CFP
1.1 “’Narratives of Difference’ in the Global Marketplace”
1.2 Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean
1.3 Contested histories and the parameters of resistance
1.4 Travel Writing: Knowledge: Literature. The Intellectual and Cultural Status of Modern Travel Writing
1.5 ‘Imagining Contemporary Algerias: Communities, Nation-State, the Maghreb, and the Mediterranean’
1.6 Memories of migrations and historical time
1.7 Postcolonial Traumas Conference
Calls for contribution
2.1 Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World
2.2 PSA Newsletter Number 10 (Autumn 2012) Special Issue on the Arab World
2.3 Relaunch of The Bulletin of Francophone Africa under the new title Transcultural Visions
2.4 Repenser la domination littéraire des littératures africaines
New titles
3.1 Islanded Identities : Constructions of Postcolonial Cultural Insularity
Other News
4.1 International Symposium : Sarkozy’s France, 2007-2012
4.2 Algeria Revisited: Contested Identities in the Colonial and Postcolonial Eras
CALLS FOR PAPERS
1.1 “’Narratives of Difference’ in the Global Marketplace”
The University of Northampton, UK and the University of Vigo, Spain
At: School of the Arts, University of Northampton
25-26 October 2012
This conference reflects research interests shared between the University of Vigo, host to the international project, ‘Globalized Cultural Markets: The Production, Circulation and Reception of Culture in the Global Market Place’, and the Centre of Contemporary Narrative and Cultural Theory in the School of Arts at the University of Northampton. Its topic relates to these global, cultural and pedagogic contexts. The focus is on how ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ are commodified in the production and reception of culture through narrative strategies and/or modes of narrativization.
In today’s age of unprecedented circulation of ideas, values and cultural practices across nation states and the technological flow of goods and financial capital across borders, we need urgently to consider new perspectives and possibilities for society. How are differences between peoples, cultures, minorities articulated and (re)produced for the circulation of cultural products in the global market place and what are the chief modes of resistance? With increasing mobilization of culture what are the checks and balances between justice and inequality?
We encourage work which addresses difference as a narrative construction and identifies ‘narratives of difference’ (e.g. racial, ethnic, gender, linguistic, sexual) that may also be strategies of resistance or dissent. In particular we ask how such narratives are constructed round cultural products and peoples that are circulated, exchanged and exploited in the global market place.
How are ‘narratives of difference’ articulated in the marketing of transnational products both from and within Europe, and other multicultural societies? How do they represent daily life practices of cultural products for global production and reception? Are existing constructions of difference reoriented and reconfigured by narrativisations for the global market place? In what ways do already existing narratives such as oral stories, fictions, urban myths, indigenous legends contribute to the articulation of difference and diversity in the selling of cultural products?
Particular approaches might address the following:
- What global narratives constructed by cultural agents create new representations of products, people and everyday practices?
- How do media technologies rewrite and reformat existing narratives in mobilizing culture, and in whose interests?
- How do urban narratives of cityscapes/ethnoscapes contribute to the production and reception of cultural difference in the globalised marketplace?
- What new narratives articulate the movements of diasporic, migrant, transnational production?
- How do new stories/ narratives contribute to and/or critique the transmission of cultural traditions in cyberspace?
- How are policies and practices of cultural exception (language, economic investment, national culture) articulated and what products are protected?
- How does narrative contribute to making ‘difference‘ an asset in the cultural markets?
- What marketing strategies of ‘difference’ are used for academic pedagogies of postcolonial, queer, citizenship and globalization studies?
- How can postcolonial criticism respond to matters of literary economy?
- How do visual technologies and new media define new narratives of difference for global audiences?
- What paradigms of linguistic difference and resistance develop from narrativisation in translation studies?
- What narrative strategies of dissent and/or resistance challenge the exploitation of difference in the cultural markets?
- What impact do audience expectation and location have on creative acts in different modes (visual, performance, oral) and how can these be assessed?
Keynote Speakers: TBC
Abstracts: Please send abstracts for 20 minute papers or proposals for 90 minute panels to Professor Janet Wilson, School of the Arts, University of Northampton and Associate Professor Belén Martín-Lucas, University of Vigo.
Janet.Wilson@northampton.ac.uk
Deadline for abstracts: 30 May 2012
Registration: Early Bird: £110; £70 (students) by 1 July 2012
Late: £130.00; £90.00 (students)
Day Rate: £80.00; £50.00 (students)
Accommodation: A number of nearby hotels will be recommended, including some rooms at Sunley Management Centre, Park Campus, University of Northampton.
1.2 The session « Francophone Literature of Africa and the Caribbean » at the 66th Annual Convention of the RMMLA is devoted to Francophone Literatures, Cultures, and Film of Africa and the Caribbean.
Topics include but are not limited to:
Sub-Saharan Africa Literature, Culture, and Film
Colonial and Post-colonial Studies
Environmental questions in African /Caribbean Literature and film
African Diaspora
Maghreb Literature, Culture,
and Film
Creolité, Antillanité
³Littérature monde²
Feminist Theory and Women Writers
Migrant Literature
National/Transnational Theory
Oral tradition, etc.
Please, submit your abstract for a 15-20-minute presentation (in English or French) with title and contact information to Marie Chantale Mofin, mcmofin@unm.edu, by March 1, 2012. Final selection of abstracts will be made by March 15, 2012
The 66th Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) Convention will be held from October 11- 13, 2012 at the Millenium Harvest Hotel in Boulder, Colorado.
1.3 Contested histories and the parameters of resistance
University of York, Tuesday 3rd July 2012
Confirmed Keynote: Dr. Alan Rice (University of Central Lancashire)
Representing the past is a contested and dissonant process. The promotion of particular voices and stories within history in line with the simultaneous suppression of others is an action which is both
directed by and influences the politics of identity, performances of power and reaction to contemporary circumstance. But alongside authoritative and officially endorsed versions of the past are instances of cultural resistance which seek to challenge the agreed conventions and fill silences. Alan Rice (2010) has described occurrences of artistic reaction to dominant historical narratives as
‘Guerrilla Memorialisation’. Through this terminology the importance of recognising these gestures as a distinctly active, political and performative process. Whilst these actions stand as important acts of resistance in their own right, it seems important to question and indeed try to understand the consequences of these processes of challenge. What are the legacies of such acts and what is their impact on official narratives? What are the boundaries and limitations of resistance to authoritative versions of the past and by whom are they imposed? Who are the audiences for this resistance and how is it received?
This interdisciplinary conference aims to create a dialogue across subjects about the different ways in which narratives, cultural artefacts, spaces and places are creatively used and reused to perform
acts of resistance which contest authoritative versions of history. In line with this we hope to raise questions about the different kinds of impact these processes may have on people, stories and understandings of the past and indeed the present.
Conference presentations will be followed by a discussion, led by Dr Zoë Norridge (University of York), which will explore both the theory and the practice of resisting official histories and interrogate the parameters of resistance. We welcome proposals from postgraduate students and early career researchers working in or across disciplines including History, Literature, History of Art, Archaeology, Architecture, Cultural Studies, Film, Geography, International Development, Politics and related fields.
Please send abstracts of up to 300 words for papers of 20 minutes as well as a brief academic biography of 50 to 100 words to the conference organisers (Isabelle Hesse, Jessica Moody and Nicola
Robinson) at contestedhistories@gmail.com by 5pm 30th March.
1.4 Travel Writing: Knowledge: Literature. The Intellectual and Cultural Status of Modern Travel Writing
Two workshops, to be held at Oxford University
Co-organised by the Travel Cultures Research Seminar series, Oxford,
and the Centre for Travel Writing Studies, Nottingham Trent University
April 21st and late autumn 2012 (latter date tbc)
Travel writing is generally regarded today as a minor, somewhat ‘second-order’ genre. Seldom adopted by writers who wish to make a substantive contribution to knowledge or to current intellectual debates, the form is from one perspective too dilettante or ‘literary’; it seemingly lacks methodological rigour and prioritises style and/or entertainment over factual content. From another perspective, however, travel writing is apparently not literary enough. Few critics today (and few university departments!) class travelogues as ‘Literature’, in the most exalted, honorific sense of that term. Seemingly hamstrung by the requirement to relay factual information, they are thought to lack the aesthetic scope or resonance of more obviously imaginative forms such as fiction, poetry and drama; and so travel writing is for many commentators a genre which seldom reaches the highest levels of artistic achievement. Yet are we right to be so dismissive about travel writing? This is the question we will explore in two workshops, to be held in late spring and autumn 2012. Addressing travel writing’s intellectual status as a form of knowledge, the first workshop will investigate whether the genre has made, and can still make, meaningful contributions to disciplines such as anthropology, geography, sociology, politics and science – or indeed, whether it generates a different kind of knowledge by being independent of such disciplines. The so-called ‘linguistic’ or ‘cultural turn’ of the 1970s and 1980s prompted a significant critique of the scientific methodologies, and the claims to scientific objectivity, traditionally espoused in many of the so-called ‘social sciences’; in the wake of this critique, what is the relationship between the travelogue and the many academic treatises, across a range of fields, which essentially relay the findings of a traveller-observer? What sort of knowledge can travel writing provide? And how is the genre currently regarded by the practitioners of disciplines traditionally dependent on observations garnered through travel?
The second workshop (date to be confirmed) will then explore travel writing’s status as a mode of
literature, investigating the aesthetic potentialities of the form – the artistic effects to which it is best suited, and the greatest literary heights which have been attained in the genre. Why might a writer choose the travelogue over fiction or poetry as a medium to relay his or her insights? Why does travel writing seem to become fashionable and attract more ‘literary’ writers in the 1930s, and then again in the last three decades or so? Does travel writing perhaps speak to 21st century readers in a way that the novel no longer does? And if so, what are the distinctive pleasures of the travelogue? We accordingly invite papers which address either the ‘travel writing as knowledge’ or ‘travel writing as literature’ themes. (NB: a core of speakers has been confirmed for the first workshop on April 21st, but we have space for more papers). Please contact Dr Carl Thompson (carl.thompson@ntu.ac.uk) if you are interested in contributing or attending. There is no deadline for paper proposals, but if you wish to participate you are advised to get in touch sooner rather than later!
1.5 ‘Imagining Contemporary Algerias: Communities, Nation-State, the Maghreb, and the Mediterranean’
Keynote speakers: Salim Bachi (writer) and Jane Hiddleston (Exeter College, Oxford)
International Workshop to be held at University College Cork, Ireland
September 7-8 2012
This workshop asks what kinds of communities and identities have been imagined within Algerian literature and film in recent decades. Has the relationship between communities and the nation-state been re-imagined in ways that undermine or reinforce the nation-state? And can we speak of the emergence, or re-emergence, of Mediterranean and trans-Maghrebian perspectives?
Prior to recent, revolutionary events across the Maghreb, a number of competing forces have been in play in Algeria including nationalist disenchantment, Islamism, and globalization. How have they been given aesthetic form? How has their impact on communities been addressed within cultural production? And in what ways have these texts and films imagined Algeria, and future Algerias, over the last twenty five years?
The workshop asks participants:
— to think of ways in which communities located within specific places (such as Bab el Oeud), or formed through identifications (with, for example, Islamist groups or ethnic formations) are given cultural articulation within wider frames of reference.
— to explore how the Algerian nation-state has been represented in ways that suggest not only nationalist disenchantment but the hope of a new, democratic dispensation.
— to situate the nation-state of Algeria within its trans-Maghrebian context and in terms of its national borders (that can be porous yet serve as barriers to ‘transit’).
— Finally, if the movement of peoples both across the Mediterranean and across the Maghreb suggests the continuing strength of the nation-state, this conference asks how the nation-state has been questioned within, and through, a re-thinking of the Mediterranean.
We invite proposals that focus on cultural forms including, but not limited to, literary, cinematic, and artistic productions. Contributions may address the question of new and imagined Algerian identities through inter-disciplinary approaches, comparative case studies, or close readings of cultural products from the Maghreb or wider Mediterranean.
In addressing the questions outlined above, topics may include:
— questions of national belonging and new imagined communities
— New allegories for old national questions
— the making-Mediterranean of the Maghreb
— new Mediterranean humanisms in Algeria
— borders
— how Algeria is viewed across the Maghreb
— hybridity, assimilation, and marginalization in nation-state discourses
— colonial/postcolonial correspondences
— questions concerning national literatures, la francophonie, and Arabic literatures
— poetics and littérarité of imagining communities
— madness, nostalgia, homesickness
— francophone texts and publishing politics
— bodies and transit: Mediterranean/African/European
— questions of origin (real, imagined, haunted or otherwise)
Abstracts in English or French (max. 300 words) for 20 minute papers due to pcrowley@french.ucc.ie or mgn.macdonald@gmail.com by May 1 2012. Submissions should include the paper title and the presenter’s name, affiliation, and email address.
This workshop forms part of the Algeria: Nation and Transnationalism 1988-2010 project supported by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS).
Join us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/pcrowleyAlgerianAllegories
1.6 Memories of migrations and historical time
Conference to be held 22nd – 24th November 2012
Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (CNHI, National Centre for the History of Immigration), Paris
For the past thirty years, memories have become ubiquitous in the public sphere and a recognised field of enquiry in historical studies and the social sciences. Within this framework, migrants have a particular place: in France, they have been actors of these memorial mobilisations but have not always done so on behalf of their origins. Research-wise, studies on memories of migrations have already shed light on a group or a particular event but defining and exploring the historicisation of such memories remains to be done.
Thinking of memories of migrations – in the plural – enables us to consider both emigration and immigration but also the different categories of migrants regardless of their status. Furthermore, it implies a plurality of memories according to groups, their reasons for leaving, conditions of departure, places of settlement and time periods. Lastly, the term broadens the definition of what constitutes memory and moves beyond the expression of individual memories.
The first series of questions relates to the place of migrations in this memorial resurgence. Which memories of migrations are being expressed here? How do they articulate with the general societal evolution of the relation to the past? Do they emerge, as in other contexts, from claims for recognition or reparation? Do they have a specific temporality, when compared to other memorial mobilisations? Are they expressed and transmitted in different ways? The expression of such memories today cannot be understood without being placed within a longer-term process during which the relation to the past has taken different forms that also need to be analysed.
However, beyond these contemporary mobilisations, it is important to reflect more generally on the role played by memory in the history of migrations since the nineteenth century, especially regarding the formation of group identities and the establishment of transnational and diasporic networks.
This conference aims to stimulate reflection by focussing on five main, albeit overlapping, areas.
• Event, temporalities and transmission
“Generation” as a concept forms a central question. How does transmission take place from one generation to the next? With regards to political mobilisations, does memory function like a palimpsest, with each generation imposing its memory and erasing the previous ones? Or do mobilisations in fact inherit from the past, nourished by previous struggles? How is memory transformed when the lived experience of the migrant generation is transmitted to those who have not migrated? The issue of memory transmitted from one migratory flow to another will also be addressed: do the most recent groups develop memorial practices with regard to more established migrant groups? Most probably, it will be important to distinguish between the kind of transmission which is linked to public migration-related mobilisations and that which draws from intimate experience. Does the family hold a central place within these transfers across generations? It may be useful to use the notion of “post-memory”, put forward by Marianne Hirsch with regards to memories of the Second World War and the extermination of the Jews, and broaden it to the case of migrations. Finally, from a comparative perspective, the conference will reflect upon how the different migratory flows relate to memory.
• Geographical territories, social spaces, mobilities and levels of analysis
The construction and the circulation of memories can also be analysed through geographical territories and social spaces. Firstly, the aim is to consider the relevance of a national framework and to vary the levels of analysis, from the local to the international, transnational and diasporic. This varied topographical focus also encourages the study of memories seen from the migrants’ country of origin as well as the memories of returnee migrants.
The reflection on the geography of memory can feed useful comparisons. Between country of origin and that of settlement, do we see similarities between the relation to memory, its expression in the public sphere, and the introduction of policies relating to symbolic memory-related demands or, instead, are there national specificities?
“Mobilities” allows analysis of the different ways of considering all that circulates in the construction of memories: men and women, but also material objects such as photographs, letters or diaries, and that also raise the question of sources. The diversity of spaces and social backgrounds involved requires reflection on the “borders” that exist between the different social spaces of memory: private and family spaces, public or semi-public spaces (associations, dancehalls, cafés, migrant hostels, etc.). It will be interesting to see how memorial processes manifest themselves in such spaces and what aspects are specific to memories of migration.
• Identities and multiple belonging
Migrants’ memories cannot be dealt with solely in reference to migration. It is important to compare such memories to the theoretical framework (itself changing with time) developed by Maurice Halbwachs in the inter-war period, and to see the roles played by political, territorial, religious, social and gender affiliations in how migrants construct their memories. These memories can effectively be regarded as an interactive process arising from relations between individuals and groups but also between different social groups. The role of memories in identity construction and the value such memories are given by host societies can also be compared. For example, while European identity now allows European Union (EU) migrants to belong simultaneously to different identities, multiple belonging is often denied to non-EU migrants.
• Symbolic policies and heritage
Since the 1980s, the symbolic policies of public authorities have responded to memorial mobilisations in the field of migration and elsewhere. Such interventions have in turn produced further initiatives. Thus, by activating, supporting but also preventing activities, public authorities participate in the construction of memories through cultural policies and funding. What are the recognition processes at work? Are there other processes to be identified? Are public authorities concerned by memory or by the ‘management’ of minorities? Does the EU have a particular influence through its system of grants and the definition of issues that transcend the national framework?
What role does heritage play and how is this manifest in the recognition process? This question leads on to others: which roles are assigned to migrants and which roles do they claim? We will focus in particular on different kinds of museums, as well as on artistic creativity, taking into account how these memories are used within cultural production, how they are mediated and in turn received by the public.
• Historians of immigration and memories of migrations
Historiographical debates of the past decades have involved reflecting upon the role of the witness and of memory in the writing of the past. Such debates have also focused attention on the history of those who leave few archival traces, thus contributing to greater reflection on sources and on other ways of writing history. At the intersection of these developments, it would be useful to analyse how memories influence the works of historians and the historiographical debates on migrations.
Organisation
Proposals for papers should be sent in French or English (Word format or as an rtf attachment).
Proposals should include a title and abstract of 3,000 characters (450 words), as well as your contact details (surname, first name, post and institutional affiliation, email and (home) postal addresses, telephone numbers) and a short biography.
Final papers should be submitted at least three weeks before the conference to be read in advance by the discussants.
Several types of proposals will be particularly welcome: those favouring a long-term historical analysis across the centuries; those considering mobility between social or geographical spaces; and finally, those developing a comparative perspective between country of origin and receiving country. More widely, this interdisciplinary conference embraces all proposals incorporating an epistemological reflection.
Submissions by doctoral students and early career researchers are particularly welcome.
Contact details
colloquememoires@histoire-immigration.fr
Time scale
Deadline for submissions: 25 mars 2012
Conference Committee makes final selection of papers: May 2012
Deadline for written conference papers: 31 October 2012
Expenses
Speakers’ travel and accommodation expenses will be covered by the conference organisers; further details will be sent out in June 2012.
Conference committee
Marianne Amar (Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration), Michèle Baussant (CNRS/EHESS), Hélène Bertheleu (Université de Tours, CITERES), Yvan Gastaut (Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis, Urmis), Nancy L. Green (EHESS, Centre de recherches historiques), Jim House (University of Leeds), Tony Kushner (University of Southampton), Marie-Claire Lavabre (Institut des sciences sociales du politique, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense), Sabina Loriga (EHESS, Centre de recherches historiques), Denis Peschanki (Centre d’histoire du XXe siècle, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Laure Pitti (Université Paris 8, CSU-CRESPPA), Henry Rousso (Institut d’histoire du temps présent), Scott Soo (University of Southampton), Laure Teulières (Université Toulouse-Le Mirail / FRAMESPA).
The conference is organised by the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, in partnership with the research centres Framespa (CNRS / Université Toulouse-Le Mirail) and Citeres (CNRS / Université de Tours)
1.7 Postcolonial Traumas Conference
Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent University
13th-14th September 2012
Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Patrick Williams, Nottingham Trent University
Around the time of Frantz Fanon’s famous articulation in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) of the ‘massive psychoexistential complex’ created by colonisation, such writers as Octave Mannoni and Albert Memmi were also thinking about colonisation’s damaging psychological effects. In more recent years, the work of trauma theorists, including Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Marianne Hirsch, Dominick LaCapra and Dori Laub, has been both embraced and rejected by postcolonial theorists and critics. Whilst, for some, trauma theory has provided a helpful way of conceptualising the often painful and difficult legacies of colonialism, others have been all too aware of what Stef Craps and Gert Buelens (2008) have recognised as the ‘Eurocentric blind spots that trauma theory will have to confront if it is to have any hope of delivering on its promise of cross-cultural ethical engagement’. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to reflect on this promise and explore new ways of thinking about postcolonial trauma.
Conference participants will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for an edited collection.
Topics may include (but are not limited to):
* Slavery and indenture
* Colonial legacies
* Neocolonial trauma
* Apartheid
* Genocides
* Survival and resistance
* Tourism and eco-trauma
* Migration and displacement
* Asylum
* Witnessing and testifying
* Memory and trauma
* The ethics of trauma studies
Please send 300-word abstracts and 50-word bios to Abigail Ward by Friday 13th April 2012: abigail.ward@ntu.ac.ukmailto:abigail.ward@ntu.ac.uk
CALLS FOR CONTRIBUTION
2.1 Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World
Call for Contributions to Book
Edited by Nikita Dhawan
The formal attainment of independence by colonies and protectorates in Latin America, Asia and Africa has not ushered in the end of imperialism. The epistemic and material conditions that underpinned European colonialism persist to shape our world, so that the postcolony continues to be confronted with the violent legacies of imperialism. From development politics to peace and security issues, from human rights to foreign trade policies, from climate change to intellectual property rights, from gender justice to global governance; colonial relations still inform how problems are perceived and what solutions are offered. If “modernity” is deeply linked to European imperialism and if European norms, values and practices were universalised through colonialism, then decolonization is inextricably linked to the project of “deuniversalising Europe”. However, this cannot be achieved through a simple rejection of European Enlightenment in favour of nationalist or nativist projects; rather “provincializing Europe” (Chakrabarty) entails the recognition that the postcolonial world is historically determined by the Enlightenment, even as the construction of the West as a normative power has left a trail of violent and exploitative systems in the name of modernity, progress, rationality, emancipation, freedom, equality, rights, justice and peace. At the same time, the native elites in the postcolonial world, to a large extent, profit from and reinforce the very neo-colonial structures they seek to critique (Spivak). This confronts us with the paradoxical legacies of the Enlightenment project and the challenge of freeing ourselves from the “intellectual blackmail of being for or against the Enlightenment” (Foucault).
In the last few decades there have been intensive debates regarding the pertinence of Enlightenment ideals of justice, human rights and democracy, which have been criticized for being Eurocentric and androcentric since they are firmly grounded in a Western (hetero)-normative framework. This volume presents critical perspectives of feminists, critical race theorists, queer and
postcolonial theorists who confront the question whether norms of justice, human rights and democracy are enabling for disenfranchised communities or do they simply reinforce relations of domination between those who are constituted as dispensers of justice, rights and aid and those who are coded as receivers? This raises the following questions: How do Western conceptions of justice, human rights and democracy become normative, thus meriting emulation from the rest? How do they exert violence on those subjects that violate Eurocentric norms? If there are no objective standards of justice, human rights and democracy that apply universally regardless of culture, race, gender, religion, nationality or other factors, what implications does this have on debates regarding the scope and scale of struggles for justice, rights, freedom, equality? How does this inflect transnational alliance politics and solidarity across borders? This indicates the orchestrating and regulative effects of norms as well as their aspirational and coercive dimensions.
If the origin (Genese) of an idea does not determine its validity (Geltung), then a postcolonial-queer-feminist critique of justice, human rights and democracy cannot merely entail a rejection of these
norms because they emerge in the West or are authored predominantly by privileged white men, nor can the aim be to recover “pure”, “uncontaminated” authentic non-Western notions of justice or rights.
Rather the challenge is how to re-imagine these norms such that those subjected to them may have a possibility of intervening and transforming the terms of the debate. The contributions in this volume focus on the silencing and exclusion of vulnerable groups from claims of justice and rights, while highlighting postcolonial-queer-feminist struggles for transnational justice, human rights and radical democracy.
Contributions on the following issues are welcome:
1. Cosmopolitan Democracy, Global Governance and Neo-Colonialism
2. Transnational Justice: Postcolonial-Queer-Feminist Perspectives on Recognition, Redistribution and Representation
3. Human rights, Cultural Difference and Geopolitics
4. Development Politics, International Aid and Empire
5. Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Globalization
6. Transnational Counterpublic Spheres, International Civil Society and Decolonization
7. Religion, Secularism and Modernity
The volume is to be published by Barbara Budrich Publishers in the book series of the Working Group “Politics and Gender” of the German Association of Political Science (DVPW).
Contributions submitted must be original and unpublished accounts.
Anticipated schedule:
Submission of paper proposal: 1st March 2012
Internal review process: 1st April 2012
Completed final paper submission: 1st October 2012
Revisions completed: 1st February 2013
Manuscript to printer: 1st March 2013
Please forward your queries and submissions to the editor:
Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan
Junior Professor of Political Science (Gender/Postcolonial Studies)
Faculty of Social Sciences
Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies (FRCPS)
Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”
Goethe-University Frankfurt
Senckenberganlage 31 (Hauspostfach 7)
60054 Frankfurt am Main
Email: dhawan@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
2.2 PSA Newsletter Number 10 (Autumn 2012) Special Issue on the Arab World
In 1990, Edward Said decried ‘the will to reduce and ignore the Arabs that still exists in many departments of Western culture, and the unacceptable defeatism among some Arabs that a resurgent religion and indiscrimate hostility are the only answers (‘Embargoed Literature’ The Nation, 17 September: 280). Just over a decade later, Hosam Aboul-Ela lamented that Said’s words remained depressingly relevant (‘Challenging the Embargo’ Middle East Report, 2001, 219: 44). By contrast, 2012 sees the aftermath of ostensible revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and although such political uprisings continue to be met with brutal repression in the various Arab countries, there is now an international media spotlight on Arab national and regional affairs.
What ‘answers’ are being offered to political crisis? Who are the key players? To what extent do recent events reflect a new optimism in this part of the world, and/or a new, renewed or revised set of orientations? As postcolonial scholars, how can we begin to think about – without reducing – the causes, trajectories, aftermaths and implications of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, particularly from locations in the West and while this history is still unfolding?
As Claire Chambers has exhorted us, ‘academics need to respond to the Arab Spring with empathy, alertness to Eurocentrism and a strong ethical framework. Interdisciplinarity should be central to research, including examination of the role of new media, the arts and material culture, as well as politics, economics and society, in the rebellions Newsletter 8, 2011).
The editors of the PSA Newsletter thus invite reflections on the contemporary Arab world for a forthcoming Special Issue to be published in Autumn 2012. We welcome submissions from the full spectrum of scholarly disciplines and interdisciplinary research, that draw attention to political and/or cultural points of interest, and/or areas for potential future research.
To make an enquiry, or register your intention to submit a feature, please contact the editors as soon as possible. Final contributions may be in English, French or Arabic; if in French or Arabic, they should include a 100-200 word synopsis in English. Contributions should be between 300-1200 words long, and be sent as .doc files by the end of June.
Lindsey Moore: L.C.Moore@lancaster.ac.uk; Nicola Abram: n.abram@pgr.reading.ac.uk
2.3 Relaunch of The Bulletin of Francophone Africa under the new title Transcultural Visions
The Bulletin of Francophone Africa was first published in 1992 and celebrated its 10th anniversary at the French Institute in 2002. It aimed to give a voice to research on the Francophone world in general, more specifically the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa. Papers, published in French or in English, have covered literary, socio-historical and/or political topics. Since 1994, the BFA has had a Board of Referees whose areas of expertise reflect these specialisms. Since its launch it has been edited and produced at the University of Westminster.
In the 1990s, journals whose remit included the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa were relatively few. Since then, however, the range of publications has widened considerably. It now seems appropriate to give our review a new title, Transcultural Visions, and with it an enhanced brief encompassing trans-cultural issues on a wider, even a global scale. Submitted papers will continue to be peer-reviewed, and be published either in French or in English.
This call for papers seeks to explore how migrants are represented in contemporary Francophone and/or Anglophone media (press, TV, film) and to shed a critical light on the concept of belonging in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Its purpose is to bring together scholars and research students working across a range of disciplines, in order to foster a pool of knowledge and analysis as rich and as varied as possible.
The resulting publication, drawing from individual and collective research efforts and agendas in this vital – and topical – field of study will no doubt open new, exciting scholarly perspectives. Proposals submitted in French or in English on the subject of migration and newly established populations in contemporary media could focus on (but are not limited to) the following themes:
Urban/rural spaces
Ethical choices and practices
Gendered and/or racialized spaces
Collaboration and coalitions
Corporeality and embodiment
Movements/social engagements
Approaches, methodologies and theory
Please send a (150-200 word) proposal and a (50 word) bio to L.L.Randall@wmin.ac.uk by March 15 2012. Papers considered for publication (between 6000 and 10 000 words) must reach Laurence Randall for submission to the peer reading group by 8 June 2012.
Organizing Committee:
Laurence Randall, Senior Lecturer, Department of Modern and Applied Languages, University of Westminster.
Maryse Bray, Principal Lecturer, Department of Modern and Applied Languages, University of Westminster.
Hélène Gill, Principal Lecturer, Department of Modern and Applied Languages, University of Westminster.
2.4 Repenser la domination littéraire des littératures africaines
Appel à contribution
Date limite: 30.03.2012
HeLix – Heidelberger Beiträge zur romanischen Literaturwissenschaft
Appel à contribution pour HeLix, volume 6 (2012)
Selon Pascale Casanova, sociologue de littérature, l’universalisme littéraire français est un facteur influent qui s’exerce sur l’ensemble du processus de production des littératures qui dépendent structurellement de la capitale littéraire parisienne. Casanova soutient que « [p]our accéder à la reconnaissance littéraire, les écrivains dominés doivent […] se plier aux normes décrétées universelles par ceux-là mêmes qui ont le monopole de l’universel. Et surtout trouver la ‘bonne distance’ qui les rendra visibles » (Casanova 1999: 218). Or, cette normativité esthétique qui découle du rapport de domination entre centre et périphérie et qui s’exerce indirectement et directement sur les textes d’auteurs et d’auteures francophones et notamment africain(e)s fait encore rarement l’objet d’études approfondies. Au contraire, force est de constater que l’universalisme, la croyance en une littérature pure, apparemment désintéressée et indépendante de facteurs socio-économiques et politiques, sous-tend aussi une tradition d’études littéraire française vouée à l’interprétation de texte dans des catégories dépouillées de toute référence historique. Tandis que les théories postcoloniales de provenance anglo-saxonne ont en partage l’engagement de dévoiler la continuité des rapports de domination hérités de l’époque coloniale, en France, pour des raisons diverses, les théories postcoloniales n’ont pénétré le champ d’études littéraire que tardivement, où elles se heurtent notamment à la tradition universaliste. Ce conflit de traditions de pensée explique d’ailleurs, en partie, l’usage parfois réactionnaire qui en est fait en contexte francophone. S’il est sans aucun doute vrai que l’application des théories postcoloniales anglo-saxonnes ne va pas de soi dans le cadre de la francophonie qui obéit à des lois tout à fait distinctes, il faut néanmoins reconnaître que les possibilités de soumettre l’organisation du champ littéraire francophone africain à une critique postcoloniale matérialiste (telle qu’elle est projetée par Graham Huggan et Sarah Brouillette par exemple) n’ont pas été épuisées jusqu’à ce jour.
Dans le domaine de la recherche postcoloniale féministe, l’intersectionnalité (voir Kimberlé Crenshaw et Kathy Davis par exemple) partage en partie les prémisses de la théorie postcoloniale matérialiste. En effet, l’intersectionnalité rend compte de la répression naturalisée basée sur différents facteurs qui influencent l’identité sociale (« race », genre, classe sociale, âge, santé, orientation sexuelle, etc.) qui s’accumulent et interagissent dans les enjeux liés au pouvoir. Les chercheuses féministes contemporaines d’origine afro-américaines (pour la plupart des cas) soulignent les différences entre les femmes, notamment, l’aspect particulier de la domination des women of colour. La domination intersectionelle est cependant souvent négligée dans les théories occidentales « blanches ». Les études de Life Writing (voir Joseph Janangelo) explorent de nouvelles pistes au sein de la recherche autobiographique contemporaine aussi bien au niveau des formes (blogs par exemple) que du contenu. Ces branches d’études ont en commun d’étudier le vécu comme fondement et comme outil de revendication des droits des femmes.
C’est dans cet objectif commun qui est donc celui de comprendre les conditions matérielles (sociales, économiques, politiques et historiques) de la possibilité des littératures africaines dans le champ littéraire français, que les théories postcoloniales matérialistes recouvrent l’ambition d’une tradition de sociologie littéraire initiée par Pierre Bourdieu et transformée en une théorie de la domination littéraire par Casanova. Nous proposons donc ici de croiser la réflexion sociologique sur les conditions matérielles de la production, la diffusion et la réception des littératures africaines avec une approche postcoloniale de critique matérialiste sensible aux multiples rapports d’inégalités qui structurent un champ littéraire à présent globalisé. Considérant que la normativité de la domination littéraire exerce son effet sur l’ensemble du circuit de communication littéraire, nous proposons, dans ce dossier, de centrer la perspective critique sur les trois articulations suivantes :
1 les facteurs qui déterminent et conditionnent la production littéraire
2 les facteurs qui se manifestent à l’échelle du texte littéraire
3 les facteurs qui conditionnent le processus de diffusion, de réception et de consécration
Dans une approche résolument anti-essentialiste, nous souhaitons mettre l’accent sur les questions suivantes :
– Pour quelles raisons les littératures africaines se constituent encore aujourd’hui en tant que ‘l’autre’ de la littérature française ?
– Comment évaluer la ‘dialectique de la distinction’ (Bourdieu) et quelle y est la part de l’exotisme ? S’agit-il de la seule forme esthétique qui prend la ‘bonne distance’ par rapport à la norme ?
– Comment évaluer les processus de légitimation et de consécration ? Quel rôle y jouent les différentes instances de légitimation ? Y a-t-il des ‘règles spécifiques’ de la réception en ce qui concerne la littérature diasporique ou « migrante » (Jacques Chevrier) ou/et de la littérature francophone, notamment africaine, écrite par les femmes ?
– Quel est l’impact du facteur de la visibilité de l’auteure/de l’auteur/du texte, à la fois moteur de promotion et obstacle à la reconnaissance ‘universelle’ ? Dans une perspective comparatiste: Quels facteurs distinguent la position des auteur(e)s francophones africain(e)s dans le champ littéraire français de celle des écrivain(e)s anglophones, lusophones ou encore hispanophones ?
– Que penser du phénomène de minor transnationalism (Francoise Lionnet/Shu-Mei Shi)? Quel est l’impact d’un discours sur la diversité et le métissage de plus en plus médiatisé dans l’espace public français ? Quel rapport ces discours entretiennent-ils avec des stratégies de marketing à l’aune d’un capitalisme à présent globalisé?
– Toute innovation littéraire qui s’impose est-elle nécessairement absorbée par le mainstream ? Ou peut-on parler de stratégies littéraires réellement subversives ?
– De quelle manière la mise en scène de l’auteu(e)r peut-elle influencer la diffusion et la consommation du produit littéraire ? Quelles formes de proteste s’articule de la part des auteur(e)s concerné(e)s ?
On s’intéressera aussi bien à des réflexions théoriques qu’à des études de cas spécifiques. Les contributions seront évaluées par les pairs. Les contributions pourront être soumises en français, en anglais, en allemand, en espagnol ou en portugais.
Modalités de sélection : Les contributions pour ce dossier sont attendues, pour au plus tard le vendredi 30 mars 2012. Les contributions doivent contenir un titre et une courte présentation biographique de l’auteur(e). Elles devront être envoyées aux adresses courriel: kaiju.harinen@utu.fi ; sarah.burnautzki@ehess.fr
Contacts : kaiju.harinen@utu.fi ; sarah.burnautzki@ehess.fr
NEW TITLES
3.1 Islanded Identities : Constructions of Postcolonial Cultural Insularity
Edited by Maeve McCusker and Anthony Soares
The following is a new publication which might interest you. At the moment it is offered with 30% discount until February 15th*. More information at info@rodopi.nl<mailto:info@rodopi.nl> <mailto:info@rodopi.nl>
Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, NY 2011. XXVIII, 243 pp. (Cross/Cultures 139)
ISBN: 978-90-420-3406-8 Bound
ISBN: 978-94-012-0693-8 E-Book
Online info: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=CC+139
The island, because of its supposed isolation, and its apparent small scale, has historically been a privileged site of colonial aggression and acquisitiveness. Yet the island has also been imagined as a uniquely sovereign space, and thus one in which the colonial enterprise can be seen as especially egregious. ‘Islandedness’ takes on a particular charge in the early twenty-first century, in the supposedly postcolonial period. While contemporary media offer a simulacrum of proximity to others, the reality is that we are ever more distant, inhabiting islands both real and conceptual. Meanwhile migrants from today’s ‘postcolonial’ islands are routinely denied access to the perceived ‘mainland’. And, in islands freed from overt colonialism, but often beset by neocolonial forces of domination and control, identities are constructed so as to differentiate insider from outsider – even when the outsider comes from within.
This is the first volume devoted explicitly to the postcolonial island, conceived in a broad geographical, historical, and metaphorical sense. Branching across disciplinary parameters (literary studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies), and analyzing a range of cultural forms (literature, dance, print journalism, and television), the volume attempts to focus critically on three areas: the current realities of formerly colonized island nations; the phenomenon of ‘foreign’ communities living within a dominant host community; and the existence of (local) practices and theoretical perspectives that complement, but are often critical of, prevailing theories of the postcolonial. The islands treated in the volume include Ireland, Montserrat, Martinique, Mauritius, and East Timor, and the collection includes more broadly conceived historical and theoretical essays. The volume should be required reading for scholars working in postcolonial studies, in island studies, and for those working in and across a range of disciplines (literature, cultural studies, anthropology).
Contributors: Ralph Crane, Matthew Boyd Goldie, Lyn Innes, Maeve McCusker, Paulo de Medeiros, Burkhard Schnepel, Cornelia Schnepel, Jonathan Skinner, Anthony Soares, Ritu Tyagi, Mark Wehrly
Maeve McCusker is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. She has published widely on Caribbean writing in French, notably on contemporary fiction and autobiography. Anthony Soares is a Lecturer in Portuguese Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. His chief research interests focus on postcolonial theory and literature in relation to the Portuguese-speaking world.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Introduction
Matthew Boyd Goldie: Island Theory — The Antipodes
Maeve McCusker: Writing Against the Tide? — Patrick Chamoiseau’s (Is)land Imaginary
Jonathan Skinner: A Distinctive Disaster Literature — Montserrat Island Poetry under Pressure
Ritu Tyagi: Rethinking Identity and Belonging — ‘Mauritianness’ in the Work of Ananda Devi
Burkhard Schnepel and Cornelia Schnepel: From Slave to Tourist Entertainer — Performative Negotiations of Identity and Difference in Mauritius
Ralph Crane: “Amid the Alien Corn” — British India as Human Island
Mark Wehrly: Journalism and Identity — The Red-Top Hangover and Erosions of ‘Island Mentality’ in Postcolonial Ireland
Anthony Soares: Western Blood in an Eastern Island — Affective Identities in Timor-Leste
Lyn Innes: “No Man is an Island” — National Literary Canons, Writers, and Readers
Paulo de Medeiros: Impure Islands — Europe and a Post-Imperial Polity
Notes on Contributors
Index
*Please note that this offer is not valid in combination with any other offer
OTHER NEWS
4.1 International Symposium : Sarkozy’s France, 2007-2012
International Symposium
February 20-21, 2012
Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, Florida State University
How has France changed during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy? In this assessment of Sarkozy’s five-year term, topics to be addressed by leading speakers from Europe and the United States include social and economic reform, relations with the left and the extreme right, the media, women, ethnic minorities, the “Arab spring” and former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa.
Speakers include Ludivine Bantigny (Université de Rouen), Alistair Cole (Cardiff University, UK), Christian Delporte (Université de Versailles), Julien Gaertner(Université de Nice), Yvan Gastaut (Université de Nice), Jean-Robert Henry (IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence), Mark McKinney (Miami University, Ohio), Phil Dine(National University of Ireland, Galway), Janine Mossuz-Lavau (Sciences-Po, Paris), Jean-François Sirinelli (Sciences-Po, Paris) and Dominic Thomas (UCLA)
The program is open to the public. It may be viewed at
http://www.fsu.edu/~icffs/sarkozy_france.html.
For further information, contact
Alec G Hargreaves
Director, Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French & Francophone Studies
Florida State University
Tallahassee
FL 32306-1540
E-mail ahargreaves@fsu.edu
4.2 Algeria Revisited: Contested Identities in the Colonial and Postcolonial Eras
International Conference, University of Leicester
11-13 April 2012
Plenary Speakers:
· Dr Sylvie Thénault, CNRS, Paris
· Prof. Martin Evans, University of Portsmouth
· Dr James McDougall, University of Oxford
· Maïssa Bey, novelist and playwright (Algeria)
· Mabrouck Rachedi, novelist and essayist (France)
[Version française ci-dessous]
We are pleased to announce that registration for the Algeria Revisited conference is now available via the conference website. This can be accessed by clicking on the following link:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/modern-languages/algeria-revisited
In addition to the conference programme (included below), you can find information regarding travel to and from the conference location on the website. There is also a link to the online booking system which allows you to register and pay for attendance at the conference. There are a range of attendance options from the full conference package to day rates, as well as a special postgraduate tariff. It is also possible to book additional nights of accommodation at the conference venue at a cost of £45 per night (nights of the 10th and/or 13th April 2012; Bed & Breakfast). We hope that there is sufficient flexibility within this system to accommodate your needs, but if you have any concerns or problems please do not hesitate to contact us (email address: algeria.revisited@gmail.com)
To encourage early booking we are offering a discounted ‘early bird’ rate which will be available until 1st March 2012. Delegates registering after this time will pay the full conference rates.
Should you have any queries, please contact the conference organisers Dr Rabah Aissaoui and Dr Claire Eldridge at the following address:
algeria.revisited@gmail.com
Short description of conference:
To mark the 50th anniversary of this historic moment, this interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the ways in which identities have been shaped by and, in turn, have informed Algeria during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Bringing together scholars working across a range of disciplines, the intention is to foster a holistic appreciation of the significance of this major historical turning point and its afterlives. We are pleased to be able to bring together academics working across multiple disciplines and from a truly international range of institutions in order to facilitate a genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue. This diversity promises to yield wide-ranging and stimulating discussions, which we hope will help advance individual and collective research agendas in new and innovative directions.
We would like to thank the following organisations and learned societies for their generous support:
The Royal Historical Society
The Society for French Studies
The Society for the Study of French History
The Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies
The Society for Algerian Studies
The Society for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
The Modern Humanities Research association
The French Embassy, London
The School of Modern Languages, University of Leicester
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