CfP Inscriptions 9, no. 1 (2026): Hospitality in Art and Society

Deadline for proposals: 15 September, 2025 (guidelines below).

The term “ethics” carries two distinct --- and at times even conflicting --- meanings. In its first sense, ethics is understood as a synonym for morality: a codex of rules that emanate either from the autonomous subject or from God, which must be followed and implemented. In its second sense, drawn from Levinas, ethics is seen as an unconditional hospitality of the Other, guided by a response to their destitute call.

This themed issue aims to explore the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in both of these conceptions of the ethical. In the first sense, the central question is: how should the relationship between ethics and aesthetics be conceived? Should art be regarded as ethically neutral, as Kant and modernity suggested? Or should it be understood as always-already operating under the auspices of the ethical, conveying an ethical message? In the second sense, the primary question concerns how the artwork can be viewed as a space in which the hospitality of the Other unfolds within its framework. 

Key questions that are relevant include: 

• What is the role of art in environmental ethics? 
• How can art confront unethical aspects of hyper-capitalism? 
• Can art and should art propose ethical models of behaviour for the well-being of society? 
• What does ethics as hospitality mean, and can art function as a site for such hospitality? 
• Which works of art might serve as ethical sites of hospitality? 
• What is the nature of the Other to whom hospitality is given within works of art?

This themed issue will partly work as a vehicle to publish particularly incisive essays presented at the 5th interdisciplinary Ereignis conference on Aesth/Ethics in Gdynia, Poland, and online in August 2025 (https://www.ereignis.no/events/conference/2025). 

Invitation

We invite papers from all traditions and schools of philosophy and adjoining discipline (critical and social theory, media studies and arts, literary theory and comparative literature, etc.) to address any of the topics and questions above. Submissions should be structured, well-argued, and show evidence of rigorous scholarship. 

Submission instructions: Academic essays should be 3,000 to 7,500 words. We encourage potential authors to submit proposals (150 words) ahead of writing/submitting full-length manuscripts. The editors provide an indicative review of proposals. Include title, institutional affiliation, and a brief author bio with the text of your proposal. More information is available under the Editorial Policies tab on our web-page. 

Creative criticism: For this issue we solicit creative criticism under a broad ambit; we seek writers who are reflecting explicitly on their methods, practices, positionings, etc., as academic writers and/or creative practitioners. We provide space for autoethnographic explorations; lyrical, personal essays; creative non-fiction approaches; imagined dialogues; experimental oddities in which form charts “thinking in/as writing” (and vice versa); collaborative conversations and “inter-views”; interdisciplinary detournements. Creative criticism should be no more than 4,500 words in length. 

Deadline for proposals: 15 September, 2025. Full manuscripts are due 15 October, 2025.