GSA 2023: "Übung, Exercise, Askesis", Montréal (10.03.2023)

Exercise (askesis/melete/exercitium/exercitatio/usus), the repeated performance of actions over time, has always been one of the most fundamental aspects of culture in those areas in which the human mind-body-complex is thought to be organized according to possibilities, potentialities, or “faculties.” It may be deployed as a means of—and account for—the incorporation of norms, whether cultural, religious, rhetorical, artistic, or societal. As such, it might be understood as a sort of meta-technology of the self, and most fundamentally a mode of its temporal existence. At the same time, the iterative, performative character of exercise may also lend it the power to undermine the very identities formed through the performance of obligatory, normative practices.

Despite their transhistorical nature, sophisticated systems of exercise as well as their theorization have long been associated with the disciplinary regimes of European modernity in particular. And yet, within this modernity, the role of exercise has been complicated—encompassing, among other things, spiritual or “occasional” meditation; regimes of aesthetic askesis; the training of scientific observation; practices of pedagogy; the rehearsal of performances; the event of psychoanalysis; discourses on enslaved, colonized, indentured, or “rationalized” labor; the mechanization of “the body”; the liberation of “the body” from rationalization in the name of “organic” rhythm; the cultivation of the national or “racial” body; and the current circulation of ideas about self-optimization and wellness—as well as their various prehistories and afterlives.

For our highly exploratory panel at the 2023 GSA Conference in Montréal (Oct. 5-8), we seek both contributions that theoretically reflect on the notion of exercise within or across a variety of fields (including but not limited to literary and cultural studies, the history of science and technology, performance studies, disability studies, post/decolonial studies, and the history of ideas) as well as contributions that deal with concrete case studies from a variety of periods and cultural contexts. 

Please email a 250–500-word abstract and brief biography or CV to Patrick Hohlweck (patrick.hohlweck@hu-berlin.de) and Susan Morrow (sm22@princeton.edu) by March 10th. We encourage applicants to contact us with any questions.