“Cultures of resistance, minorized people and languages”, Call for papers from University Paris 8 Vincennes’ CEMTI

The Center of Studies about Media, Technologies and Internationalizationfrom University Paris 8 Vincennes has just opened the call for papers for the international conference “Cultures of resistance, minorized people and languages”, which will take place on 1st and 2nd of December 2016 at the Art Museum of Halle Saint Pierre. The deadline for submitting proposals is August 15th 2016, and these proposals should connect with the aim of the conference, which is “questioning the way States deal with minorized languages and cultures within their national territory, as well as the modes of resistance minorized people deploy to defend their rights.”

Therefore, the meeting will pay special attention to the way in which minorized groups articulate culturally their claims, around the idea of a culture of resistance forged through fights conducted by peoples who managed to survive and transmit their language where others dissapeared. The Editorial Advisory Board, of which Margarita Ledo Andión (Professor of the University of Santiago de Compostela and coordinator of the Grupo de Estudos Audiovisuais) is part, propose a series of questions to guide the proposals: “what relationships exist between these forms of resistance and the values they carry? How did the historical tensions resulting from the building of Nation-States or colonial empires interact with the quest for recognition, pushing minority-language speaking groups to use cunning in order to cope with the constraints imposed by the dominant culture? Which critical capacity do minority groups have for thinking citizenship and togetherness in the era of cultural and economic globalization? In other words, what characterizes the range of collective actions mobilized by the minorized groups that are resisting in different historical and socio-political contexts?”

These questions will be debated through four main themes:

1. The political dimension related to the way claims from minorized peoples are dealt
with within the public democratic sphere set up by Nation-States.
2. The legal framework of international conventions or national constitutions which try to
organize the defence and protection of the languages and cultures of the world.
3. The economic dimension around the tensions or conflicts between territorial
rights/regional sovereignty and economic development.
4. The different experiences and initiatives linked to social mobilizations.

Proposals should be sent, in spanish, french or english, to culturesresistance@univ-paris8.fr including a title, a 500-word abstract and a short biography. In the event of being accepted, the full texts should be electronically sent to the Organizing Committee before the 15th of November 2016. For more information, you can download here the pdf document with the call for papers (in english), or contact professor Jacques Guyot (jacques.guyot@univ-paris8.fr).