BASE CONFERENCE 2020 , 26 & 27 December 2020

*ONLINE using GOOGLE MEET*

The present crisis has occasioned, apart from the ontological anxiety and gloom, a rethinking of some of our established social, cultural, economic and political ideas. Not only it has exposed the incompetence and apathy of the political regimes across the globe, it has sharpened the existing fault lines between communities, social groups and classes. India in particular witnessed deaths and despair among lakhs of stranded migrant labourers all across its major cities. While fake news led to vilification of minorities. Owing to the precautionary moves undertaken by the government, education has taken virtual mode thereby furthering the digital divide. The shift has also given space to innumerable stories of frustration and desperation among the rural and downtrodden students and their caretakers. The digital service providers have become the big players reaping maximum benefit in the name of this transformation in dissemination of education, media content and even entertainment.

Democracy, thus, seems to have given way to ‘Pandemocracy’ where security for people’s lives is replaced with ‘Coronopticon’, generating fears of stabilisation of the authoritarian regimes. However, there also have been talks of a post-capitalist future that is sensitive to ecology and a complete rethinking of our livelihood and modes of being. The Black Lives Matter Movement, too, makes us hopeful of a common fight for justice. And the pandemic has made it pertinent to rethink our common destiny as humans.

BASE Conference 2020 proposes to lay bare these conundrum by exploring the ‘after’ of the crisis- philosophically, politically, culturally and economically. However, the thinking of the ‘after’ would also necessitate a critical enquiry on the unfolding present, and similar crisis in the past and the cataclysm they brought to people’s lives. Our focus, thus, is on attempting a critical social enquiry to understand how the world might integrate or disintegrate after the crisis and what are our conceptual wherewithal at hand to imagine a better world.

The following subthemes can be kept in mind for sending abstracts. However, the list is not exhaustive and authors might propose to write on any topic that helps us to understand the ‘after’ of the present crisis in a fresh and critical way.

Subthemes

Literatures of Crisis- Past and Present

Crisis and Populist Politics: Past and Present

Crisis and Inequality: The Migrant and the Homeless

Rethinking Our Common Destiny: Towards a New Politics of Hope

Cultures of Lockdown: Sociality during and after the Pandemic

Media & Pandemic: Misinformation, Prejudice and Scapegoating

New Economic Imaginaries: Degrowth, Postcapitalism and Returning to the Land

Ecological justice after the Pandemic: Anthropocene/ Capitalocene and Beyond

Pedagogy after the Pandemic: Online Teaching, Class Divide and Classroom

Pandemic and the new normal

Censoring Online entertainment platforms post pandemic: boon or bane

Please send your tentative title and a short abstract to office@basebengal.in by 15 December 2020