The philosopher Julián Marías pointed out an idiomatic peculiarity around the notion of illusion. In Latin and Romance languages as a whole, and also in English, this word denounces something false, deceptive, fantastic and apparent. The Spanish, already in Romanticism, understand by illusion, in addition to what others understand, something new, different, positive and valuable, “that which has expressions such as “to have illusion” for something or someone; to do something “with illusion”; one thing is “to have illusions” and quite another “to be full of illusion”. Illusory” is not the same as “illusionary”; “being an illusionary” is not at all similar to “being illusionary” (Julián Marías, Brief Treatise on Illusion, 1984, p. 15).

In Spanish, illusion is presented as an essential ingredient in people’s lives and acquires an ambivalent meaning: it may or may not be deceptive, but it certainly provides a vital orientation and the inner strength to pursue it. As futuristic beings, we project ourselves into a tomorrow that must be imaginatively anticipated and presented to us as desirable. The imagined and desired future awakens in the human being the enthusiasm that moves to action, as well as a project to reach or maintain the object of our desires. Marías then defines illusion as “desire with argument” (1984: 62).

Poetic creation has always been under suspicion for presenting invented worlds, mirages that distance man from reality. Plato accused poets of lying or, at least, of constructing second-degree imitations: copies of copies of the truth (Republic, I and III). In Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953), books are burned under the pretext of their uselessness, since they present stories that never existed, and of their toxicity, for feeding dangerous ideas and desires. Aristotle extols the dignity of poets, explaining that their works are neither true nor false, but plausible and, because they are, they teach us something about human desires, our actions and their possible consequences for the achievement or failure of the person or the community. The dissident protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 finds in books that which can make his life intelligible and give meaning to it. In the Spanish literary tradition, Don Quixote has been interpreted in this double light: as a madman and as a genius, or as a genius madman. At the 5th Image and Recognition Congress (SIMUFV 2023), dedicated to Tolkien, we had the opportunity to reflect on the ambivalence of the visions provided by Galadriel’s mirror and, more generally, on the notion of “subcreation”, which suggests an analogy between the mythopoets and the Creator. Criticism of the plastic arts and literature has been extended and sharpened with the visual arts.

The accusation of illusionism extends to other professions, in principle far removed from fiction: journalism, political communication and advertising. The masters of the new journalism

helped us to see social reality as never before, but they were accused of producing reports that did not strictly adhere to the facts. Both the tyrant and the great statesman have, in illusion, a powerful ally, and all populisms live on illusions. Some of the illusions evoked by their speeches stimulate our desire and guide our lives towards dark or wrong places, towards initially attractive but ultimately unsatisfactory figures of life. But these discourses can also offer us possible worlds that awaken our aspirations for a successful personal and social life, they can be illusionary, since they provide us with the anticipated joy of what we long for. What does advertising sell: products or perhaps illusions, that is to say, arguments of a successful life?

The 6th International Congress SIMUFV: Image and Recognition, under the slogan“Desires with argument: illusion in contemporary visual culture” summons professionals and researchers to reflect together on the power of images and their ambivalence as illusion-generating devices. We give priority to papers inspired by the reflection of Julián Marías in his Brief Treatise on Illusion (1984), where he relates this faculty to the great themes of human life: imagination, the future, desire, vocation, friendship, family, the relationship between teachers and disciples, masculinity and femininity, beauty and falling in love, presence and absence, and the image of the ultimates, the last frontier of this life.

Our conference seeks to offer a humanistic look at the contemporary image (photography, graphics, audiovisual, transmedia, comics, video games, etc.), of any genre and format, which explores the expressive power of the image as a path to the recognition of the human.

Thematic areas and methodologies

Area 1: Illusion and its diegetic function in worlds constituted by diverse cultural devices (semantics of illusion)

Area 2: Cultural devices as generators of illusion (pragmatics of illusion)

Area 3: Illusion in public communication (rhetoric of illusion in journalistic, political, institutional or advertising discourses)

Area 4: Miscellaneous “image and recognition”, for papers on the permanent theme of the congress that do not fit the annual theme.

Priority will be given to research that seeks an interdisciplinary dialogue between the thematic areas and the humanities, especially insofar as the objects studied are presented to us as significant images in which to recognize our world and our way of inhabiting it.

Methodologies:

– Theoretical or conceptualization studies that facilitate the analysis of cultural devices
– Hermeneutic, textual, aesthetic or close reading analysis of cultural devices
– Case analysis

This conference accepts proposals for oral communications and video-essay proposals of an academic nature. Only proposals that meet the deadlines and formal requirements indicated in this call for papers will be accepted. Authors are encouraged to review in detail the section on REGISTRATION, PROCESSES AND SCHEDULE in this call and to confirm it on the website in case there are updates. The scientific committee, with a view to the subsequent publication of the results of the congress, will pay special attention to the following criteria:

– The relevance of the contribution in relation to the theme of the congress, with special emphasis on one of the four thematic areas.

– The scientific quality of the proposals and their possible impact on the training of communication professionals or on the professional flows of audiovisual production.

– The originality and novelty of the proposal. At the end of the congress, the communicators will be eligible for the publication of their communication and the review of their video-essay in a monographic volume of the collection “Jano Comunicación y Humanidades” of Editorial Sindéresis, recognized with the SPI quality seal for specialized publications in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Authors are requested to send their oral communication proposals by means of a form on the congress website with the following data:

– Name and SURNAME.
– DNI.
– ORCID number (if available).
– Affiliation (if any).
– A postal address, in case it is necessary to send certificates or publications.
– An abstract in Spanish, Portuguese or English of between 400-500 words, including: problem statement, purpose, methodology, results and expected conclusions.
– A list (between three and five) of the sources to be used.
– A resume or brief cv of 100-150 words. Authors are requested to send their video-essay proposals by means of a form on the conference website with the following data:

– Name and SURNAME.
– DNI.
– ORCID number (if available).
– Affiliation (if any).
– A mailing address, in case it is necessary to send certificates or publications.
– A presentation of the video with a length between 400-500 words, in Spanish, Portuguese or English.
– A brief list of sources used.
– A resume or brief cv of 100-150 words.

Video-essays should fit into one of the following genres, to be specified in the proposal: supercut; scene, shot, or structural analysis; and thematic essays. In all cases, they must conform thematically to the areas proposed in the call for papers. They may be in any language, always with English subtitles. Their duration should be around 10 minutes. The video-essay must be hosted on the Vimeo platform, with private access. It must include, in the first images, the author’s name, the title of the video-essay, as well as the name, date and logo of the congress.

The reception of paper and video-essay proposals ends on January 19, 2024; the registration to the conference can be done once the paper or video-essay is accepted by the scientific committee and always before February 2, 2024. The deadline for sending the url with the final video-essay and the password to access it is February 16, 2024.