Department of Germanic and Romance Studies
University of Delhi, Delhi - 110007
Tel: 27666426, 27667725 Ext.1296 /
Website: http://grs.du.ac.in
E-mail: head@grs.du.ac.in / grs.du.in@gmail.com / minnisawhney@yahoo.com
CALL FOR PAPERS
CONFERENCE:
India in other literatures
6-8th
March 2014
The gaze of the Other, the foreigner has fascinated but
also repelled host cultures over time. It has straddled various disciplines in
the humanities like philosophy, anthropology, history and literature. While
deeply indebted to Edward Said who in Orientalism (1978) deconstructed
the power – knowledge nexus inherent in colonialism, latter day scholars have in
turn pointed to the differences between colonizing and exoticizing imaginaries
of writers and intellectuals and non reductive Orientalist traditions that were
detached from binary oppositions useful to imperialism. Indeed the varied
social backgrounds of travelers who were often marginal figures in their own
countries point to the existence of counter cultures of modernity in the West
which valorized the desire for difference. These counter cultures range in time
and space and include the 19th century German Romantics and their discomfort
with modernity as well as Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation.
In the post colonial period, Said’s paradigms continue to
hold sway but the frequency of illustrious anthropologists and philosophers like
Levi Strauss (Tristes Tropiques) and Octavio Paz (Conjunctions and
Disjunctions) who maintained that philosophy had always been hybrid and had
benefited from non Western traditions has enriched the canvas of cross cultural
understandings. If some encounters are still riddled with power relations,
others have resulted in a range of literary expressions in the essay, novel and
poetry genres. Writers have skillfully maneuvered in new meaning systems and
yet remained politically detached. More importantly they have transcended the
stultifying binary discourses of colonialism and participated in the clash and
conversation of Self and Other.
With these perspectives we invite papers on a seminar on India
in other Literatures. We will address questions on how writers with
multiple cross purposes negotiate in a terrain that is historically mined with
power relations. Has the portrayal of cultural difference abandoned essence and
environment for global mutuality? Has the Eurocentric surveillance gaze given
way to the stereoscopic? The limitations of the Orientalist discourse and its
oppositions can best be studied if we include the precolonial period in our
analytical time frame together with the colonial and post colonial. With a
wider corpus of texts on India over time we hope to avoid the pitfalls of
categories and typologies of cultures.
[Deadline for submission of abstracts (200-300 words): 10 January 2014]