CfP: Architectural Theory Review 22:1 Resist, Reclaim, Speculate (deadline 1 June 2017)

Resist, Reclaim, Speculate: Situated Perspectives on Architecture and the City
Architectural Theory Review
Deadline: June 1, 2017
In search of new forms of critical and creative resistance, the Editors of this issue of ATR call for situated, relational, and embodied
perspectives in architectural scholarship rather than distant, autonomous, and authoritarian ones. In this we draw our inspiration
from radical (feminist) thinkers including Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and
Karen Barad. Whilst the relevance of these perspectives for architectural and urban studies—and more specifically Donna Haraway’s
“situated viewpoints” and Isabelle Stengers’s “ecology of practices” and “cosmopolitics”—have now, arguably, become evident, this issue asks
how such approaches as these can also inform new critical engagements with architecture and the city. Through slowing down, hesitation
(Stengers, 2005), and “category work” (Haraway, 2006), scholars are invited to resist the taxonomies and conceptual categories through
which they have become accustomed, or feel obliged, to think. The Editors invite scholars to reconnect with (hi)stories and (radical)
imaginations that tell alternative stories; stories that went unnoticed because they were considered odd, unrealistic, or inconvenient. From
the authors named above, we learn that by reclaiming and reconnecting with alternative stories, other forms and imaginations of engagement,
of resistance, can emerge.
This issue of ATR articulates embodied-relational and feminist perspectives as a form of critical engagement that can be, but are not
necessarily, intertwined with the feminist struggle. It contends that a wider scholarly openness to feminist epistemologies and situated
perspectives suggests valuable approaches to addressing timely and urgent questions regarding the ethical, political and critical agency
of architecture and urban design. We seek accounts of concrete situations that challenge the authority of theoretical taxonomies and
analytical categories, or that offer alternative forms of resistance that are embodied, situated, experimental, risky, and probing. It also
asks how embodied-relational perspectives can inform not just critical analysis, but how they can inform critical (design) practices. What is
the transformative potential and what are possible “speculative gestures” (Stengers and Debaise, 2015) of relational perspectives, for
research, for theory, and for design?
The Editors invite contributors to examine the potential of situated perspectives for the study of architecture and the city and to
demonstrate the possibility of a critical engagement in research and design through the analysis of concrete practices and practices of
thought: architectural and urban, contemporary and historical. We welcome contributions from architectural and urban studies, and from
fields outside (but pertinent to) the study of architecture and the city. Contributions may include papers that recount stories that do not
fit neatly into the current discourses and paradigms; present models of critical engagement; or discuss material instances of the realization
of feminist perspectives in speculative design practice.
Guest Editors
Isabelle Doucet isabelle.doucet@manchester.ac.uk
Hélène Frichot helene.frichot@arch.kth.se
Chris L. Smith chris.smith@sydney.edu.au
Submission Instructions
The deadline for the submission of completed manuscripts is 1 June 2017. Please submit manuscripts to the journal’s website:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ratr
When uploading your manuscript please indicate that you are submitting to this special issue: vol. 22, no. 1 – Resist, Reclaim, Speculate. The
Editors welcome expressions of interest prior to paper submissions and are available for discussing possible contributions.
Manuscript submission guidelines can be found on the Architectural
Theory Review Website:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=ratr20&page=instructions