20/21French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium : "Crossings, Frictions, Fusions / Traversées, frictions, fusions"

(voir l'appel à communications)

Twentieth- and twenty-first century literatures around the globe are marked by movement, struggles and transformations, often postulated in terms of crossings of, or intersections between, concrete and imaginary borders, communities, ethnic and racial delimitations, languages, and genres. This rings particularly true in the case of Francophone Studies, whose very core assumes a host of social, cultural, political and historical encounters as well as inter-disciplinary theoretical workings. This conference aims to delineate such spaces of encounter, ephemeral or lasting, that lead to frictions, hyphenations, cross-pollinations or fragmentations. Among questions to be considered: Is the encounter bound to be informed by what Sergei Eisenstein famously dubbed a “dialectics of collision”? Are there particular cultural fusions (music, food or art for example) that might be considered “non-threatening zones of acceptance”? What is the dynamic between these zones and the socio-political realities, ethnic segregation among others, which often accompany them? Do possibilities of conciliation exist in a world that is increasingly seen as divergent, and where the rise of new nationalisms posits a threat to the practice of an inclusive multiplicity?

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