Mixtape Logics:
Listening to Empire and Resistance
(2012 ASA Panel)
full name / name of organization:American Studies Associationcontact email:mdcarril@usc.edu
2012 ASA Call for Papers
Mixtape Logics: Listening to Empire and Resistance
What might it mean to listen to culture, instead of simply critique it? Could our thinking become as dynamic, inventive, and entrenched in the culture in which it is produced as, say – a mixtape?
This panel proposes that “listening,” as a critical act, might produce a different way of thinking about empire and resistance in the 21st century. And it takes the figure of the mixtape – an item as beloved as it is differently understood by the various subcultures that circulate them – as a unique cultural object that listens: Created from that which it critiques, at once both of and not of the culture upon which it reflects.
But here’s the key change: Individual presenters will each curate brief (20 minute) mixtapes of their own, intercut with commentary and reflection on what kind of work the mixtape aims to do, what alternative economies of knowledge it seeks to represent, and, most specifically, how that mix engages the ways in which we think about empire and resistance in the 21st century.
A wide range of approaches is encouraged: perspectives that vary across a range of genres, periods, locations, bodies, sexualities, genders, and moments.
Prospective panelists should include a brief abstract (250 words) that focuses on how the mixtape they have produced engages issues of listening, empire, and resistance, along with contact information. Submissions should be sent to mdcarril@usc.edu by Dec. 31st, and notifications will be sent out by January 7th.