Université de la Manouba—Tunis--Tunisia Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités
Department of English
Manouba English Studies Conference Call for Papers on Secrets
April 10-12, 2008
The concept of “secret” points to a realm that remains separated, put aside, displaced from the knowledge of the ‘analyst’.
In literary studies, the interpretive endeavor indicates an attempt to disclose the enigma, and demonstrates the process that leads to such disclosure. The secret (of) meaning challenges hermeneutic passions mainly by accentuating them, ad infinitum, and thus seems to reveal itself “only by refusing to be revealed.” (Patricia Daily) The unfathomable enigmaticity of “the primal scene” in , say, a literary text, produces an impassioned race towards access, but any accessibility to its secret folds is bound to remain at best partial and fragmentary.
Linguists have also sought a tenable connection between the word and the world. Yet, this connection has always escaped a systematic and believable explanation. The word as well as the world have kept some hidden aspects. Underlying/deep features have been analyzed by language philosophers and syntacticians. Pragmaticians, in turn, have proposed a more realistic project for the understanding of how language means. Meaning is what we say, and what we say is a pragmatic construction. As our pragmatic experience is limited, grounded, situated in the here and now, meaning lies beyond the boundaries of the identifiable. The question remains: Is there something beyond “reality”, “truth”, “experience”, “convention” and “linguistic usage”? The project of interdisciplinary linguistics is to transgress the prescriptions of early twentieth century project. The ambition is to explain the seemingly “arbitrary” connection between the signifier and the signified; in other words, to challenge the paradigm which kept the relation between langue and parole secret, let alone the relation between parole and acts of speech.
In light of cultural history, secret alludes to the birth of the nation, state and “imagined communities”. When social, economic, demographic history loses its “humanist” character, it becomes all too susceptible to positivist historiography. It becomes, then, excessively mechanical and “evolutionist”. When history as occurrence starts to disclose secret events, it turns into archival history. Once interrogated by the “subaltern, it evokes “history from below” or what Hobsbawm dubs “grassroot history”.
Our conference welcomes any contributions that investigate the issue of “secrecy” in cultural, political domains, as well as proposals that tackle it more theoretically in such disciplines as philosophy, linguistics and literature. We are interested in, without being limited to, 1. examining/discussing the issues of · secret as “the twilight zone” between memory loss/oblivion · secrecy and the ethics of responsibility · secret as absolute hospitality · secret and betrayal · cultural manifestations of secrecy · the strategies of political secrecy 2. addressing the following questions: · What does it mean to mean? · Does language mean it all? · What are the different approaches to the notion of the “hidden” in language? · Is language the degenerate/distorted form of thought? · Is thought shapeless/secret without language? ·
Abstract Deadline: Submissions, which should not exceed 250 words, are to be sent no later than February 15th , 2008 to: Jaleleddine Boussedra: jalelbous@yahoo.com Abdennebi Ben Beya: babdenn@yahoo.fr Note that a limited number of overseas participants will be granted free accommodation. Any further query has to be sent to the conference organizers.