"Signature" Conference

Baltimore, Maryland, February 26, 2005

Signature… the petition, the check, the painting, the autograph, the document, the stamp
… of experience, of institutions, of the state, of the everyday, of the spoken, of the human
… forgery, claim, authenticity, acknowledgment, ownership, belonging, become …Everyday life is charted in the domain of the signature: through the marks made on selves, things and others, and by the signatures we imprint upon the world in moving and living. Each signature serves as means to anchor and place lives, to grasp a moment, to suggest possibilities for knowing and changing. But as subjects poised within networks of signatures, venturing down trails of other available signatures denoting identity, position, authorship and belonging, our sense of certainty may open to doubt, our singularity becoming ungraspable. If the signature offers a lens through which the world is made known, what happens when these marks or beliefs of ‘originality’ are thrown into question, when one’s sense of authenticity and control is undermined, when who we are is as much a product of what we bear as it is of what we have chosen to be? What does it mean when one’s signature fails to be recognized, read, verified, acknowledged? If signatures are used to authenticate and to authorize, how might we anticipate or respond to forgery and fraud, surveillance and control?

The signature becomes our mark on the world, but what makes it ours? In such an exploration, how can we rethink assemblages of the social world, of individuals located precariously as canvasses that endure and bear the signatures of institutions and others, while forcing, employing or believing that signatures produce spaces for growth, subjectivity and social action? Can a signature provide the makings for hope and newness, if caution and skepticism remain embedded within? What is at stake in the notion of ‘the unique’? How does anthropology elicit signatures within the fieldwork encounter and what trails and marks does it leave behind? In our intellectual work, we face important questions about whose signature an experience bears and what its meaning might create.

We invite submissions of abstracts for papers on these and related themes for a student conference hosted by the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University on February 26, 2005. We welcome contributions from all disciplines and encourage innovative modes of presentation. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to signature@jhu.edu by January 5, 2005. Abstracts will be evaluated and accepted participants will be notified by email by January 20. Lodging will be provided for all participants. Limited funds are available for travel.