Unpsychology Magazine 9: IMAGININGS Submissions call
Following Unpsychology Magazine’s epic Anthology of Warm Data (issue 8), we are following up with an equally ambitious and related project. This one aims to reimagine the present within and beyond social, ecological and multispecies contexts.
In this issue, we are particularly inspired by fictions and speculations and invite creative responses to these themes and musings.
Deadline: 12th February 2023
Issue 9 will deal with what Donna Haraway calls, “SF: science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far.” For her, these figures, stories and imaginings offer ways in which we will be able to “stay with the trouble” of our “mixed up times…overflowing with pain and joy…”.
The unpsychology project has long been concerned with imagining how things can be different in the here-and-now, and not just in some utopian or dystopian future. SF (in all Haraway’s variations) reaches back and forward in time in order to make sense of how human minds are co-present with the lives and minds of non-human kin, and with the Earth itself.
Haraway, and other writers, practitioners and artists are inviting us to move beyond spiritually infused narratives of Gaia, transformation and magical thinking towards a kind of ‘tentacular’ animist materialism, a messy and playful socialism of the mind, an anarchic soul-making that recognizes the multiple layering and interdependencies that make up our reality and consciousness.
The relational ‘now’ is a difficult place to find ourselves in, yet only out of the spaces between the people, places and multispecies companions will emerge responses that will, in turn, take us into the foggy time we call our future. We might, (after Donna Haraway) call these practices of ‘worlding’ or (after Nora Bateson) ‘warm data’ – getting down and dirty into the soul-making, kin-making, story-making and composting of complex ecologies of mind.
If you are interested in contributing to this special anthology (and we hope you will be), you can find the full submissions guidelines at: Unpsychology.org/submissions.
Please reply to submissions@unpsychology.org with any queries/contributions/ideas regarding this special edition of Unpsychology.
You can also still download the Anthology of Warm Data (issue 8) free at unpsychology.org and get a special printed version of the book from HERE for £10 plus postage.
We look forward to hearing from you,
All best wishes,
Steve Thorp