Call for Papers: Perspective 2021-2, Inhabiting
For its coming issue, the journal Perspective asks the question of what it means to inhabit: to inhabit a space, a territory, one’s home or one’s body, whether we are dealing with far away frontiers, or the outlines of intimacy; to inhabit one’s life, one’s society/ies, one’s epoch, in what inhabiting means in terms of being present in one’s world, for and with one another, to face circumstances as they stand. In a time when, across the globe, entire populations are confined to their homes, Perspective issues an invitation to revisit the visual and imaginary plasticity of inhabiting: “to occupy a place of settled residence or habitat,” so states the dictionary, suggesting habit, repetition, regularity; but also occupying persons, inhabiting them, animating them, moving them.
Inhabiting is not only a question of space. When we speak of “the spirit of a place”, it opens the poetic question of being inhabited: to haunt, to be haunted, to possess a place or a being, to be possessed, as one may possess an idea, values or beliefs which, in turn, inhabit us. Thus, both time and intangibility find their way into the material world: inhabiting refers to what is built (masonry, roofs, buildings, frontiers), but it also refers to what we inherit, immaterial presences, intimate representations and mental spaces – finally, it refers to what holds us up, holds us back, or holds us together. In fine, inhabiting articulates the individual and the collective, what is shared and what is separated, what is movement and what is closure, places and non-places, and brings forth the question of the Commons: in our world, what do we share? This inevitably brings us to the question of ecology, in its original meaning; the science of the habitat (oikos, the “home”), to how our multiple forms of existence and coexistence interweave.
In this manner, Perspective endeavours to dedicate its coming issue to the ways in which artists, art historians, and their colleagues from various neighbouring disciplines, take on these interrogations and bring forth the multiple ways in which one can inhabit or be inhabited. This subject calls for a wide variety of approaches, both in terms of thematic and fields of study. All proposals will be studied as long as submissions remain in line with the journal’s editorial policy. Investigations into the fields of history of architecture, urbanism, landscaping, visual arts, but also museology, ethnology, anthropology, visual studies, and digital humanities, as well as decorative arts, design, fashion, performing arts and cinema shall all be welcome.
Please send your submissions (an abstract of 2,000 to 3,000 characters, a provisional title, a short bibliography on the subject, and a biography of a few lines) to the editorial office (revue-perspective@inha.fr) before 10 January 2021.
As Perspective will manage translations, projects will be examined by the issue’s editorial board regardless of language. The authors of selected proposals will be informed of the committee’s decision in February 2021, and articles must be submitted by 15 June 2021. Submitted articles, with a final length of 25,000 or 45,000 characters depending on the project, will be definitively accepted after the anonymous peer-review process.
The call for paper, with more information about the journal, is also available here.
For further information on the journal please visit the journal website.