Letters (Sep 2017)
Featuring: Rebecca Comay (Jun 2017)
The Mosaic Interviews (Mar 2017)
A matter of lifedeath III (Dec 2015)
A matter of lifedeath II (Sep 2015)
A matter of lifedeath I (Jun 2015)
Romance (Jun 2014)
Blindness (Sep 2013)
Freud After Derrida, Part II (Dec 2011)
Freud After Derrida Proceedings Issue, Part 1 (Sep 2011)
Kristin Linklater / The Santorini Voice Symposium (Mar 2011)
Sculpture (Jun 2010)
A discount is always available to academic students (must specify school to qualify).