Mutations

 

Thirty-two years ago, American scholars of twentieth century French and Francophone literature held their first international colloquium. In the intervening decades, the focus of our discipline has expanded geographically to cover all regions of the francophone world. Our critical approaches and analytical methods have evolved.  Even the definition of the literary object has changed to include more hybrid forms, from the graphic novel to fictional blogs posted in installments on the Internet.

 

The objective of the 2015 edition of this colloquium is to focus on the evolution of French and Francophone Studies, to take our bearings, to take stock. Now in its fifteenth year, the twenty-first century is well underway. We do not read Apollinaire, Claudel, Valéry, Colette, Proust, Céline, the Surrealists, Francis Ponge, Aimé Césaire, Nathalie Sarraute, Samuel Beckett, Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras, Jacques Derrida, nor Édouard Glissant and Assia Djebar (former Directors of LSU’s Center for French and Francophone Studies), nor LSU graduate Malcolm de Chazal, considered today as one of the founding authors of Mauritian literature, in the same way that we did fifteen or thirty years ago. Film and Media Studies have become an integral part of what we teach.  What authors and genres do we study now? Which geographical regions inspire our attention? How has our way of thinking about literature changed?

 

Institutions

 

In his essay L’Institution de la Littérature, Jacques Dubois demonstrated that literature is an institution, and as such influenced by political changes. [1] Even though some authors and scholars refuse to accept the idea of literature as an institution, they are aware that the literary establishment is in a state of radical transformation, as the disappearance of conventional forms and the emergence of new structures proves. Literary journals, university departments, bookstores have vanished, whereas archives, centers of research, collective research teams, book fairs, organizations devoted to the study of specific authors, or to other types of literary endeavors (translation groups like Double Change), new digital media and places devoted to public readings and literary events have multiplied. Our discipline has become increasingly more global (consult mondesfrancophones.com), and simultaneously marked by our increased interest in indigenous French languages and literatures, in the circulation of languages and of populations. Louisiana, located at the crossroads of the Americas, the Caribbean and Atlantic worlds, is a propitious place to examine these transformations. Which journals and institutions have disappeared, what others have changed or which new ones have come to the forefront during this period of transition? Why? What are the implications of their disappearance?  How have these newly created institutions, journals, voices, and forms influenced our concepts, and oriented our studies?   

 

Interactions

 

In the years which separate the first meeting of the International Colloquium on Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries French and Francophone Studies at Louisiana State University in 1986, and the 2015 event our discipline has changed its relationship and interaction with the other arts, humanities, social sciences, and pure sciences. Our enterprise has become increasingly comparative and interdisciplinary. In his 1987 essay La Poésie n’est pas seule, Michel Deguy identified the analogy and the comparison as two fundamental literary devices, and conceived of the arts in terms of their interconnectedness, what he called the dance of the arts – sculpture and painting and music and poetry, – and of their enduring dialogue with philosophy. [2] Thirty years ago literary scholars were interested in linguistics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Today, ecology has become part of the debate; its relationship with poetry, philosophy, and politics solicits sustained attention.

 

In 2013, the title, “When literature produces knowledge” used for the sixth installment of conference series, “Literature: Contemporary Issues,” initiated by Dominique Viart at the Maison des Écrivains et de la Littérature in Paris, seems to be very pertinent to our endeavor. In their program, the conference organizers underlined the rapport between literature and knowledge: “Literature cannot be summed up as merely a gratuitous diversion, nor can it be abandoned solely to the intoxications of the imagination. It has something to do with knowledge, which it questions, displays, and even sometimes suspects. It is a mode of experience and knowledge; another information system.” They subsequently propose a question which we repeat her because of its usefulness for our inquiry: “ What happens when literature produces knowledge? (How does it accomplish this, in what forms and with which practices?) [3] What disciplines do today’s scholars find pertinent to the study of French and Francophone literatures?

 

 

 

[1] Jacques Dubois, L’Institution de la littérature (Paris-Bruxelles : Éditions Nathan ; Éditions Labor, 1978) see chapters 3 and 4).

[2] Michel Deguy, La Poésie n’est pas seule (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, coll. « Fiction & Cie », 1987), p. 152.

[3] Programme, Enjeux contemporains VI, « Quand la littérature fait savoir » Maison des écrivains et de la littérature Paris.

 

 

 

 

The 2015 edition of this conference will be devoted to the study of the literary texts, individuals, events, and institutions that have marked our discipline and led to its evolution. We intend to study the changes that have influenced the concepts of French and Francophone literature globally, in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and on the world’s islands, in all areas where the French is spoken, where literature in that language is written and studied.

 

Please send proposals for papers or panels (proposals as well as papers may be in French or in English), along with a short biographical summary by clicking on the "Proposals" tab below. Then click on the appropriate button -- Paper Proposal or Panel Proposal -- to fill out the Google Docs form. Please include your contact information (name, institutional affiliation, email address) and a 250-300 word abstract of your paper.  Panel proposals must include a description of the entire panel as well as individual abstracts and biographical data for each person participating on the panel, including the chair.

 

Deadline September 15, 2014.