Agoriad is a new online open-access journal that is managed and edited by postgraduates and early career researchers with oversight and support from a managing editorial team. Its aim is to publish high-quality research on key theoretical debates as well as provide a supportive publishing process for researchers at all levels.
The Agoriad journal, published annually, is supported by the WGSSS and published by Cardiff University Press (Gwasg Prifysgol Caerdydd).
Call for Papers
The editorial team of Agoriad (meaning Openings in Welsh) are looking for submissions for an issue on the theme of thinking with fragments. They are particularly interested in soliciting submissions from postgraduates and early career researchers as well as established researchers.
The Agoriad team are happy to receive abstracts and enquires and want to provide a supportive pathway to facilitate authors from submission to publication. If you have any queries about your project, feel free to reach out to the editorial team at Agoriad@cardiff.ac.uk.
Submission deadline: 31st August 2024
Submission details: https://agoriad.cardiffuniversitypress.org/
Thinking with fragments: the allure of the broken, discarded, and disjointed in geography
It is almost a century since Walter Benjamin conceived of his Arcades Project, which set out to explore the fragments and detritus of consumer capitalism, the discarded infrastructures and leftover shards of commodities no longer coveted but still present in the material fabric of the city, whose ruins and remains continued to bear witness to the hollow promises of a golden future made to the masses. The fragment, it seems, has a peculiar kind of attraction. It can draw our attention by not being fixed to any particular meaning, overarching narrative or lost totality. The fragment attracts precisely because it is leftover – i.e., it is unattached, a curiosity to be amused over. This issue of Agoriad will explore the idea of the fragment and what fragments can tell us about the forming and reforming nature of space. As the world becomes increasingly urban and growing numbers of people inherit infrastructure, housing, and neighbourhoods that are broken and fragmented, we invite contributions that explore what these piecemeal shards can tell us about how people create worlds, satisfy desire, and engender meaning. Submissions are encouraged to engage with thinkers ranging from Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, Jean-Luc Nancy, Julia Kristeva, to writers working in the subaltern tradition (e.g. Dipesh Chakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee), and geographers who have written in and on fragments (e.g. Caitlin DeSilvey Tariq Jazeel, Colin McFarlane, Allan Pred and Karen Till). Submissions could follow Benjamin in exploring how fragments continue to elicit desire, even though time and context change, and use spatial fragments to contemplate the fluidity between mass consumerism and the seductive nature of the singular. Submissions could examine the role of the fragment in spatial production and the fragmentation imminent to every spatial formation. Submissions could explore not only how the broken and discarded can be used and reconfigured but also how both urban and rural space can be seen as a conglomeration of fragments, and how fragments can be attended to both intellectually and methodologically. By thinking with and through fragments, this issue of Agoriad will advance our understanding of the fragmentary nature of space and place.