Bio-communism: Reconceptualizing Communism in the Age of Biopolitics
The organizers would like to invite interested academics,
students and independent thinkers from various fields to
submit their abstracts and to take part in our symposium
on the topic of Bio-communism. The symposium will take
place as a closed workshop with paper presentations by each
participant, and as such we do not expect the workshop to be
open to the general public. This format is chosen as we hope
it will facilitate closer cooperation and the creation of lasting
connections between the participants. We do however hope
to make the keynote addresses open to the public (keynote
speakers will be announced in early January).
CALL FOR ABSTRACT
By arranging this workshop we hope to facilitate an earnest
discussion on what the communist promise of emancipation
might mean in our post-(post?)-modern world. A world
which has increasingly become, at least in works of some
theorists, open to the possibility of recognizing both biological,
mechanical and ecological entities as acting both within and
upon it. Hence, under the umbrella term of Bio-communism,
we invite each participant to voice their vision, critique or
comment on the communist promise and how it could be
reconceptualised in a Bio-political age.
Such a discussion seems needed because of those present
conditions in which biological, ecological, and economic
catastrophes seem to multiply at an ever-increasing pace, and
because the status quo upheld by late capitalism has proven
itself ill-suited to respond to these calamities. We, therefore,
invite interested researchers, students, and independent
thinkers to answer our call for abstract and attempt to
reconceptualizing the communism promise of emancipation.
As an inspiration for topics we suggest the following list:
• alienation: biological and ecological perspectives
• species-being: is non-speciesist communism possible?
• species-being: is racism an integrated problem of Marxism?
• species-being: a perspective of contemporary Marxism
• the future of labour: in times of environmental catastrophe
reconceptualizing communism under new prefixes (eco-, bio-,
zoe-communism)
• utopian and dystopian visions of communism: possibilities of
the emancipation/enslavement of the human species
• biopolitics: governing population of whom (humans? nonhumans? or life itself?) biopower and its relation to alienation
• feminism: mutual influences of eco-feminism, new materialism
and Marxist theory