Hi there,
This post is for prospective participants in a proposed Poststructural Panel for the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Conference to be held in Las Vegas from 7-10 April 2021. I understand it may go online if it is unsafe to travel by then. The details of the conference can be found here.
I would like to put together a panel of poststructural scholars working on topics where borders and bordering are a key constituent. Please read the abstract below. I am looking for 3-4 papers to fill out a panel as well as a discussant. I am super open to how you might see this topic, but would anticipate this may interest people taking a critical approach. For further details or to submit an abstract, please email me at phughes38@qub.ac.uk
Deadline: Submission of the final panel document needs to be by 1 June so please let me have your abstract (or let me know it’s coming by dropping me an email) by 31 May. Submissions: title (<50 words), abstract (<200 words) plus name and affiliation. Submissions from POC scholars, Global South scholars and those in minority groups are super welcome.
Funding: I do not have finances to fund travel/accommodation but ISA does have some travel grants that can be accessed (I believe) after the panel is accepted. Other funding sources may be available through your institution.
Who am I? My name is Patrick Hughes and I am a PhD student at Queen’s University, Belfast. I am a co-convenor of the BISA PPWG (poststructural politics working group) (PhD member), working alongside Christina Oelgemoller and Patrick Pinkerton. My research interests include the Irish border, queer theory, New Materialism, IPS and contentious sovereignty.
Proposed ISA PANEL: Poststructural Borders: Crossing the Line
This panel acknowledges and emerges from critical border thinking and asks what knowledges are opened up by poststructural thinking that is situated in the big-ticket global border issues of today. The panel sets off on a number of trajectories which coalesce around the idea that resolving borders enacts a historical narrative that is resisted and rewritten by critical thought; we propose that this historical and deeply cyclical approach, in which the border failures of the past are used as the principal tool to resolve the struggles of present border issues, re/produces a failing sovereign order.
We consider 3-4 big-ticket issues: TBD!! We ask what happens when we stretch beyond the dominant IR accounts of border, risk and resolution? Who or what is excluded by the statist and anthropocentric focus of such accounts? What is rendered possible by the knowledges produced by poststructuralism in the context of today’s border issues? What do we learn about living from people in their border communities as well as non-human mobilities that resist and reform borders through daily practices? This panel argues that a restructuring of border thought opens new ways not only to rethink how policy is formulated, but also how humans might be partners in the post-Anthropocene world, by re-examining critical border studies through new and evolving lenses of poststructuralism.
For further details or to submit an abstract, please email me at phughes38@qub.ac.uk