Next issue – 51 (2/2025) - ruins/remnants/remains
Submissions now closed

Even though ruins tend to tell complete stories and refer to destroyed worlds, they rarely function as domains of “void” or “lack.” On the contrary, ruins are vibrant places which actively distribute matter and meaning, and foster ample social and cultural imageries. Similarly, remnants, remains, rubbish, and rubble draw our attention to the uncanny everyday afterlife of objects.

It seems that the residual form of the categories vital to the upcoming issue bears eschatological implications Therefore, it points to the universal experience encapsulated in the widely shared generational fear of living in the end times. As results of randomised and unintended processes, remnants, ruins, or even leftovers might function as metaphors capable of overthrowing complete theories and fixed concepts. Yet, the eponymous remains function also in historical and local narratives. Precisely, they are related to civilisational anxieties, minor histories, or traumatic experiences that are yet to be worked through. Moreover, their existence remains deeply enigmatic; ruins, remnants, or remains strike us with their persistence in surviving at any cost, regardless of the event that once reduced them to their vestigial form. Still, their irrelevant and incomplete state resists any definite act of cognition, often leading to nothing but disappointment.

The metaphors of ruins or remnants are arguably symptomatic to the 20th century thought, owing to the devastating military conflicts and unprecedented genocides this age witnessed. Furthermore,  philosophers and critics indebted to the Linguistic Turn effectively linked the aforementioned categories with the widely observed instability of significance. Even today, incompleteness or nonlinearity forms a viable theoretical premise in spite of the weakening status of poststructuralist and postmodernist discourses. Contemporary theories offer a systematic and critical insight into the very functioning of objects, things, or matter, facilitating in-depth reflections on ruins, remnants, or remains in new and often unexplored contexts.

The relevance of the titular concepts, finally, does not seem to be exhausted in the dynamic early 21st century that has confronted us with international terrorism, military conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, and economic crises, not to mention increasing austerity and social exclusion.

The discourse of ruins and remains deserves our critical attention also in the light of accelerating climatic instability, extinction of diverse species, and pollution of water, air, and soil. Rapidly developing Interdisciplinary Studies in the Anthropocene and Capitalocene allow us not only to discuss the materiality and metaphorics of the residues, but also to imagine (and critically assess) the world by means of its end, if not the ruins that anticipate the very extinction event (no matter how illogical this statement may seem).

In an attempt to approach critically the problems of ruins, remnants, and remains, we invite submissions inspired by the following ideas: 

• cultural and literary representations of ruins, remnants, and remains
• side-effects and by-products
• rubbish, trash, leftovers
• disintegration and decay
• negation, aporia, and the ruins of thought
• non-linearity, fragmentarity, residuality
• ruins of memory / places of commemoration
• devastations and natural disasters
• cli-fi and climatic instability
• Anthropocene / Capitalocene
• the ruins of capitalism / capitalism in ruins
• survival
• eschatological narratives and end-of-the-world discourses
• (post)apocalyptic imageries
• risk society

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