August 23rd 2021. Due to the on-going pandemic, the first Denemes workshop took place in a much reduced and lighter version than planned. The event was nevertheless a refreshing intellectual meeting with wonderful presentations ranging from empires and nationalism to the politics of labor and temporality. Hopefully next year the workshop can finally take place in full strength.
Denemes Workshop has been postponed until summer 2021. More info to follow later.
Due to the pandemic and especially work and travel uncertainties, such as university support for participation, the Denemes Workshop has been postponed until summer 2021. More info to follow by January 2021.
For those who may be in Istanbul in late August 2020 and were considering participation, do contact us at denemes.workshop@gmail.com as a smaller event may still take place.
Deadline Extended till 31st of May
Due to current uncertainties around travel we are extending the deadline for abstract submissions for the Denemes workshop. The expectation and hope is that by the end of August travel would be possible and the workshop could be arranged. We hope to know more by late May.
Please submit your abstract or preliminary presentation title by May 31st 2020. Mention also your institutional affiliation. Email: denemes.workshop@gmail.com
Denemes Workshop 2020
Denemes Workshop in Critical Analysis of Socio-Historical Formations forthcoming in August/September 2020
Keydates:
- May 31st 2020: Deadline to send expressions of interest and research/presentation ideas to denemes.workshop@gmail.com
- mid-June 2020: Confirmation of acceptance and participation
- Early August 2020: Deadline to submit short papers for pre-circulation
Workshop Call for Papers
August 31. – September 2. 2020
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
Denemes in Critical Analysis of Socio-Historical Formations
The denemes workshop aims to critique, question, unpack and engage socio-historical formations and their emergence, reproduction, transformation, or destruction in methodologically or theoretically critical, experiential, experimental, pluralistic, or creative ways. A deneme means a try-out, attempt, essay, experiment…
Rather than presenting established results, the workshop hopes to create a space for meeting and exchange of ideas for scholars engaged in developing and exploring questions of what are critical socio-historical formations and temporalities in interconnected global and local contexts and around various themes that range from inter-imperiality, symbolic violence, decoloniality and political and democratic representations to the use and abuse of power and capital(s) as well as the mobilization of national, racial, gendered and colonial epistemes and the politics of history, memory, and future.
Motivation
“In ‘social formations’ one is dealing with complexly structured societies composed of economic, political and ideological relations, where the different levels of articulation do not by any means simply correspond or ‘mirror’ one another, but which are – in Althusser’s felicitous metaphor – ‘over-determining’ on and for one another (Hall, 1986, 12).”
The levels of articulation of socio-historical formations that Stuart Hall writes of are not separate from issues of epistemology, methodology, and theory in social sciences and history. On the contrary, they extend to and penetrate them, especially in relation to self-reflexivity in formulating critical analysis (or analytical critique), in defining and identifying relevant socio-historical formations, and in formulating arguments for observing the exceptional, challenging simplification, connecting the unobvious, overcoming narrative and causal exclusions, and contextualizing or historicizing knowledge.
The impetus for the Denemes meeting then arises from witnessing increased efforts in socio-historical sciences to critically reflect on and address the foundations of disciplinary practices regarding their own historical entanglements with some and resulting blindspots with other socio-historical formations. However, we remain critical about these efforts’ consequences, and worry that many of these critical insights become undermined through appropriation by existing disciplinary and knowledge structures in inconsequential ways. Denemes hopes to provide a space at once both critical and free of such pitfalls and the restrictions of disciplinary realities. A meeting that could foster new ideas and connections.
Problem
Indeed, a rising tide of critical scholarship has aimed to develop ways in which we could better understand social and historical sciences’ and scientists’ own entanglements in historical and present imperiality, symbolic power, and inequalities. But problems and pitfalls remain. In describing them, we turn to examples from sociologist Gurminder Bhambra’s work on her own discipline, but do not mean to limit ourselves to that discipline. Indeed, we believe that similar problems, perhaps with different nuances, are pertinent to all socio-historical analysis.
In sociology, increased self-reflexivity and immanent disciplinary critique have not yielded serious changes to the problems they have identified, such as canonical exclusions, Eurocentrism, and the valuation of certain empirical questions, perspectives or geographies over others. “Given that the deficiencies and inadequacies of the existing paradigm have been noted and articulated over a number of decades and there still is empirical contestation of the arguments being made, the question then arises – on what basis do practitioners … continue to act as if the critique had not been made?” (Bhambra 2016, 337).
On the other hand, disregarding these inherent biases and power structures of our disciplines and just focusing on empirical relations and cases that challenge them or have been overlooked by them has its own risks. For one, it may cast those unobserved or disregarded empirics as supposedly incommensurable with others; as specialized or localized knowledge, less valuable for purposes of theoretical and disciplinary discovery and improvement. Second, it also enforces the prevalent misrecognitions supported by dominant perspectives, especially by undermining the overlooked cases’ importance in relation to the disciplines’ mainstream and to the dominant geographical and political contexts of academia.
Therefore, “what is in prospect, is not an embrace of relativism, but a recognition that a truly global sociology with universal claims will derive from reconstructing present understandings in the light of new knowledge of the past and the present” (Bhambra 2013, 127). Methodological, theoretical or disciplinary critique alone does not translate into the transformation of existing and embedded power relations, even if the focus is empirically placed on the dominated, or lead to theoretical programs free of the constraints of traditional, entrenched, and canonical thinking. Indeed, unsuccessful and unimpactful disciplinary self-reflexivity can even serve to reinforce divides, such as the universality and generalizability of some cases against the exceptionality of others. That is to say that neither disciplinary and historical critique nor empirical inclusion and theoretical renewal seems sufficient if their co-constitutive relation is not critically considered. Indeed, one of the partial successes in recent times has been the pluralization and deepening of analyses of racialized inequalities together with a more institutionalized status of DuBoisian sociology.
Aim
What is to be done? We hope to develop critical perspectives that bridge this divide and try to remedy the lack of impact of critical disciplinary and empirical standpoints as separate issues. Sociologist Julian Go has suggested turning to different methodologies that transform a puzzling difference, or an analytical divide, into an empirical interaction in its own right. He has then, for example, turned to analyzing the imperial history and connections of American sociology itself. A step further is taken by Bhambra, who suggests that such differences ought to be turned into questions of occlusion, into metapuzzles concerning the existence of the division in the first place. To use the same example, we would then further ask what purpose has the imperiality of American sociology served, continues to serve and to what results. Bhambra brings the historical question that Go poses to bear on the present and on our efforts at critique, even the type of critique proposed by Go if it does not lead to transformation.
We suggest then, that the search for impactful critical analysis often leads us to cases, collaborations and perspectives whose questions and problematics bring together or emerge from the relation of self-reflexivity or disciplinary critique together with occluded, overlooked or misinterpreted socio-historical formations, or as Bhambra writes, “how the configuration of substance is intimately linked to the methodological underpinnings” (Bhambra 2016, 336). This, however, requires cooperation, intellectual exploration and try-outs; Denemes that should not be underpinned or constrained by the very realities of academia that we hope to transform.
We welcome and look forward to presentations of denemes regarding any aspects of similar or related concerns and questions in critical analysis of socio-historical formations. We will pre-circulate short papers by the presenters before the meeting. We are open to suggestions and ideas regarding workshop formats that facilitate the exchange of ideas beyond individual presentations.
If you are interested in participating or for any questions write to denemes.workshop@gmail.com Include your affiliation and an abstract, or a short description of your research or presentation idea. We expect your abstracts or preliminary presentation ideas by May 31st. Unfortunately, we cannot provide support for participation costs.
Contact person:
Juho Korhonen
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Boğaziçi University
Denemes Workshop 