[Nettime-bold] M/C Calls for Contributors: 'fear' issue and other issues in 2002

["M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture" <mc@media-culture.org.au>]

This posting contains calls for contributors for the upcoming issues of
M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture:


                   M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture
                    <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>

                          Call for Contributors

The University of Queensland's award-winning journal of media and culture,
M/C, is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between
the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal.

To see what M/C is all about, check out our Website, which contains all the
issues released so far, at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. To find
out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit
<http://www.media-culture.org.au/contribute.html>. We're also welcoming
submissions to our sister publication M/C Reviews, an ongoing series of
reviews of events in culture and the media. M/C Reviews is available at
<http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/>.

We are now accepting submissions for the following issue:

                'fear' - article deadline: 21 January 2002
                       issue editor: Angi Buettner

As Brian Massumi pointed out in The Politics of Everyday Fear, there is
nothing new about the fact that "fear is a staple of popular culture and
politics". This was in 1993 and today "fear" is no less pervasive as a
global cultural commodity. For a privileged group of people "fear" is
something that can be purchased and actively sought out "for fun"; in
horror films, extreme sports, or travel to "the world's most dangerous
places", equipped with the notorious Worst Case Scenario Handbook. Yet, for
numberless people "fear" is not something to be consumed but a life-
threatening reality imposed on them.

The new virility and magnitude of recent terrorist attacks and acts of war
since September 11 re-ignited the awareness of the material and political
dimensions of "fear". Fear is a forceful tool for exercising power – used
on both sides of oppositional power relations. Certain dialectic
configurations immediately come to mind, such as fear and nation-states or
fear and capitalism. Human history is replete with fears of various
manifestations. Fear of witches, gay people, women, racial or ethnic
"others", as well as fear of natural disasters or the invisible germs of
biological warfare or terrorism are but a few examples of scares throughout
the times. The disconcerting immigration politics currently discussed in
Geneva at the UN Commission for Refugees (initiated by the Australian
immigration minister Phillip Ruddock) are only one of the most recent
political effects of "fear".

What are the fears and their materializations, and how are they mobilised
in ways that constitute our contemporary cultural and political landscape?
What kind of thing is this globally circulating figure and reality, and is
its flow different from other forms of cultural commodities? And, not to
forget, what role do the mass media play in this? We welcome contributions
on these or any other questions you can think of.

                   issue release date: 13 February 2002

Further issue topics for 2002:

'urban'       (deadline 11 Mar. / release 10 Apr.)
'colour'      (deadline  6 May  / release  5 June)
'loop'        (deadline  1 July / release 31 July)
'self'        (deadline 26 Aug. / release 25 Sep.)
'love'        (deadline 21 Oct. / release 20 Nov.)


                                                     Axel Bruns

--
 M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture            mc@media-culture.org.au
 The University of Queensland           http://www.media-culture.org.au/


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold