Literary Links
Asynchronous Session
Literary Language Games: Acknowledging Narratives View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ejuerleigh Jones
My paper investigates the ways in which narratives are a medium for contending with philosophical questions that re-emerge across time and space, particularly those relating to human nature and the conditions of human connection. Proceeding from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of “language games,” I argue that the act of reading narratives is one language game in which we learn and develop our understanding of who we are and have been as humans, how we relate to others, the capacities of human beings (individually and communally), and the nature of meaning for ourselves and our society. I examine the ways in which narratives and their varied forms operate to test, confirm, challenge, negate, etc. our understanding or recognition of meaning and use as well as the implications. Succeeding Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, Toril Moi, and Sarah Beckwith contend for a critical practice of “acknowledgement” in literary criticism. This mode compels the reader to see the text, the author, and herself in relation to it in an intellectually honest way that renders a richer, more fruitful dialogic with oneself and others. Coupling the theoretical with the practical, I take for my sample Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave. Provoked by Northup’s philosophical contemplations on moral formation, the scope of my inquiry addresses the nuances of moral identity and the complexity of difference that Northup illuminates while maintaining his moral convictions.
Pyrostories: New Historical Insights from Portuguese Literature View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Isabel Queiroz, Joana Abranches Portela, Frederico Ágoas, Miguel Carmo, Joana Sousa
The Mediterranean region has been hit by large fires, which have had considerable social, environmental, economic and political consequences. Scientists working in ecology and forestry have mainly explained wildfires as a result of land use modifications and climate change. The FIREUSES project frames the study of wildfires by addressing burning landscapes as a specific historical field and by combining it with the study of social and environmental factors. This paper looks at the uses of fire in 20th century Portuguese literature. The analysis was based on the identification of pyrostories. They correspond to a section (or sections) found in or mentioned in less explicit ways, like uses of fire, consequences of fire, social and ecological main pieces of fiction in which fire is either central to the narrative dimensions of fire. Each of the pyrostories was analyzed according to their spatial and temporal literary scope, following a set of analytical categories: the fire circumstances, the biophysical, historical, social and political contexts in which fire appears in the text, and the adjective and subjective elements that constitute a particular representation of fire. From a comprehensive characterization of the corpus, the paper reflects on science, policies and aesthetics. Results show pyrostories as memory repositories, valuing their integration together with other historical and anthropological sources. We not only revisit rural fire practices and the historical grounds of contemporary fire regime but also report fire as an actant in protest and sabotage against hard living conditions and State afforestation policies in common lands.
The Missing Books in Australian Children’s Literature: An Australian-Filipino Author’s Journey to Representation View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristyn Maslog Levis
This paper discusses my own experience as an Australian-Filipino children’s and young adult (CYA) author trying to get traditionally published in Australia. After self-publishing two picture books and traditionally publishing three bestselling YA books with a Philippine publisher, I raise the question as to why the Australian publishing industry has not traditionally published a CYA book from the community in two decades, especially since the Aus-Fil community is the third largest Asian community in Australia. The paper covers my journey as an author — how I started, why I started, the steps I took to get traditionally published via a Philippine publisher, how I landed an Australian agent and the struggles of getting a publisher in Australia as well as getting recognised as an author. It contributes to the understanding of the struggles of writers of colour in Australia and discusses the realities of Aus-Fil writers.
Uncovering the Nude: Josephine Baker as the Black Venus View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ajana Bradshaw
When using a visual arts database, the image of a nude Josephine Baker appears with the title "The Black Venus." After viewing the image, I wondered why the title centralizes Baker's racial/ethnic identity and how Baker's portrait was created. Through the research to answer my question, I began to uncover the complex, incomplete, and nuanced story of Josephine Baker as a nude model for Jean-Gabriel Doumergue. This paper examines the history of the portrait titled "The Black Venus" by Jean-Gabriel Domergue. By reading the history of this oil painting, the black feminist methodology of scholars such as Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, bell hooks, and Petrine Archer Straw formulate an interpretation of the socio-political structures surrounding Domergue's portrait of Baker. Furthermore, this research investigates the reproductions, copies, and different known versions of Baker's portrait. Overall, I aim to study and question the dynamics between the artists and the model through the socio-political structures of 20th-century France and Black feminist ideologies surrounding Black nude models to identify Baker's agency as a model for Domergue's painting.
The Poetic Community of the Future Return : The New Comparative Literature View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ido Fuchs
The main argument of this paper concerns the act of literary comparison as a form of collectiveness oriented toward future liberation. This form of collectiveness stems from interpreting the figure of return in the Arabic 1953 poem “Sana’ud” (We Shall Return) by the Palestinian ‘Abd al-Karmi al-Karmi. The paper claims that the return in al-Karmi’s poem is a figure of a poetic community’s future. Al-Karmi’s poem is compared to the 1961 Portuguese poem “Havemos de Voltar” (We Shall Return) by the Angolan Agostinho Neto. Beyond their titles, the rationale for this comparison are similarities in their historical conditions and similarities in the features of the idea of return. Both poets are also connected through their association with the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association (AAWA), a literary-solidarity organization founded in the late 1950s. The paper also discusses features of the AAWA, firstly, for introducing another basis for the Palestinian-Angolan comparison, and secondly, for comparing both poems with the AAWA's own idea of a poetic community’s future. Lastly, the study investigates Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 2003 book, Death of a Discipline, and the figure of the new Comparative Literature. This investigation leads to the notion of comparatism offered in the book as related to collectiveness and the future. This notion supports a dual argument concerning Spivak’s book and the other texts in this paper: the comparison itself is a manifestation of a poetic community’s future; Spivak’s notion of comparatism as belonging to a poetic community’s future that can find its location in Global South literature.
Pseudotranslations in Eighteenth Century France: Mapping the Desire for Global Knowledge View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tegan Raleigh
The publication of Antoine Galland’s Thousand and One Nights (1704-1717) inspired a seemingly insatiable demand for exotic tales in France, and a parade of imitations followed suit. The majority of these works were pseudotranslations, or translations with no original, and they contributed to a fictional cartography of the world beyond France that was based not on geographic, anthropological, or personal exploration but on the notion of the exotic as a literary conceit. Yet authors of such texts such as Thomas-Simon Gueuellette and Antoinette de Fagnan provide glimpses into the mechanisms of their charade, compelling the reader to question “the extent to which all translations are unreliable transmitters of the original, a regime, that is, of extreme truth” and to consider that “all translators are to some extent counterfeit artists, experts at forgeries and style” (Apter 2005). Pseudotranslations serve to highlight the constraints involved in accessing understanding knowledge across language and cultures while exposing the myth of precise and faithful translation. Such texts provide guideposts for attempting to understand artistic creations from other cultures and traditions by revealing that epistemological endeavors are dialogical processes rather than unidirectional procedures reinforcing the distinctions of subject and object; the frontiers between literary landscapes are characterized by their very permeability. Pseudotranslations demonstrate that the transfer of literatures across spatial, linguistic, and cultural frontiers is more than a question of transaction and imitation: it is, to borrow Karen Emmerich’s terminology, a process of proliferation (Emmerich 2017), attesting to a knowledge transfer that is rhizomatic.
