[D-G] paper proposals... from Foucault list

[.+oot7AM martini]

Annual Meeting of the Association for American Geographers, San
Francisco
April 17-21, 2007
Paper session proposal

Deleuze in the geography of race

Some feminists have used Gilles Deleuze's philosophy fruitfully to
take issue with critical theory's  emphasis on language and psyche at
the expense of the biological body. So what can Deleuze contribute to
understanding race relations? What kind of spatiality does he offer,
and does it allow for appreciating the turbulent and violent ways
that bodies are discriminated under racism? The benefits of Deleuze
and his collaborator Félix Guattari for studying spatial relations
and movement is attested by the diffusion of some of their themes
(territorialization, rhizome, nomad, smooth/striated, affect,
topology, machinic assemblage, event, fold). The four books written
by Deleuze and Guattari contain many seldom discussed discussions of
fascism, colonization and the nation-state. On the whole Deleuze and
Guattari are cognizant of the postcolonial capitalist situation which
enables white men to exploit as well as fear others. In commentary,
however, how the global geographies of racism and patriarchy remain
in place despite or because of their leakages, is not fully
clarified. A careful mapping of how racism works in a
Deleuzoguattarian framework – through capital, fantasy and phenotypic
difference – is very much due. Since the literature on Deleuze and
race is fragmented, the session welcomes a diversity of contributions
and cases. Papers could place a Deleuzian take on race aside or
against other thinkers (Fanon, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Butler,
Glissant, Agamben, Badiou). Whether the spatialities of race are
approached through political economy, biogeography or literary
criticism, perhaps Deleuze can loosely knot these approaches together.

Send your title and abstract to Arun Saldanha, saldanha at umn.edu.

arun saldanha
geography
university of minnesota

432 social sciences
267 19th av s
minneapolis mn 55455
usa

ph  (1) 612-625-9660
fax  (1) 612-624-1044


everything that cannot be understood does
nevertheless not cease to exist
(pascal, pensées § 261)