CALL FOR PAPERS – MATRIZes

We are glad to announce a special edition of MATRIZes (September-December 2020) dedicated to Armand and Michèle Mattelart’s thoughts on communication, edited by the researchers A. Efendy Maldonado (UNISINOS) and Roseli Figaro (USP).

For this issue, submissions are open and will run until September 30, 2020.

Submissions can be made on the following address, from which the Author Guidelines are also available: http://www.revistas.usp.br/matrizes/about/submissions

THEME RATIONALE AND SCOPE

The communicational line of thought and critical investigation articulated by Armand and Michèle Mattelart is one of the main criteria for strategical production of knowledge in the field – in Latin America and worldwide. This line of thought has been distinguished by its transdisciplinary strength to formulate theoretical resource issues/subject and by its consistency and methodological openness to combine research strategies and procedures, which conjoin to elucidate a set of significant problems to the area of communication science.

In an epistemological dimension, Mattelart line has been a referential framework to considerations and systematic and deep critiques on the methodological and theoretical models, hegemonic in the area (positivism, functionalism, formalism, instrumentalism, technicism). In this sense, their argumentation on behalf of Latin American critical thought, which they recognize due to its philosophical, political, ethical and aesthetical fortune, has contributed to strategically questioning the Euro-American logocentrism. In this perspective, their epistemological work has been vital to problematize left-wing logics, assumptions, scholastic cultures, and political – communicational behaviors. With this in mind, their analysis of Allende and Mitterrand’s govern administrations, and of the “politics” of left-wing governments in Latin America and worldwide, are paradigmatic. Their criticism on politically correct culturalism, which has substantially restricted thoughts on culture/communication since the 1980s, is also enlightening.

The Mattelarts have been working in the theoretical dimension with such singular dedication, and this is how their research offers valuable systematizations to interpret, understand, know and problematize the various trends, schools, models, proposals and arguments of relevance in the work of theoretical training of universities and academic communities from Europe, USA and Latin America.

In the methodological aspect, the Mattelart line of thought, during their six decades of work in the area, explored, formed, sampled, and produced fruitful and consistent critical investigational combinations. Their research on transnational systems of hegemonic power; liberal press coverage in Allende’s Chile; Latin America’s mainstream genres (comic books, photo comics and telenovelas); the economical-political logics of media systems; the main paradigms in the field of communicational sciences; their investigations on the key aspects of the international communicational environment (telematics, advertising, telecommunications, digitalization, surveillance, control); and the historical research regarding communication-world structure in modernity should be noticed. In this intricated set, a disrupted and continued historical epistemology, articulated in a strategical way developed from Marx’s critical thinking is prioritized and combined with contributions from dialectical, existential, heuristics and hermeneutical philosophies updated in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Given the relevance and critical power of the Mattelart line of thought, it is essential for Brazil and Latin America to update and present it to new generations problematizing elements crucial to the research in this field, which can be strengthened in dialogue and confrontation with the Mattelarts. A special issue in MATRIZes on this subject will contribute to the excellent work the journal has been accomplishing.

Indicatively but not restrictively, we suggest the following aspects to be explored:

• Contributions of the methodological theoretical approach of Mattelart’s thought.
• Critical Latin American communicational thinking and the Mattelart line contribution.
• World-communication as an aspect of the historical epistemology of the Mattelart line rupture and continuity.
• Critical research and strategic communicational thinking in communication, according to the Mattelart line.
• Mattelart line and the critical analysis of leftist governments in Latin America.
• Transactional systems of communication, power and democracy in Latin America from the perspective of Mattelart line.
• Critical investigation of Mattelart line in communication and popular genres (comics, telenovelas, photo comics, TV series) in Latin America.