Please note: The Call for Papers closed on October 1st 2006

Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Methodologies, Imagining Alternatives

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) invites proposals for an
international workshop, INSIDE KNOWLEDGE, to be held at the University of Amsterdam on March 28-30, 2007.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Gannit Ankori (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Derek Attridge (University of York)
Leo Bersani (University of California, Berkeley)
Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, London)
Saurabh Dube (El Colegio de Mexico)
Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia)


Scholars think of themselves as having “inside knowledge” or being “inside” knowledge. The state of being inside can be interpreted as a comfort zone or privileged position, or on the other hand, a trap excluding other ways of knowing. Is being inside knowledge a kind of all-compassing frame forming our subjectivity or are scholars active agents in this process? Do we discover or invent knowledge? While the myth of knowledge as objective and neutral appears to have been debunked, a question remains unresolved: If not objectivity, then what?

In search for an answer to this question, academic disciplines today often find themselves trapped between relativist and essentialist tendencies. Faced with the new multiple and complex realities of globalization, cross-cultural encounters and conflicts, the inadequacy of old approaches to knowledge underscores the need for either radical revisions of traditional modes of knowledge production, or alternative ways of doing and thinking knowledge. Disciplines therefore appear to be in need of specific methodologies, which could function across disciplinary borders and provide (tentative) grounds for inter- or transdisciplinary communication.

The previous ASCA workshop focused on specific issues of commitment and complicity for self-reflexive, engaged and responsible scholarship. This year, we have decided to make knowledge itself an issue. In dedicating a whole workshop to the admittedly vast issue of knowledge, we intend to bring practices and theories of knowledge to the foreground, thereby making knowledge a starting point for critical discussion and interrogation, rather than a pre-given fundament of our academic, scientific and everyday practices.

By revisiting the theme of knowledge, we wish to challenge, question and resist existing methodologies; revise traditional modes of knowledge production; revisit the histories of knowledge and epistemologies of the past and the present; culturally contextualize and situate knowledge; discuss new emerging regimes of knowledge and the power relations that they (re)inscribe; imagine different ways of experiencing and doing knowledge; and, finally, dare to envision the future of our various disciplines through different ways of knowing.

We welcome proposals from a range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) art history and theory, literary studies, cultural studies, film and media studies, theatre, dance and performance studies, philosophy, history, gender studies, queer theory, art and design, musicology, anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, religion studies, and linguistics.

This conference is the latest in a series of ASCA International Workshops and is inspired by the 2005-2006 ASCA theory seminar on Ways of Knowing, organized by Mieke Bal. The workshop format is designed to stimulate discussion in the panels. For this purpose, participants will be asked to send the final version of their papers (no more than 4000 words) two months prior to the conference. We shall strictly adhere to this deadline since we will prepare a reader for each of the panels in advance, to be circulated before the conference. During the workshop, instead of reading their papers, participants will give a short summary of their work and make connections with other people’s contributions in the panel. To stimulate discussion rather than formal presentations, each participant is asked to limit their presentations to 10 minutes.

Organizing Committee: Carolyn Birdsall, Maria Boletsi, Itay Sapir, Pieter Verstraete