ABOUT
The Contagion and Containment Graduate Symposium has been made possible by the generous funding provided by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Latin American Cultural Studies Consortium. It is being organised by a committee of graduate students, as a one-day symposium to be held on the 21st May 2016 in Newnham College.
Contagion stems from the Latin con meaning ‘together with’ and tangere meaning ‘to touch’. Similarly, containment stems from con and tenere meaning ‘to hold’. Their shared prefix signals togetherness and their roots point to contact and connection, but contemporary uses of the terms often invoke separation and holding apart. In this conference we hope to grapple with the linguistic resonances, the historical development, and the current deployments of both terms: contagion and containment. We are particularly interested in touching on their ethical, political, sexual, and social implications.
Ideas of contagion and containment are of particular relevance in a world that is characterised by vertiginous globalisation in which the increased movement of people, capital, and information is faced with ever-evolving practices that strive to hold back these flows. The resurgence of barriers to contain what have been described xenophobically as ‘swarms of migrants’ is one of many such examples. Contagion and containment also appear within medical, scientific, financial and technological phenomena. For example, the use of the internet and social networks to spread political dissent is cited as justification for increased state surveillance of online activity. Entwined with the negative connotations of the terms, contagion is a provocative way of understanding intermediality, interdisciplinarity, and alternative models of human and non-human relations. For example, hybrid artistic practices such as pastiche, collage, and digital performance may reflect reconfigurations of subjectivity, intimacy, and community. In our analysis of contagion and containment, we hope to make connections between the abstract and the material, the technological and the affective, and the local and the global.
We invite paper proposals from researchers working in all disciplines. Aware of the contradictions in containing a debate about containment, we are ambivalently focussing the day's discussion on flows within and without the Iberian and Latin American context. Topics addressed throughout the event may include (but are not limited to):
The artwork has been generously provided by illustrator Jenny Robins.
Contagion stems from the Latin con meaning ‘together with’ and tangere meaning ‘to touch’. Similarly, containment stems from con and tenere meaning ‘to hold’. Their shared prefix signals togetherness and their roots point to contact and connection, but contemporary uses of the terms often invoke separation and holding apart. In this conference we hope to grapple with the linguistic resonances, the historical development, and the current deployments of both terms: contagion and containment. We are particularly interested in touching on their ethical, political, sexual, and social implications.
Ideas of contagion and containment are of particular relevance in a world that is characterised by vertiginous globalisation in which the increased movement of people, capital, and information is faced with ever-evolving practices that strive to hold back these flows. The resurgence of barriers to contain what have been described xenophobically as ‘swarms of migrants’ is one of many such examples. Contagion and containment also appear within medical, scientific, financial and technological phenomena. For example, the use of the internet and social networks to spread political dissent is cited as justification for increased state surveillance of online activity. Entwined with the negative connotations of the terms, contagion is a provocative way of understanding intermediality, interdisciplinarity, and alternative models of human and non-human relations. For example, hybrid artistic practices such as pastiche, collage, and digital performance may reflect reconfigurations of subjectivity, intimacy, and community. In our analysis of contagion and containment, we hope to make connections between the abstract and the material, the technological and the affective, and the local and the global.
We invite paper proposals from researchers working in all disciplines. Aware of the contradictions in containing a debate about containment, we are ambivalently focussing the day's discussion on flows within and without the Iberian and Latin American context. Topics addressed throughout the event may include (but are not limited to):
- migration, xenophobia, racism
- national identity
- the ‘trans-’ e.g. transnationality, transgenderism
- gender and sexuality
- virus, parasite, disease
- internet, social networks
- technological innovations and exploitations
- science-fiction and apocalyptic narratives
- financial crisis, financial contagion, neoliberalism
- class, property, privatisation, collectivisation
- activism, protest, resistance
- policing, surveillance, punitive practices
- ecology, environment, space
- dialects and varieties of language, code-switching
- translation, adaptation, fidelity
- rumour and gossip
- crime, criminality and innocence
The artwork has been generously provided by illustrator Jenny Robins.
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