Dates: April 3-5, 2008
Location: University of California, Riverside
NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: NOVEMBER 25, 2007

Is surplus really more than is required, or is it, in fact, an excess that is necessary for a functioning and continually circulating economy? In Marxian theory, surplus is the profit created when workers produce value above and beyond what they receive in the form of wages. The relations generating surplus labor and value overspill capitalism: materialist analyses trace surplus back to the formation of the social and its division of labor. For Bataille, excess is the accursed share, the unrecuperable portion of any economy that is destined to be expended either on nonproductive “luxury” or on “war.” For Deleuze, in a more metaphysical but no less “economic” sense, excess is productive and generative, especially of the subject. In psychoanalytic theory, the excess of pleasure, jouissance, is also that which drives the libidinal economy. Today, images and realities of surplus and excess—of goods, desire, speed, information—inexorably barrage us. The insistent presence of surplus/excess in all aspects of our daily lives brings us to a series of crucial questions: if surplus is required, what then distinguishes and marks surplus/excess? What is the ontological status of surplus? What are the differences between surplus labor, surplus meaning, and surplus jouissance? Is it possible to theorize surplus or excess in ways that provide insights to its ambiguous (and ambivalent) operations in our culture(s)? What sorts of resistances or accommodations do surplus/excess demand? What role can Marxism play in confronting new forms of surplus/excess?

Our aim for this conference is to bring together scholars and students working on various aspects of surplus/excess in an attempt to begin a conversation across disciplinary and conceptual lines on these issues. We encourage submission of proposals for 20 minute presentations on any and all features of surplus/excess—from the empirical to the theoretical. Panel proposals are also encouraged. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Globalization, class analysis, gift theory, labor and populations, cognitive capitalism, surplus and value, recuperation of excess, reappropriation of surplus, profit, information and technology, speed theory, the limits of surplus/excess, representation and meaning, surplus as productive, bio-power, virtual capitalism, desire and surplus, lack and shortage, zero growth theory, maldistribution.

We welcome proposals on all aspects of Surplus/Excess. 300 word proposals due by NOVEMBER 25 to Joseph Childers at joseph.childers@ucr.edu

Please put “SURPLUS/EXCESS Conference” in the subject line.

Sponsored by the Association for Social and Economic Analysis (AESA), RETHINKING MARXISM, and the Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside.