Event Details

Contemporary Communication Cultures, Controls and Becomings
DGSIC Camp and Conference
2018 February, 14-17
University of Madras

Depts.of Journalism and Communication & the Dept.of English, University of Madras
in association with
Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective
The Association of Communication Teachers – Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (ACT TNP)
invites you to participate in the International Conference on
Contemporary Communication Cultures, Controls and Becomings
Camp – 2018 February 14-15
Conference – 2018 February 16-17

The contemporary world has been going through challenging times in the domains of communication, controls and becomings. In particular, the transitions marked by the webs of controls have expanded over the past few decades, irrespective of the governments in power, throwing the lives of the common men, their every day life practices, in particular, the environment, the sectors of education and social welfare, among others, out of gear.

There is a dire need to at this juncture to engage with the contemporary issues before the common man with the Deleuzian-Guattarian prism on controls and becomings. Deleuze and Guattari said in A Thousand Plateaus, “Becoming isn’t part of history; history amounts [to] only the set of preconditions, however recent, that one leaves behind in order to “become,” that is, to create something new. This is precisely what Nietzsche calls the Untimely…They say revolutions turn out badly. But they’re constantly confusing two different things, the way revolutions turn out historically and people’s revolutionary becoming. These relate to two different sets of people. Men’s [sic] only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of casting off their shame or responding to what is intolerable. (170-171). While Deleuze and Guattari had their prescription against the dominant sites in their versions of becomings, how we can in the post-Deleuzean-Guattarian temporal times engage with the threats of controls posited by neo-liberalism and autocracy with our acts of becomings. What is the linkage between the contemporary and historical factors in such a journey?

The present conference is meant to provide opportunities for the delegates and paper presenters to invoke the concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in coming to terms with a reality that is emblematic of the coils of serpent that are crushing the life of its prey. We are well aware that Gilles Deleuze was inspired by Foucault in his thoughts on the linkages between controls and social formations. His postscript on “The Societies of Control” closes with the statement, “The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a molehill.” The 2018 Deleuze and Guattari International conference at Chennai seeks to explore this theme and the following sub themes as well as any other relevant theme.

  • Machinic/digital controls and new subjectivities
  • New panopticons and new control societies
  • Cryptic journalism/communication, encryption and hacking
  • State and corporate surveillance and control systems
  • Bodies as sites of controls and becomings
  • Food cultures as sites of controls and communication
  • Biometric controls as sites of economy and body politics
  • Agrarian cultures of communication in the new age of controls
  • Industrial cultures of communication in the new age of controls
  • Consumer cultures of communication in the new age of controls
  • Mass media as sites of controls and communication
  • Social media as sites of controls and communication
  • New cultures of protests and dissent
  • Neo feudalism, casteism and neo liberalism as sites of controls and communication
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