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Call For Papers for XII SAAS Conference

"A Return to (What Never Was) Normal: Discourses of (Ab)Normalcy in US Culture, Literature, Arts, and Politics; Past, Present, and Future"

PANEL 7

7) Posthumanism and the Return to Normal: Questions and Challenges
Panel Chair: Sonia Baelo-Allué, Universidad de Zaragoza
E-mail: baelo@unizar.es
 

The Humanistic ideal of "Man" as the measure of all things is captured in Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, a model of masculine bodily perfection and the emblem of Humanism. This classic humanist model of human perfection reduces those who do not fit the mainly white, Western, handsome, able-bodied, heterosexual ideal "to the less than human status of disposable bodies" (Braidotti 2013: 15). The posthuman conception of what it means to be human deviates from Humanism's restricted idea of the human as it rejects the self-centered individualism of the human subject and sees the organic body, the machine, and other material forms as relational, co-evolving and interdependent.

If the norm in the classic humanist model of "Man" is defined by the lack of markers of bodily difference such as sex, race, and ethnicity, what would a "return to normalcy" entail in our present context? Does the narrative of the "return to normalcy" reveal a discourse that advocates the conception of the human as autonomous and self-willed, dominating other life forms and defined by his exceptionality, rational thinking, uniqueness, and distinction from other life forms? Is it a return to the times when there was a clear body-mind distinction in which the mind held rationality and was the key to the human condition?

This panel welcomes proposals that approach the "return to normal" from a (post)human perspective and that explore what being posthuman entails in the context of the 21st century and in contemporary literary, filmic, and other artistic representations.

GUIDELINES FOR PARTICIPANTS

Abstracts of Proposals are to be e-mailed directly to the chair of the selected panel using this form. The deadline for submitting abstracts is October 15, 2022. Panel chairs are expected to accept/reject proposals and have panels set up by November 7.

Non-members of SAAS (of all nationalities) are welcome to participate in the conference, but will be required to pay membership dues for one year as well as the conference registration fee. Members of ASA (American Studies Association), AISNA (Associazione Italiana di Studi Nor-Americani), APEAA (Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies) and HELAAS (Hellenic Association for American Studies) need only pay the conference registration fee.

Further guideliness for participants can be found here.