Call for papers for conference and edited volume Tentative date of open conference: June 28th 2013
Location: Sophia University, Tokyo
3.11 as Trauma, Ritual and Representation; Public Memory, Art and History

>From the moment our keitai began buzzing, even before
we could feel the tremors, to the flood of tweets for help by stranded survivors; from the ever-changing death tolls in the national media to the bureaucratic schematics of socio-cultural interaction with a washed away or radioactive environment; from the spontaneous memorials and rituals in affected townships to nationally funded "art" exhibitions that travel the world, representations that are in some way "of 3.11"
have been generated and circulated in such volume and deployed to such diverse ends, that there has hardly been a more exhaustively documented event, ever.

This workshop asks: how have we recorded, documented and more generally represented these events, as personal, distinctive and individual, and also as collective, shared and public (even national)? In what ways do they, or are they used to, represent trauma and loss but also solace and survival; where are they positioned as narratives of heroic struggle and where do they reveal more venal irresponsibility? What are the historical and political points of reference that are invoked to situate these narratives? What becomes obscured, even unavailable, and does this help us forget or just prevent us from remembering? What of
3.11 is selected and what are the criteria of selectivity? How are mnemonics operationalized, to what end by whom? And how have these strategies shifted over these past two years?

We seek to include a number of different sites and a diverse group of scholars: ethnographers working on the ground, textual- or digital-based scholars of social media, popular culture, documentary film and photography, and those looking at the political aesthetics of gallery art and performance. Clearly, any attempt at this sort of project needs to be cross-disciplinary.

Two years later, we are far enough removed from the day of 3.11 to allow us to see the patterns forming, to identify the events, issues and players as they have emerged and been managed, but close enough to allow us to see the process of memory creation as it unfolds. In many ways, 3.11 has already escaped the grasp of personal memory, congealing as some form of public memory (although which "public" is not always clear).
>From here, the shapes of 3.11 as history are becoming
visible, even as the alternative or marginalized options are still recoverable.

Please submit paper title, abstract of less than 200 words, and academic bio as soon as possible and by April 1st 2013.

David H. Slater (d-slater[at]sophia.ac.jp)
Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology Faculty of Liberal Arts and Graduate Program in Japanese Studies Sophia University, Tokyo