Theme
SPRING 2013
LIMIT
What is the limit? A limit? Your limit? A sense of limit(ation)? Why are we so seduced by that which contains us and threatens us, yet concurrently provides the (false?) promise and liberty of transgression? This edition offers the topic of Limit and with it an invitation to consider the limit in the widest possible terms.Michel Foucault, in A Preface on Transgression, writes: “The limit and transgression depend on each other, for whatever density of being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were not absolutely uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadows.” Here we might like to consider the dependence our construction of sexuality has on power and knowledge, or the role and influence of the law and punishment as disciplinary technologies of the body; or perhaps how the self and culture can only be known through conflict and compromise – a battle over limits. One cannot transgress without the presence of a limit, and yet the limit is there to contain and prescribe the transgressive act.
We are accepting submissions in the following five categories: death, revolution, mind, space and place, and body. Here are some examples of how to look at “Limit” in the context of a category:
- Space and Place: What are the limits that surround space and place? To what extent do they overlap? Where do we cross the threshold moving from one to the other? How do limits affect notions of orientation, be they spacial, ideological, or theoretical?
- Death: Is death an ultimate or perceived limit? What are the limits that surround life and death? How does the awareness of death affect our perception of limits throughout life?
- Mind: Is the mind a limitless realm of imagination, or do confines exist within that limit what we might be capable of examining? Does the mind create limits?
- Body: Body creates a sense of limit by its implications: it is a collection of parts, of anatomy, of works, of experiences that create an identity. How do limits define your idea of body? How do they define your identity within that context? How do you envision a body without limit?
- Revolution: Is revolution is the act of transgressing an existing or perceived limit, or the substitution of one limit for another?