The University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
In this workshop, we seek to explore how a decidedly materialist approach to discourse can be put into practice. Bringing together contributions from a range of disciplines, we will think through the methodological implications materialism has for Discourse Studies, and vice versa.
From the beginning, discourse analysis (in the broadest sense of the term, as an approach at the intersections of language, politics, and society) and materialism have been intimately connected. Constituting a relationship of varying intensity and visibility, this entanglement is for example present in Marxist critique of ideology, materialist semiotics, Russian formalism, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, or ‘French’ structural Marxism and discourse analysis. This highly diverse field continues to provide different strands of discourse analysis with a complex, in many ways even contradictory notions of materialism, ranging from essentialist/substantialist, over dialectical, to post-representationalist ones. The issue is further complicated by the construction of alleged incompatibilities (for example between ‘materialism’ and ‘post-structuralism’) and a battery of dichotomies (materiality/discourse, discourse/reality, language/materiality, language/reality, etc.), which constitute a prominent focus of theoretical debates. Especially with the emergence of New Materialism, material semiotics, or material culture studies and a renewed interest in the materiality of discursive, social, and political realities, what exactly ‘materialism’ denotes has become the subject of intense debate in the social sciences and humanities again.
Particularly the methodological consequences to be drawn from a decidedly materialist perspective on discourse remain rather opaque, and are rarely explored systematically. Therefore, the workshop will constitute a space to discuss practical implementations of discourse analysis as a materialist method.
We invite proposals that
● explore this issue against the background of concrete examples from a broad range of subject areas
● and in relation to a range of different theoretical frameworks, which are animated by a critical and/or interventionist impetus
Contributions could address (but are not limited to) the following aspects:
● What qualifies a discourse analytical method as materialist?
● The methodological and epistemological implications materialisms have for discourse analytical methods
● Analysing the materiality of discourse, and the discourse on materiality
● Materialist approaches to the study of subjectivation and ideology
● Materialist methodologies within praxeological and pragmatic approaches to discourse
● Post-representationalist and -foundationalist methods of discourse analysis
● Trajectories of materialism in discourse-analytical methods and the historical relation between materialism and discourse analysis
● De-colonial and non-western methods of materialist discourse analysis
● Feminist-materialist methodologies and epistemologies
● Discourse-analytical methods that rework prominent Marxist categories, such as class(,) struggle, production, reproduction, accumulation, or crisis
We look forward to submissions that reflect on the implications of the chosen aspect(s) for their own research and/or political practice. Contributions from researchers or collectives without formal academic affiliation are explicitly welcome. A small quantity of travel grants is available for participants without access to institutional funding. Please mention your requirements alongside your application, we will then get in touch and discuss possibilities.
The goal of the workshop is to work towards an edited volume that takes stock and explores materialist methodologies in the field of Discourse Studies. Papers for publication will be selected on the basis of the participants’ submission and the discussion at the workshop.
Please submit your abstract (of no more than 400 words) and a short bio by January 18, 2016 to
materialistdiscourse@warwick.ac.uk
Papers (of no more than 5000 words) should be submitted 10 days before the workshop. Please note that it is crucial to adhere to this deadline in order to be considered for the publication.
Johannes Beetz, CAL, University of Warwick
Veit Schwab, CAL & PAIS, University of Warwick
Veit Schwab