Trespassing Time and Space: The Postcolonial Encounter in the Francophone World
Lancaster University
16 June 2017
The word ‘encounter’ begins with uncertainty, but opens up a host of possibilities, collaborations, discourses, meanings and expressions. In this sense, an encounter is a synonym of change, radical power shifts, and cultural convergence that moves beyond/ transgresses the strict limits of time and space, facilitating dialogue not only between the past and the present but also across geographical boundaries. Francophone postcolonial studies have always favoured this dialogue sans frontières as the colonial enterprise was a form of encounter with far-reaching consequences. These colonial encounters were not only marked by violent confrontations but also by hybrid romantic unions (by ‘tense and tender ties’, to take up Ann Laura Stoler’s phrase) and often included effervescent reaffirmations of cultural difference and identity. The contemporary processes of globalization have necessitated a renewal of the forms and terms of this encounter that translates as an ethics of alterity and non-universalist conceptions of political activism.
Possible topics might include, but are not limited to: identity – social, political, religious, and other forms; historical encounters; gender and sexuality; migration and mobility; exilic encounters; borderlands; transnational and transcultural formations; encounters in digital/online space; urban encounters; revolutionary encounters; artistic expression – literature, film, media.
Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, with paper title, name, and university affiliation to: sfpspg2017@gmail.com by 16 April 2017. Confirmation of acceptance by 3 May 2017
Organising Committee: Foara Adhikari (Lancaster), Kirsty Bennett (Lancaster), Nicola Pearson (Bristol)
Twitter: @sfpspg2017
For more information see: https://postcolonialencounter2017.wordpress.com/
