Journal: Intermédialités / Intermediality: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies.
Issue 51, “Distracting / Distraire,” guest-edited by Ilinca Iurascu and Dante Prado (University of British Columbia).
For more than a century now, distraction has been our aesthetic and media-theoretical companion: an analytical category and a subject of constant reflection on modernity and collective experiences. Central to the canon of the Frankfurt School, its forms and spaces of manifestation have repeatedly offered critical platforms for the study of mass phenomena, caught between organized stupor and emancipatory trepidation. Acting as a sign and signal of historical crises, distraction has been interpreted in relation to processes of rationalization as well as via techniques of displacement, disruption, fragmentation, and dispersal.
In the centennial year of Siegfried Kracauer’s “Cult of Distraction” essay (“Kult der Zerstreuung,” printed in the Frankfurter Zeitung on March 4, 1926), this issue of Intermediality is dedicated to situating distraction at the intersection of multiple cultural discourses and media-technological configurations, and reflecting on its ongoing capacity to shift, reorganize, mobilize and redirect the objects of its study. We invite proposals, in French or English, related to, but not limited to, the following topics:
– cultural histories of distraction beyond modernity
– distraction and new forms of experience
– distraction and non-chrononormativity
– queering distraction
– political economies of distraction
– digital capitalism and distraction
– distraction and/as labour
– the futures of distraction
Starting January 2027, Intermédialités will publish in immediate open access.
[Intermédialités does not charge authors any publication fees.]
Submission details
Proposals (350–400 words), in English or French, should include an abstract, a preliminary bibliography (five books or articles), and a brief biographical note (5–10 lines). Please send them to both guest editors, ilinca.iurascu@ubc.ca and dante.prado@ubc.ca, by January 10, 2027.
– Notification of acceptance: February 1, 2027
– Completed articles due: August 1, 2027 (maximum 6,000 words/40,000 characters including spaces). Articles may include audio, visual, still, or animated illustrations; authors are responsible for securing reproduction rights.
– Publication: Spring 2028
Full call: https://intermedialites.com/