File spoon-archives/spoon-announcements.archive/spoon-announcements_2004/spoon-announcements.0411, message 1


Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 10:26:58 +0200
From: "Hein Viljoen" <AFNHMV-AT-puknet.puk.ac.za>
Subject: SPOON-ANN: CFP: International conference on hybridity, liminality and


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First Call for Papers
International conference on hybridity, liminality and boundaries June 30-July 2, 2005

The Potchefstroom research group into space and identity in literature and the Literator Society 
June 30-July 2, 2005
Potchefstroom, South Africa

The Potchefstroom research group into space and identity in literature and the Literator Society  (who publishes the journal Literator) are inviting papers for an international conference on hybridity, liminality and boundaries to be held in Potchefstroom, South Africa, from 30 June to 3 July 2005.

Literature registers the disjunctures between different global flows (A Appadurai) and the effects of such flows on people's identities and views of the world. The diffusion of temporal and spatial boundaries in an age of globalisation has expanded the reader's awareness of possible worlds and stretched the limits of the imagination.   Many literary texts are centrally concerned with boundaries  crossing boundaries and the effects of such crossings.  Systematic investigation of boundaries, crossing boundaries and the new landscapes that come into being in literary texts could be very fruitful * and that it would be extremely interesting to study the literary reflection and modelling of processes of identity formation as well as the nature of the identities that come into being in such new landscapes by focusing on boundaries and the effects of crossing boundaries. The hypothesis is therefore that the literary response to social transformations like South Africa’s transition to democracy can be charted by focusing on boundaries and hybridity.  By moving characters beyond boundaries of various kinds (mostly connected to the heritage of the past) writers create liminal zones where transformation, reconfiguration, or hybridisation can take place. Interaction between different zones or frameworks can be conceptualised as a process of hybridisation, since there is a double movement between the different zones that is expressed in different, mixed or hybridised forms and language.

Central questions are i.a.: 
How do we define and model hybridity, liminality, and boundaries?
How are boundaries, liminal spaces and hybrid processes of identity formation represented and configured in literary texts in the context of comparable international literatures and traditions?
What are the social implications of these configurations? 

The focus will be mainly (but not exclusively) on South African texts since 1994.

The aims of the conference are to discuss the reflection and refiguration of boundaries, liminal spaces and hybridisation of identities in recent important literary texts in order 
* to take stock of the literary response to local transformation and to the forces of globalisation,
* to chart and systematise these responses, and 
* to evaluate the ultimate significance of these responses by focusing on boundaries, liminality and hybridity.

Please mail or e-mail 300 word abstracts to Hein Viljoen (afnhmv-AT-puknet.puk.ac.za) 
by 15 January 2005.

Prof. Hein Viljoen
Afrikaans and Dutch
School of Languages
Northwest-University (Potchefstroom Campus)
Private Bag X6001
Potchefstroom
2520 South Africa
afnhmv-AT-puknet.puk.ac.za     tel +27-18-299-1501
fax +27-18-299-1562





   

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