CALL FOR PAPERS
SOAS, London, December 10, 11 and 12, 2009
Tropics of Travel
Part III
Utopias and Dystopias
International Conference jointly sponsored by School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia, and Université de Liège, Liège.
The Conference is part of a wider project that will take the form of four international symposia. The first two on Departures and Encounters were already held in Venice (2007) and Paris (2008). The fourth on Homes will be held in Liège (2010).
Project Leaders: Frédéric Bauden (Université de Liège), Aboubakr Chraïbi (INALCO, Paris), Antonella Ghersetti (Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia), Wen-Chin Ouyang (SOAS, London)
Travel is arguably a central metaphor of man's search for the right place in the world that has grounding in and impact on reality. Accounts of travel, fantastic or real, at home or abroad, are a familiar subject in cultures and literatures worldwide. Travel has been a staple narrative motif in Arabic writings. Tropics of Travel will examine travel not simply as a process, but as a central trope, a figurative matrix that drives quest for knowledge, geographical discovery, historical narratives, religious accounts of pilgrimage, spiritual journeys of transcendence, official records of diplomatic missions, literary journeys of transformation, and cross-cultural dialogues. It will, more particularly, explore the importance of new forms of knowledge created through the mediation of travel in the definitions of identity, community and home. The Project will look at factual or fictional Arabic writings that take 'travel' as its main theme or motif from a comparative and multi-disciplinary perspective so as to involve scholars of literature, geography, history, anthropology, religious studies, art, art history and cultural studies.
Tropics of Travel III: Utopias and Dystopias
The third conference of the Project on Tropics of Travel pursues one of the destinations of travel and examines the centrality of 'travel', as a programme of departure, search and arrival, in the narrative constructions of utopia, an ideal world that ensure personal happiness and communal harmony, or of dystopia, a world of anarchy run over by tyranny and chaos. It looks at the ways in which motives behind travel and the new knowledge created during travel go into narratives of utopias and dystopias. It considers the spatiality of human life and examines the ways in which utopias and dystopias, whether imagined as monolithic homotopias or polyvalent heterotopias, or heavens and hells, speak of the fantasies of the subject, and of its desire for coherence, autonomy, and belonging.
- How are notions of identity, community and home to be related to 'Xanadu', the utopia located in an idyllic elsewhere that hovers between fact and fiction?
- Is utopia necessarily premised on a rejection of familiar definitions of self and community? Is dystopia, then, simply an exaggeration of the unwelcome state of reality? Or is it too, like utopia, shaped by a rejection of familiar definitions of self and community?
- What do the components of 'foreign culture' picked up in utopian or dystopian narratives tell us about the relation and tension between self and other?
- To what extent are utopias and dystopias haunted by communities left behind or encountered? What do utopias and dystopias tell us about our satisfaction or apprehension of what and how we know?
- What do the constructions of utopias and dystopias, be it in the form of homotopias or heterotopias reconfigured from familiar, real spaces, about the importance of space in human imaginary as well as social interaction? In what ways is subject and its fantasies implicated in such imaginary constructs? What is the role of space in subject formation and identity construction?
- What can the intersections between fact-driven and fictive travel writings tell us about the desire for and construction of a utopia placed in no-where or not-now? And how do trajectories of travel structure this utopia? What may we say about dystopias?
- Do utopian fantasies or dystopian nightmares in turn give shape to narratives of travel?
- Is the construction of utopia or dystopia subject to the workings of narratives centred on travel?
- In what ways are utopia and dystopia defined by homesickness, nostalgia and exile?
- How would bringing the concepts of utopia and dystopia into an inquiry of homesickness, nostalgia and exile refine our understanding of these sentiments and the ways they drive and give shape to narratives?
- What can the material aspects of utopian fantasies and dystopian nightmares tell us about the relation and tension between reality and fantasy?
Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words or one A4 page (double-spaced) to Wen-chin Ouyang (wo@soas.ac.uk) by March 30, 2009. A circular containing more details on the organisation of the Conference will be sent to those whose papers have been accepted. All participants are asked to submit the full version of their papers to the organizer no later than September 2009.
Presentations should last 20-25 minutes. Each presentation will be followed by comments and questions by a discussant who will have read the paper beforehand (5 to 10 minutes). The floor will then be open for a general discussion. The official languages of the conference will be English and French. However, papers written in another European language will be accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Conference. Papers to be submitted for publication should not exceed 8000 words; they will be peer-refereed.
Registration fees: 50 euros. Participants will be responsible for their travel and accommodation expenses.