Gambling Theory

The Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western
Ontario organizes, every five years, a major international conference dedicated
to an overarching topic which brings together the research interests of
scholars of critical theory from around the world. Proceedings of previous
conferences (“Theory between the Disciplines” (1988), “The Human Sciences in
the Age of Theory” (1993) and “The Histories of Theory’” (1998)) have now
appeared in book form. “Gambling Theory,” which will take place with a one-year
delay, will include more than 70 invited and selected papers by faculty and
graduate students.

The overarching theme of this year’s conference focuses on contemporary and past
theory as species of risk-taking, or gambling. Defined as “to stake something
of value on the outcome of an uncertain contingency,” gambling is understood –
in theory – as risk-taking necessary to the survival and renewal of theoretical
thought. After the “age of high theory” that has dominated and somewhat shaken
the most innovative quarters of North American academia during the 1980s, the
last decade and a half has witnessed a retrenchment of theoretical reflection.
This has occurred alongside what emerged as trendy directions in humanities and
social sciences research: subaltern studies, postcolonial studies, various
sorts of feminist research, cultural studies, combinations of psychoanalysis,
film and media studies, etc. Because a significant part of the research done in
these areas came quickly to display the desire to occupy a position in the
existing organization of knowledge, the academic establishment’s lack of
consistent theorizing was reinforced.

“Gambling theory” is designed to addresses the issue of “risk reduction” in the
establishment of research directions, while encouraging advanced theorizing and
allowing for a wide range of more discipline based approaches to ‘gambling.’ It
invites scholars of the humanities and the social sciences to reflect on topics
such as risk and risk management, the tackling of conceptual and pragmatic
crises, the relationships between chance and prediction, game theory, social,
psychological, economic and historical aspects of gambling, the representation
of gambling in literature and the arts, to name only some.