Magical Realism: Texts and Contexts

Association of University English Teachers of South Africa/ SAACLALS/ SAVAL CONFERENCE 2007

8 - 11 July 2007

UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL, HOWARD COLLEGE, DURBAN

WORLDS, TEXTS, CRITICS

Deadline for submission of abstracts is 1 April 2007.

Website: http://academic.sun.ac.za/english/AUETSA2007/

SPECIAL PANEL

MAGICAL REALISM: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

Convenor:

Faisal Marrouki
email (fmarrouki@yahoo.com)

Adhering to the conference's spirit of homage and debate, this panel uses as a springboard of departure Edward Said's comment in his Culture and Imperialism (1994) on perceptions of magical realism:

…discussions of magic realism in the Caribbean and African novel, say, may allude to or at best outline the contours of a 'post-modern' or national field that unites these works, but we know that the works and their authors and readers are specific to, and articulated in, local circumstances, and these circumstances are usefully kept separate when we analyse the contrasting conditions of reception in London and New York on the one hand, the peripheries on the other. (374)

Papers from across the disciplines are invited to engage with any aspect of magical realism including, but not limited to:

* 'territorializations', 'deterritorialisations' and 'reterritorializations' of magical realism
* the poetics, politics and problematics of magical realism in postcolonial fiction and theory
* magical realist narrations of Africa
* magical realism and the global economy of literary consumption and production
* magical realism, globalization and cultural difference
* magical realism and new possibilities for (South) African literature
* magical realism and attendant isms: postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism...