CFP: Imagining the unseen: 20 pictures of debt’s empire, then and now

fyi, I
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Call for proposals

Imagining the unseen: 20 pictures of debt’s empire, then and now

Edited by Clea Bourne
<https://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/bourne/>, Paul Gilbert
<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/275733>, Max Haiven
<https://maxhaiven.com/> and Johnna Montgomerie
<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/dr-johnna-montgomerie>

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   We are seeking pitches (200w) for short chapters that tell a story of
   the way today’s forms of debt, finance and/or money are entangled with
   the histories of race, empire and/or colonialism
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   Chapters of roughly 2,500 words will focus on a single demonstrative
   image (eg. artwork, map, artifact, advertisement) as a means to
   illuminate these entanglements
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   The collection will be geared towards a general audience and oriented
   towards use in classrooms. Talks are underway with several presses to
   ensure the best fit.

To submit a pitch, please use this short online form:
https://forms.gle/zQkCjPfWd65sS4mJ8Please submit pitches by July 19, 2019
Drafts of selected chapters due by September 2019

For more information, contact: Max Haiven - [email protected]

The proposed edited collection, imagined as both a thoughtful introduction
and a meaningful contribution to ongoing conversations, addresses the
entanglements of debt, finance, empire race and colonialism through a
series of short, accessible and image-driven essays. Made up of
contributions by artists, activists, scholars, journalists and other
thinkers, each chapter “unpacks” a significant and illuminating image: for
instance, an artwork, a map, an advertisement, an artifact or a picture of
a building.

This book project follows the success of a 2017 gathering at
Goldsmiths (“Colonial
Debts, Imperial Insolvencies, Extractive Nostalgias
<http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/colonial-debts-extractive-nostalgias-imperial-insolvencies-reimagining-financialization/>”),
a recent 2019 gathering at Sussex (“Finance Capital and the Ghosts of Empire
<http://rival.lakeheadu.ca/ghostsofempire>”), and a 2018 special focus
section of Discover Society
<https://discoversociety.org/2018/09/04/focus-colonial-debts-imperial-insolvencies-extractive-nostalgias/>
each of which brought together artists, activists and scholars. It is the
companion project to the production of a special issue of a scholarly
journal special issue <http://rival.lakeheadu.ca/ghostsofempire>.

The goal of this collection is to offer diverse readers a venue to think
through the complex tangle of forces at work in the creation of the
economy, historically and today. The collection will maintain a special
focus on the way the legacies of empire, race and colonialism persist in
the present: from the transatlantic slave trade to today’s racialized
global working class, from the early days of settler colonialism to
contemporary extractive industries, from direct colonial rule to our
worldwide empire of debt. Equally, we envisage contributions which
emphasize the traces that financial exploits deposit in wider social and
cultural landscapes, from architectural forms to communications
infrastructure.

Since the 2008 financial crisis plenty of accessible books on finance and
the broader trend of financialization have appeared. There has also
recently been a renewed attention to the economic legacies and present-day
manifestations of the racial hierarchies of empire and colonialism. This
will be among the first collections to bring these themes together.

Uniquely, this collection seeks to bring together not only scholarly
experts but also artists, activists, journalists and others to offer a
multifaceted approach. It is written for newcomers to this conversation,
providing an entry point into debates about finance for those who might
feel ‘uninitiated’, but doing so with rigour and nuance. It will mobilize
images as a means to tell a complex and interwoven story about how our
current financial and (post)colonial moment came about.
Overview for contributors

Towards an exploration of these themes, the editors invite contributions
along the following dimensions

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   All chapters will open with an image, selected by the author. In the
   case of artists, this might be a single image of/from their work; in the
   case of academics and others this might be a particularly striking,
   demonstrative or iconic image related to their research.
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   The chapters are structured around explaining the image and its contexts
   and significance to a broad, thoughtful but diverse audience. We encourage
   authors to imagine first- or second-year undergraduate students. Don’t feel
   the need to develop a close reading of the image itself: we’re interested
   in how the image presents a jumping-off point for discussing the bigger
   issues at play.
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   Chapter should be about 2,500 words in length and might be guided by the
   following questions
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      What is this image and what are its origins? What does it represent?
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      How does this image or what it pictures help us think about the
      intersections of finance/financialization and the histories, legacies and
      presents of colonialism, imperialism and/or racism?
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      What are the stakes and the important dimensions of the problems the
      image reveals?
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   We encourage approaching these chapters as storytelling.
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   While we can offer some limited assistance, it is unfortunately the
   responsibility of authors to secure the reproduction rights to images.
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   We prefer authors keep citations to a minimum. While details of
   preferred citation style will be distributed later in the process, please
   include a short “further reading” section with some of the texts you found
   most illuminating.

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