Open Cultural Studies, an OA peer-reviewed Journal (De Gruyter) invites submissions to a special issue on  Capitalist Aesthetics edited by Dr Pansy Duncan & Dr Nicholas Holm (Massey University The issue will explore the aesthetic configurations—from the cute to the comfortable, from the no-brow to the fringe—through which the economic logics of late capitalism come to crystallize today. It invites work that treats the stylistic and formal dimension of cultural objects, and the verdictive and affective dimensions of cultural discourse/experience, as valuable “cryptograms” of contemporary ideological formations and the economic relations they sustain.

Presentation

Open Cultural Studies, an Open Access Peer-Reviewed Journal (De Gruyter) invites submissions to a special issue on Capitalist Aesthetics edited by Dr Pansy Duncan & Dr Nicholas Holm (Massey University).

Assessing a world marked by what Hal Foster, bleakly, calls “total design” and by what Jacques Ranciere, more optimistically, calls the “aestheticization of common life,” and drawing on critiques by Fredric Jameson and Jan Mukarovsky, this special issue of Open Cultural Studies welcomes articles that explore the aesthetic configurations—from the cute to the comfortable, from the no-brow to the fringe—through which the economic logics of late capitalism come to crystallize today. It invites work that treats the stylistic and formal dimension of cultural objects, and the verdictive and affective dimensions of cultural discourse/experience, as valuable “cryptograms” of contemporary ideological formations and the economic relations they sustain. In the process, it will foreground the fact that—despite widespread suspicion, post-Bourdieu, of the discourse of the aesthetic—scholars associated with cultural studies, from Raymond Williams to Rosalind Gill, have developed a powerful set of critical tools for analysing aesthetic configurations, both as vehicles of ideological and economic domination, and as sources of subversion, pleasure, critique, and renewal.

We welcome essays on any topic related to the intersection of capitalism and aesthetics, including: Aesthetic manifestations of capitalism; Capitalist mediations and expressions, genres and forms; “Post-Capitalist” aesthetics: designing the future; White collar aesthetics: corporate aesthetics, from the bank to the boardroom; Aesthetic subversion or critique of/as capitalism; Aesthetics and techno-science: datafication of/as aesthetics; Aesthetics as domination and/or liberation: between autonomy and heteronomy; Digital aesthetics and “platform capitalism”; Beyond “zany,” “cute” and “interesting”: late capitalism’s (other) aesthetic categories; The aesthetics of the Capitalocene: eco-catastrophe and environmental activism as late capitalist spectacle; Capitalist structures of feeling, capitalist affects; Neoliberal aesthetics; Representations of capitalism; Late capitalist temporal aesthetics, from speed to slowness; The “creative industries” and the “cultural economy” as late capitalist aesthetic formations; The fate of “political aesthetics” in cultural studies; New aesthetic currencies, from the corporeal to the celestial; Aesthetics and/of class.

Full CFP is available at:  https://www.degruyter.com/page/1684

Submission Guidelines

Please submit your proposals to izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com  

by March 15, 2018.

The deadline for submissions of full papers is June 1, 2018.  The issue will be published in 2018. There are no Article Publishing Charges.

Editors

Dr Pansy Duncan & Dr Nicholas Holm (Massey University)