Ambiguities

CALL FOR ARTICLES

‘Ambiguities'

Destabilising Preconceptions

The editorial board of Skepsi is pleased to invite contributions for the third issue of the Interdisciplinary Online Journal of European Thought and Theory in Humanities and Social Sciences, based at the University of Kent, to be released in Autumn 2009.

Every day we encounter ambiguous situations; unclear signals; indecipherable messages. Some of them pass unnoticed, other produce mere misunderstandings, whereas many deeply disturb us. The act of interpreting polysemous signs results in a proliferation and a diffusion of meaning. What is the effect of such a process on human beings? How is the process of subjectification affected by this constitutional interpretative ambiguity?

Arguably, language is the privileged space in which ambiguities playfully and successfully disturb our desire to decipher something we assume to be consistent in meaning. But the uncanniness and the anguish of the ambiguities which arise may also destabilise our preconceived conceptions. This destabilisation could result in questioning ones own perception. To which extent do we need to disambiguate reality in order to protect our sanity? Does an ambiguous message lure the receiver into a maze in which the promeneur gets lost? Is reality tout court an ambiguous message?

Ambiguous artworks and their attributes such as undecidability, textual plurisignation, word plays, disruptive dynamics between connotation and denotation, are only some of the themes we wish to explore in Skepsi's third issue.

Given the interdisciplinary character of the journal we invite proposals from the following areas:

—Comparative Literary Studies

—Modern Languages and Linguistics

—Philosophy of Language

—Continental and analytical philosophy

—Aesthetics and visual arts

—Gender Studies

The list is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive.

Contributions – including an article (3000 to 5000 words, written in academic English), an abstract proposal (approximately 300 words, with a short list of keywords) and a C.V. (with your name, institution, stage of study and email address) – should be sent to Skepsi editorial board via e-mail (skepsi@kent.ac.uk), as Microsoft Word attached documents. Skepsi uses a version of the MHRA referencing style. Please refer to the MHRA online guide.

The deadline for all applications is Friday 24th July 2009. Please note that a postgraduate conference was held on the same topic in May 2009 at the University of Kent. A selection of its papers will be published in the third issue of Skepsi.

http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/journals/skepsi