[spectre] CFP ATOPIA 11: straits/estrechos/stretti/engführungen/détroits

[Emanuel Alloa]

ATOPIA – The polylogic e-zine –

Philosophy, literature, arts and politics

http://www.atopia.tk





Call for Papers



ATOPIA 11: straits/estrechos/stretti/engführungen/détroits







Neoliberal rhetoric would have us believe that we are living in a borderless 
world of free circulation; a world in which goods and persons may migrate 
and fluctuate across the globe almost as if they were particles striving for 
perfect distribution in perfect homeostatic aggregations.  However, the 
exchange of goods (both material and immaterial), of means, and of people 
across very real physical geographies hardly corresponds to such an image.  
The flows of global goods and humans converge at certain physical and 
systemic straits where these fluxes condense, swell, bottleneck, and become 
tangible.  The geophysical limitations of these maritime and terrestrial 
straits do not simply indicate that a global market past physical 
restriction has yet to be fully realized; they are also the guarantors of 
that market despite the inequalities it produces.



Often enough, straits imply a political canalization and thus become an 
instrument of identification and selection, which itself has a long history. 
  After the initial euphoria of the age of discovery, passengers leaving for 
the New World from Spanish ports of call had to go through precise 
identification practices as early as the mid-16th century, practices that 
their European descendants renewed in the 20th century when they were 
gathered at entry-points like Ellis Island.



Thus, since the early modern period, the more geographical mobility has 
become available, the more its political implications have become evident.  
Suez and Panama not only stand for further achievements on the way to 
unimpeded world-wide circulation, they have also become markers of strict 
regulation.  These narrows —zones of passage and transit spaces that 
simultaneously circumscribe and restrict exchange— ought to be part of our 
attention now even more than ever, as they are the place where the actual 
mechanisms of globalization become visible.



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Please write a short proposal for your submission (max 300 words), 
indicating in which of the ATOPIA languages you will write the article 
(English, French, German, Italian or Spanish) and submit it to the Board of 
Editors until April 15th 2007. 
http://www.atopia.tk/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&contact_id=1&Itemid=40

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