Old and new magic: The magical realism and other challenges to the materialist-rational paradigm of industrial and post-industrial society. Valladolid. 2015, July 15th to 17th
Magical realism might have been, perhaps, the only serious challenge to the materialist-rational paradigm since the West began its ambitious project of modernity, discarding from its cultural system all fantastic and non-rational manifestations, for they were considered leftovers of primitive mentalities.
Nevertheless, magical realism’s triumph as the esthetics in the indigenous world views brought with it a re-examination of age-old cultures whose form of understanding reality always differs from Western rationalist developmentalism, and it is harmoniously linked with nature, a fundamental matrix of existence. The principal consequence of the tremendous diffusion of magical-realist fiction was the alteration of perception of American social and cultural reality, to the point, that for a long time, magical realism was raised as a central pillar of the “American trademark.” At the end of the eighties, magical realism esthetics were already exhausted, and the direction of American artistic expression rejected their constructivist principles, completely automated and exploited by writers that were seeking to cash in on the esthetics. However, at the beginning of the 21st Century, the magical-realist spirit surges again in the international sphere of the arts and even in the field of science. A project of re-enchanting the world, such as the one resurged by Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, or the informative works of Chemistry Nobel prizewinner Ilya Prigogine, led to a revision of the Western epistemological paradigm which went through elements similar to the ones recreated by the works containing the magical realism esthetics: animism, harmonious co-existence with nature, re-humanization of societies, non-determinism, and uncertainty in the sciences and their reflections on the Arts… All of that appears to confront the deterministic logic imposed by modernity, that in spite of its achievements of progress and its social accomplishments due to it, it has also originated in the most difficult humanitarian and ecological catastrophes of the last centuries.
In this conference, we set out to analyze the different manifestations related to magical realism that have settled into the artistic, scientific, and social discourse during the last several years, with the intention of explaining the causes of the increasing necessity of recovering a re-enchanting look at the world, of populating nature with spirits and energies, and of the intense materialism imposed by the elites of the contemporary world.
Topics.
- Magical realism and advertising.
- Techno-magic and cyberpunk esthetics: nature and machines.
- Science and the re-enchantment of reality: unorthodox suggestions beyond the rational-materialism.
- The epigones of literary magical realism in popular art and in mass cultures.
- Magical realism in popular art and mass culture.
- Industrial anthropology: rite and myth in corporate culture.
- Witches, priestesses, and female healers of today: magical women in literature and contemporary art.
- Cultural strategies of neo-liberalism: neo-baroque, postmodernism and cyberpunk.
- Non-rationalism and esotericism in Latin-American literature.
Works should be submitted in Spanish, Portuguese or English.
Presentations must not exceed 20 minutes. For these presentations, a computer with Internet connection and a projector will be available.
It is not necessary to submit the complete paper before the Conference. For the registration, it is only required to fill in the Registration Form (which includes the abstract of the presentation) and, if it is accepted, to pay the registration fee. The Registration Form will be submitted via mail (Subject: Congreso 2015 ) by 10th May to the following address:
asociacion.ecocritica@gmail.com
The abstracts will be evaluated by the Scientific Advising Committee. Once accepted, the fee (100 euros) must be transferred to the following account in Banco Popular Español:
ES75 0075 5902 4106 0008 1419
Degree students and recent graduate students (degree finished in 2014 or 2015) are subject to a fee discount (50 euros) if they attach their student record to the Registration Form.
The deadline for accepting presentations is 20th May, 2015.
After finishing the conference, participants will submit their papers for being revised and published in a monograph of the journal Cultura Iberoamericana (Ed. Universitas Castellae). The papers will be referred to two anonymous evaluators who will decide on their publication.
The deadline for submitting the paper is 15th November, 2015. Throughout 2016, the participants in the Conference will receive a copy and a PDF of the journal when it is published.
The paper will be submitted in Word format by mail to asociacion.ecocritica@gmail.com (Subject: Publicación Ecocrítica 2015).
The papers can be composed in Spanish, Portuguese or English. The paper must not exceed 15 pages (Times New Roman, 1.5 line spacing, 6 points space above and below each paragraph). It is required to include the following parts:
- Title
- Authors’ name and surnames (in the desired order), institutional affiliation and e-mail.
- A maximum of 300-word abstract.
- Keywords.
- Text: main parts (such as Introduction, Conclusions, etc.) will be written in capital bold letters, and they will be consecutively numbered (1, 2, 3…). The sections and subsections will be written in lower-case bold letters, and they will be numbered as follows: 1.1., 1.1.1., 1.1.1.a.
- Bibliography: bibliographic references in the texts and in the Bibliography section will conform to the APA style standards (American Psychological Association). These norms will be published on the Conference webpage. The final list of references will be not numbered.
5th June: extended deadline for submitting the Registration Form including the presentation abstract.
8th June: extended deadline for accepting the presentations.
9th June: extended deadline for paying the registration fee.
15th June: publication of the Conference program.
15th – 17th July: Conference dates.
15th November: deadline for submitting the papers to be published and beginning of the revision process for publishing a monograph in the journal Cultura Iberoamericana.