Call for papers andcontributions
Tracks and Traces of Violence.
Representation and Memorialisation of Violence inArt, Literature and Anthropology in Africa.
Conference of Bayreuth International Graduate Schoolof African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth (Germany), 14th– 16th July 2011.
Following up on an interdisciplinary workshop ofBIGSAS and UKZN on the interrelations between literary studies andanthropology, this conference zooms in on a specific phenomenon: violence.According to Achille Mbembe (2001) it is possible to “follow the trail ofviolence” that marks African history from the violence implicated in thecolonial experience to the pluralistic chaos that characterizes thepost-colony. From its moments of founding, through conquests, to itsdictatorial self-arrogation as the sole source of power and law, colonizationrested on violence, and some practices of “Commandment” are in continuity withcolonial power.
The cultural, social and individual medialization oflived experiences are often shaped and inspired by those violent events. Visualartists and writers from Africa have come to deal with these violent events ofthe recent past and the present like the 1994s Rwandan genocide, thebrutalities of the apartheid regime in South Africa or the liberation and civilwars in countries like Algeria, Mozambique, Angola or DR Kongo. By means ofartistic practice they, often as both representatives and witnesses, struggleto find ways to engage with the traumas and atrocities of conflict and war ofpost-colonial African states and attempts towards reconciliation. VeroniqueTadjos literary meditation on the Rwandan genocide can be regarded an examplefor this. Memory and violence have also become one of the key topics incultural studies and literature studies from the 1990s on. Particularly theefforts of Jan and Aleida Assman have largely been adopted by other disciplineslike art history, cultural studies, literature studies and anthropology (e.g.Boltanski (1999), Bennett (2005), Douglas and Vogler (2003), Chouliaraki(2006), Poggenpoel (2003), Goodwin and Attias (1999), Wood (1999), Terr(1990)).
Main aims
In the growing tradition of joint workshop of BIGSASand its partners, we aim at ‘doing interdisciplinarity' with the special focuson medializations of violence. This conference invites papers dealing with tracks and tracesof violence in – but not restrictively- artistic and literary practices as wellas in anthropological works.
Guiding questions are: How is violence displayed,scandalized, and documented in art and literature as well as anthropologicalwriting? How have artists and writers responded to individual or collectivetrauma through an engagement with the arts? How is this violence and trauma‘written into being'? How does migration change the image ofviolence/trauma?
We welcome papers interrogating topics including
* archives and its role in the process ofmemorization, re-membering, dis-membering, amnesia and mnemocide
* the human body as carrier of ‘somatic memory',first-hand testimony and witness of violence; spatial structures as memorialsand other buildings constructed as places of memorialisation and as'architectures of trauma' or ‘landscapes of memory'
* potentially violent processes of research itself,the relationships between writer/artist and subject, anthropologist andinformant, and where violence comes into play for example in translation as possibleethnocentric violence.
* visualizations and writings on violence and memoriesof violence
Call for papers
We invite BIGSAS PhD students and PIs and members ofour partner universities as well as other interested scholars, PhD students andartists to send their proposals in English or in French. A post-conference publication ofselected papers is planned.
Please send abstracts as a word or pdf document(between 200-300 words) by the deadline of January 31, 2011 to tracks.traces@googlemail.com.
Please include your full name, institutionalaffiliation, email address and media requirements.
Organizers
BIGSAS-Workgroup Tracks and Traces of Violence: VivianeAzarian, Katharina Fink, Amber Gemmeke, Moulay Driss El Maarouf, Maroua ElNaggare, Samuel Ndogo, Nadine Siegert