It wasn’t so long ago that with heroin chic and SM clubbing what had been considered unacceptable became a voguish pretext for mass marketing. Now, with global hysteria about violent computer games and increasing calls for internet censorship, the unacceptable is being reinvented as an object of policing.
The issue of what is ‘fit to’ present has always haunted culture, especially in its relationship with social institutions: the proscription of heresy, the erasure of bodies (because of their age, gender or race), the silencing of sexualities, the purging of languages, the classification of desires as pathologies …. marking things as well as the practice of everyday life. Conversely, resistance to the banning of texts and practices has long been one of the hallmarks of movements for liberalisation.
Understanding how bodies, images and practices are judged unacceptable is key to understanding how culture, communication and creativity fit into society.
Issues include:
• What is now unacceptable?
• Did the unacceptable ever go away or did it merely shift from what was outlaw to an object of voyeurism?
• How does what is deemed unacceptable reflect racial, gender and sexual fault-lines of a society?
Topic Areas:
• Body modification
• Pornography
• Transgression in the arts
• Political censorship\youth culture and behaviour
• Free speech
• Hate speech
• Excommunication
• Sexual subculture
• Outlaw fashions
• Social networking sites
• Political and aesthetic avant-gardes
• Gangs
• Imposture
• Homophobia
• Drug culture
• Infidelity
• Secret lives
• Welfare dependency
• Internet censorship
• Religious cults
• Violence
• Worklessness
• Control of school and high education curriculums
• Obesity
• Behavior in Public Space
• Racism
For further information, visit: http://unacceptableconference.wordpress.com/.
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