The Imaginaries of nature and its effects on reality – call for papers im@go n. 15

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The Imaginaries of nature and its effects on reality – call for papers im@go n. 15

The Imaginaries of nature and its effects on reality – call for papers im@go n. 15

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Editors: Pier Luca Marzo / Antonio Camorrino

The term ‘nature’ connotes much more than the body and the great expanses beyond – where flowers bloom. As Rilke suggests, our seemingly immediate/straightforward/direct experience of nature is always mediated by a certain vision of the world. Therefore, we should understand, comprehend and appreciate nature as a sophisticated artefact of the social imagination; one that has the power to disguise its social origins and not to appear as such. However, in order to reveal the artificial character of the natural, it is necessary to bring to light the complexity of the meanings conveyed by mythical-religious cosmogonies; legal-natural political doctrines; the paradigms of the natural sciences; aesthetic representations of the landscapes; by body technologies and economic, action-driven, meanings. Each of these imaginaries finds its common primary function in fabricating – albeit through irreducible visions – a symbolic place where vital and social processes enter into mutual relations, thereby providing nature with a specifically social sense. It is from this sense that – in the manner of a ‘flowering’ – social-historical worlds inexhaustibly blossom. Therefore, in line with Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, our understanding of nature is always constructed in a certain vision of the natural.

Im@go n.15 welcomes contributions aimed at identifying, investigating and understanding the imaginaries of nature and their reality effects in the context of contemporary social life. This interest has been stimulated by the collective effervescence produced by the “return of nature” in many different arenas of global civil society. But its importance is most clearly seen in the anxieties surrounding environmental imbalances and the problematic of self and its well-being produced by the capitalist exploitation of the planet.  In addition, the imaginary of nature is also revealed in the techno-scientific redefinition of life and the valoriszation of consumer goods in new green/bio/organic/eco-sustainable discourses.  Also important in this regard are the new social formations premised upon: the re-sacralization of nature – an unprecedented/novel manifestation of “collective consciousness”; the end, or perhaps in the renewal, of the anthropocentric world-view; in daily lifestyles and practices; and in aesthetic languages and the rhetorics of politics.

Although these effects can be detected primarily at the level of daily life, these phenomena inevitably also resonate at the global level, raising important questions, such as: what specific imaginaries are involved in the “return of nature”? From what tensions, conflicts and hopes do these imaginaries emerge? Where can we locate boundary between nature and artifice (if there is one) – and how have the sciences conceived designed it? Last, but not least, what metamorphoses do these imaginaries undergo as they come inform social reality?

The aim of Im@go 15 is to explore these questions through transdisciplinary proposals as well as by means of more familiar theoretical and empirical approaches. Proposals may be submitted in Italian, English, French and Spanish and sent simultaneously to: rivistaimago @ gmail.com; antonio.camorrino @ unina.it; marzop @ unime.it.

  • Deadline for the submission of abstracts: February 29th, 2020
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: March 9th, 2020
  • Preliminary papers to the editors: May 10th, 2020
  • Revised peer-reviews papers to the editors: June 14th, 2020
  • Publication: July, 2020

 

Data e ora

29-02-2020 to
29-02-2020
 

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