Call for papers

Undisciplined Anthropologies: Practices, Trajectories, and Imaginations Beyond “Method”

Cultures and Societies Department, University of Palermo, Italy
Institut Français, Palermo, Italy

International Conference
30th, 31rst October 2025


Institut Français Palermo
Via Paolo Gili 4, 90138, Palermo

Deadline for abstracts: September 25th, 2025


This call arises from tension: the desire to break the rigid geometries of knowledge in order to explore their shifting edges, their interstices, their as-yet uncodified possibilities. Experimentally, we intend to draw on undisciplined anthropologies – and undisciplined practices of knowledge – capable of crossing epistemological boundaries, hybridizing languages, and engaging with movements of resistance, creation, and care. For us, to be undisciplined does not merely entail transgressing the rules of a pre-established – often codified and authoritarian – body of knowledge, but rather involves a critical interrogation of the very foundations of what is conventionally understood as “discipline.” To be undisciplined signifies the deconstruction of stereotypical and obsolete mechanisms of knowledge production, with the aim of opening up alternative epistemological trajectories and engaging in novel methodological exchanges. We aim to open up a dialogue among various disciplines in order to move beyond a 'normalized discipline' and to embrace indiscipline as an epistemological and ethical-political stance. In a time marked by ecological and political crises and heightened nationalism, we believe that anthropology and the other social sciences must reinvent themselves more effectively as practices of indiscipline. In this sense, we are interested in an anthropology – and a social science – open to becoming, capable of traversing multiple subjectivities, shifting cognitive terrains, and liminal experiences. We invite anthropologists – as well as scholars from other disciplines – to explore, question, and reimagine culture as a porous, unstable, hybrid, and contaminated space. We do not require specific disciplinary affiliations, but rather an openness to critical, creative, and transformative practices of thought. This call is open to scholars, artists, activists, writers, and anyone engaged in the theory and practice of culture. Possible (but not exclusive) themes:

Anthropology as a practice of indiscipline: theories, implications, experimentations;
Everyday poetics of indiscipline: performative, sensory, visual, and sonic ethnography;
Radical, militant, and engaged anthropologies;
Other languages: experimental writing, performative ethnography, visual and sonic ethnography;
Intersections with art, philosophy, politics, ecology, and technology;
Ethnographies of the unforeseen, the unexpected, the formless;
The body and affect as ethnographic practices;
Forms of situated and non-hegemonic knowledge;
Interactions between anthropology, visual arts, and technologies;
Everyday anthropology: studying daily practices as spaces of resistance and creativity;
Decentering practices and multiple subjectivities;
Interdisciplinary intersections: connections between anthropology and other disciplines;
Etc.

Modalities of participation and deadline:
Send abstracts by September 25th, 2025 to Stefano Montes (stefano.montes@unipa.it) and Massimo Canevacci (maxx.canevacci@gmail.com). Abstracts, max 300 words, include title, 3 key-words and a short biography (max 5 lines, not to be counted among the 300 words). Applicants will be notified as soon as possible. The conference will take place, in-person, in Palermo, at the French Institute, via Paolo Gili 4, 90138, Palermo. Admitted languages are English, Italian and French. Each speech is 20 minutes. Registration to the Conference is free of cost. Grants are not foreseen. Travel, accommodation and food costs are to be covered by participants.

Scientific board:
Eric Biagi, Institut Français, Palermo, Italy
Massimo Canevacci, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
Lorenzo Cañás Bottos, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Vincent Crapanzano, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA
Hanna Geara, artist
Giancarlo Germanà, Accademia di Belle Arti, Palermo, Italy
Salvatore Giusto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Claudio Gnoffo, Guglielmo Marconi University, Rome, Italy
Michael Jackson, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, USA
Alessandro Lutri, University of Catania, Italy
Stefano Montes, University of Palermo, Italy
Arrigo Musti, artist
Anand Pandian, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA
Kristiina Rebane, University of Tallinn, Estonia
Nataša Rogelja, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana
Paul Stoller, Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen/Nuremberg and University of Pennsylvania
Michael Taussig, Columbia University, USA

Organizing committee:
Massimo Canevacci, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
Stefano Montes, University of Palermo, Italy