Authorship, the public sphere and commercialization
July 26th-29th 2015
Literature and film generates symbolic as well as economic capital. Aesthetic productions thereby exist in contexts following contrasting rules. Do authors and filmmakers play an active role in positioning themselves in this conflictive relation? Pierre Bourdieu has established that during the 19th century, the economical and the symbolical logic virtually excluded each other within France’s literary field. Symbolical appreciation could be justified only by the denial of financial interests. Our session aims to take a closer look at this seemingly strict dichotomy in times of a growing tendency to commodification under the influence of late capitalism.
It is significant that an increasing amount of authors and filmmakers tends to stage their authorship not only in texts and films, but also in the public sphere (e.g. Marie NDiaye, Yasmina Khadra, Leonora Miano, Éric Chevillard, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Frédéric Beigbeder or Michel Houellebecq). The internal and external dimensions of this textually staged self-fashioning could be described with Jérôme Meizoz’ term ‘posture’. The public sphere and its fundamental part in this context will form the centre of interest of this session.
In multiple and complex ways, the self-fashioning of authors and filmmakers interacts with the public sphere, which itself generates authorial images following its very own logic, which is to evoke attention. In this context, the production of references to biographical aspects such as e.g. ethnical or social origin plays a decisive role. Moreover, the role of the public sphere in its interaction with the publishers deserves a closer look, inasmuch as publishing houses can be seen as privileged sites of transformation of esthetical into commercial value.
How do journalists and publishers stage their public appearance and what contributions do they make to the creation of literary and cultural capital? Will commercial success and economic interest end up becoming the sole subject of aesthetic productions?
We hope to elaborate and discuss the parallels and differences between the more or less clear-cut national contexts and we aim to elucidate these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective, addressing contributors from literary and cultural studies as well as film, media and communication studies.
We welcome contributions in English, but French or other languages might also be possible. For the discussions, we will try and provide (English) translations for questions (and answers) in other Romance languages and German. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words and should be sent to rsc_romanistentag@uni-mannheim.de by January 15th.
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Meizoz, Jérôme: Postures littéraires. Mises en scène modernes de l’auteur, Genève: Éditions Slatkine, 2007.
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