DIACRITICS

ABOUT|

Diacritics, a review journal of criticism and theory, was founded in 1971 by the Department of Romance Studies, under the editorship of David I. Grossvogel. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press since 1977, the journal maintains editorial offices in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell. Members of its editorial board are Cornell faculty and graduate students who are nominated and elected by the board.

Diacritics was one of the first academic journals to bring continental theory to the US. In the 1970s, it published translations of the work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Hélène Cixous, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Umberto Eco, and articles by Paul de Man, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Fredric Jameson, and Barbara Johnson. Historically its preferred mode has been the review article that analyzes in detail the theoretical arguments and assumptions of the most significant books in the humanities and social sciences. It periodically publishes special issues on topics or on thinkers of great current interest. Over the last twenty years Diacritics has published important work in gender studies, cultural studies, queer studies, political theory, literary theory, and psychoanalysis, including articles by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Leo Bersani, and Slavoj Zizek.

Diacritics maintains its role as one of the most distinguished academic journals on the scene, as it continues to embrace a plurality of theoretical approaches and critical perspectives.

Editorial offices:

Diacritics
Department of Romance Studies
Morrill Hall, Room 105A
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Email: diacritics@cornell.edu

Laurent Dubreuil, Editor
ld79@cornell.edu

Diane Brown, Managing Editor
db662@cornell.edu

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STAFF|

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FORTHCOMING ISSUES|

Negative Politics

Editor: Laurent Dubreuil. Assistant Editor for this issue: Cory Browning

The idea is to focus (in a nondogmatic fashion) on the various forms of negativity that might be at stake in the exercise of the political, from "apolitisme" to the inner resistances to the political. We will translate the introduction that Roberto Esposito gave to the revised edition of his Categorie dell'impolitico and a still-unpublished text from Étienne Balibar showing that the concept of class struggle is not political in Marx. Other contributions should include a piece by Tim Campbell on Italian "impolitical" cinema; an article by Bruno Bosteels on "apolitismo" and decadence in fin-de-siècle Latin America; a study by Geoff Bennington on the built-in apoliticism of politics itself in Hobbes, Aristotle, and Rousseau; and a text on the refusal of politics and society by Laurent Dubreuil, as a follow-up to his recent diacritics article, "Leaving Politics." We should be able to include one or two other articles (this is still in discussion with potential authors), as well as offering an interview section.

Special issue on Italian Thought

Editors: Sergia Adamo, Timothy Campbell, and Lorenzo Fabbri

From its first issue in 1971, which featured Gian-Paolo Biasin proposing a rhetorical genealogy of structuralism, to interviews with Umberto Eco, to Gianni Vattimo, to most recently a special issue dedicated to Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito, diacritics has been among the leaders in introducing an Anglo-American audience to some of the most important Italian intellectuals writing over the last forty years. With this history in mind, this special issue of diacritics will provide a snapshot of the vicissitudes of contemporary Italian thought across a variety of stances, styles, and ideologies, together with general reflections on its political and philosophical stakes today. Contributors will include Sergia Adamo, Giorgio Agamben, Kevin Attell, Franco Berardi, Remo Bodei, Bruno Bosteels, Rosi Braidotti, Cesare Casarino, Adriana Cavarero, Roberto Esposito, Lorenzo Fabbri, Carlo Galli, Karen Pinkus, and Paolo Virno.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Thinking with the Sciences

diacritics is launching a mini-series of thematic issues entitled “Thinking with the Sciences,” to be published in volumes 41 and 42. We believe it is now time for scholars in the humanities and the literary disciplines to think with the sciences (and not against, or instead of them). Our title also suggests that epistemology is necessary but not sufficient; and that the promotion of an ancillary use of philosophy and the arts as illustrations or aesthetic adornments for "scientific knowledge" is not what matters.

More than Global

diacritics is launching a mini-series of thematic issues entitled “More than Global,” to be published in volumes 41 and 42.  “Humanists” may be facing an urgent task, or the discontinuous writing of what Susan Buck-Morss recently named a non-synthetic but “syncretic” take on world history and cultures. In this mini-series, we would like to bypass comparison, and go “more than global,” in connecting discrete texts, phenomena, periods, images, languages, places—without unifying them. While certainly keeping in view the discourse of the social sciences, we seek to underscore the specificity of literary, critical, and philosophical thought in any sound attempt at reflecting on what “global” could mean anew.

For both series, we welcome bold, broad, interdisciplinary, and theoretically sophisticated submissions. Potential authors are invited to exchange over e-mail with the new editor of diacritics, Laurent Dubreuil, ld79@cornell.edu.

Please prepare manuscripts according to the MLA Style Guide, Third Edition, and include an abstract. Completed manuscripts should be sent as an email attachment to the managing editor, Diane Brown diane.brown@cornell.edu.  Please indicate the series for which the submission is intended. The submission deadline for “Thinking with the Sciences” and “More than Global” is July 15, 2012.

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES|

Notes for Contributors to Diacritics

Diacritics is concerned with the problems of criticism and devotes each issue primarily to review articles that discuss recent works of criticism. The journal has no formal policy governing the choice of books to be reviewed or critical perspectives to be explored, and welcomes suggestions and contributions from all quarters. This pluralistic policy does not imply advocacy of critical eclecticism: diacritical discussion entails distinguishing the methodological and ideological issues which critics encounter and setting forth a critical position in relation to them. A review article is not just a long review that summarizes the work(s) under discussion, makes comparisons to other scholarship, and pronounces judgment; it should be the occasion both for a critically positioned account of the work(s) and—just as vitally—for a response or supplement in which the reviewer's own theses and/or positions are introduced and argued. Thus articles in this category should be conceived as fully developed essays in which the critical reviewing and the presentation of the author's own insights are integrated by a unifying thesis or perspective.

Prospective contributors are strongly urged to choose the review article mode and to take into account the journal's aim to reach a wide audience interested in the general problems of criticism. Diacritics occasionally publishes articles in categories other than that of review articles.

TEXTS/CONTEXTS--essays dealing with major theoretical problems or illustrating adventurous approaches to the interpretation of texts;

RESPONSE--rejoinders to articles previously published in Diacritics or in other journals.

INTERVIEW--exchanges with well-known critics or, occasionally, with artists that may be either edited transcripts of recorded conversations or dialogues conducted in writing.

Texts submitted to Diacritics will be read by several members of the editorial board and evaluated collectively. Solicited articles are subject to the same evaluative procedures and are judged on the same standards as unsolicited material. The editors sometimes need more than the customary six months to complete evaluations: authors are asked to wait six months before mailing queries about the status of their submissions.

Diacritics submissions must adhere to the documentation style recommended by the Modern Language Association and asks authors to prepare manuscripts in accordance with the directives of the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The author's name should not appear on the manuscript: eliminate self-references from the text if those references will identify you and put any references to your previous work in the third person. Authors should familiarize themselves with Diacritics so as to have its format clearly in mind.

1. Submissions should include a brief abstract.
2. Articles are typically between 9000 and 11,000 words in length.
3. Prepare manuscripts according to the MLA Style Guide, Third Edition, with a list of works cited containing all works quoted from or mentioned.
4. List notes separately at the end of the manuscript.  Bibliographical information provided in the list of works cited should not be duplicated in notes.
5. Quote material from foreign sources in English translation, from published translations whenever available. When quoting a work that has not been translated, provide your own translation.  If the context requires it, foreign terms or phrases may be included in brackets after the original.
6. Please send submissions as a .doc or .docx file in an email attachment to diacritics@cornell.edu.  Include your mailing address and institutional affiliation.

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